Box Turtle Bulletin

The Daily Agenda for Saturday, May 18

Jim Burroway

May 18th, 2013

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Events This Weekend: Brussels, Belgium; Chisinau, Moldova; Düsseldorf, Germany; Hannover, Germany; Kraków, Poland; Long Beach, CA; New Hope, PA; Oklahoma City, OK; Springfield, IL.

AIDS Walks This Weekend: Buffalo, NY; Orlando, FL; Minneapolis, MN; New York, NY; Poughkeepsie, NY.

Other Events This Weekend: Harvey Milk Day, various locations and dates.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Marriage In Minnesota: 1970. Mike McConnell met Jack Backer in 1966 on a blind date at a Halloween party in Oklahoma where they were both 24-year-old grad students. On Baker’s 25th birthday, they became “betrothed,” as they put it, in a private ceremony, and moved in together. They moved to Kansas City, Missouri, and that’s when they met activists Barbara Gittings and Frank Kameny. “That’s what lit our fires of pride,” recalled McConnell. ”These fine people were willing to say, ‘Look, I’m as good as anybody else.’ That’s all I needed to hear.”

In April, 1970. McConnell accepted a job at the University of Minnesota’s library and and Baker enrolled as a first year law student. Three weeks later, on this date in 1970, the couple applied for a marriage license in Minneapolis. Their presence caused a minor stir among nervous office workers. Baker told them, “If there’s any legal hassle, we’re prepared to take it all the way to the Supreme Court. This is not a gimmick.” There were legal hassles. Not only were the denied a license, but the university fired McConnell when news of their application hit the papers. A federal judge blocked McConnell’s firing. He called the episode “rather bizarre, but concluded that “An [sic] homosexual is after all a human being and a citizen…. He is as much entitled to the protection and benefits of the laws… as others.” Unfortunately, that decision was reversed on appeal, and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up the case.

Meanwhile a state judge, ruling on the marriage case itself, sided with county officials and ordered them not to issue a license. While McConnell and Baker appealed that decision, McConnell legally adopted Baker in August 1971, which allowed them at least some of the benefits of marriage (inheritance, medical decision-making, even reduced tuition for Baker). That same year, they managed to obtain a marriage license from a clerk in Blue Earth County, Minnesota and were married by a Methodist minister on September 3. But in October, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled in Baker v. Nelson that state law prohibits same-sex marriage, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed an appeal “for want of a substantial federal question,” Baker v. Nelson became an established precedent.

In 2012, Minnesotans defeated a proposed constitutional amendment, placed on the ballot by a Republican-controlled legislature, that would have permanently barred same-sex marriages in the state. Voters also elected a Democratic-Farm-Labor (DFL, the state Democratic party’s name in Minnesota) majority in both houses of the legislature. Last week, Gov. Mark Dayton (DFL) signed a marriage equality bill into law. That law goes into effect on August 1. Meanwhile Baker and McConnell live a quiet life together, well out of the spotlight, in Minneapolis.

[Source: Joyce Murdoch and Deb Price. Courting Justice: Gay Men And Lesbians V. The Supreme Court (New York: Basic Books, 2001): 163-171.]

Therapist Warns of Homosexual Epidemic: 1970. New York psychiatrist Charles Socarides warned the nation’s physicians in the May 18, 1970 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association, that “Homosexuality is a medical disorder which has reached epidemiologic proportions; its frequency of incidence surpasses that of the recognized major illnesses in the nation.” Socarides, who had appeared three years earlier on the infamous CBS documentary “The Homosexuals” (see Mar 7), had become a nationally-recognized authority on the so-called “disease” of homosexuality and its cure, and so his article in the AMA’s prestigious journal carried considerable weight. Socarides chided his fellow physicians for not taking the new epidemic seriously:

Attempts to obfuscate the fact that homosexuality is a medical problem have not been met head on by those most qualified to clarify the situation.  Only in the consultation room does the homosexual reveal himself and his world. No other data, statistics, or statements can be accepted as setting forth the true nature of homosexuality. All other sources may be heavily weighted by face-saving devices or rationalizations or, if they issue from lay bodies, lack the scientific and medical background to support their views. The best that can be said for the well-intentioned but unqualified observer is that he is misguided because he does not have and can not apply those techniques which would make it possible to discern the deep underlying clinical disorder or to evaluate the emotional patterns and interpersonal events in the life of a homosexual.

Socarides distinguished between two types of homosexuals: the “obligatory” and the “episodic.” Only the former were true homosexuals as he put it. “The latter is characterized by isolated homosexual acts without the stereotypy, the compulsivity, of the former.” As for the former:

There is a high incidence of paranoia or paranoid-like symptomatology in overt homosexuals. This is related to the medical fact that overt obligatory homosexuality is either a fixation or regression to the earliest stages of ego development. As a result, archaic and primitive mental mechanisms belonging to the earliest stages of life characterize the homosexual’s behavior. Also, homosexuality, obligatory or not, can be seen in the schizophrenic in his frantic attempt to establish some vestige of object relations as an expression of the fragmented and disorganized psychic apparatus with which he has to struggle.

Socarides argued that because homosexuals were suffering from a mental illness, they should not be penalized legally for consensual activities “so long as it is not accompanied by antisocial or criminal behavior.” Despite increasing calls to decriminalize homosexuality, homosexual behavior was still criminalized in every state except Illinois (see Jul 28). Socarides cautioned that “ any change in the legal code should be accompanied by a clearcut statement as to the nature of obligatory homosexuality, its diagnosis as a form of mental illness, and a universal declaration of support for its treatment by qualified medical practitioners.” And only those “qualified medical practitioners,” he concluded, were qualified to pass judgment whether gay people were sick:

It is vitally important to realize this fundamental point: the diagnosis of homosexuality can not be self-made, imposed by jurists, articulated by clergy, or speculated about by social scientists. … If the homosexual is to be granted his human right as a medical patient, issues which becloud his status should be clarified. Above all, the homosexual must be recognized as an individual who presents a medical problem.

The whole issue of homosexuality must be transformed into one more scientific challenge to medicine which has time and again been able to alleviate the plaguing illnesses of man. With this respected leadership on the part of the physician, we will see a surge of support for the study and treatment of the disorder by all the techniques and knowledge available through the great resources and medical talent of the United States.

[Source: Charles W. Socarides. "Homosexuality and medicine." Journal of the American Medical Association 212, no. 7 (May 18, 1970): 1199-1202.]

First Published Report Of New “Exotic” Disease Among New York Gays: 1981. June 5, 1981 is typically cited as the date of the first published report on a new disease which would become known as AIDS, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a notice concerning five previously healthy gay men in Los Angeles who died from rare infections which were normally easily curable (See Jun 5).

But the first published report actually appeared in a New York gay newspaper a month earlier, tucked inside an issue of the New York Native on page seven. Dr. Lawrence Mass, who wrote a regular health column for the small weekly, had heard rumors of several new exotic diseases striking down gay men in Gotham. Some were coming down with a rare kind of a skin cancer that had previously only affected older Jewish or Mediterranean men. Others were stricken with a rare form of pneumonia which typically only appeared in people with severely suppressed immune systems such as cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy and transplant recipients. There were also a host of other odd diseases that gay men were coming down with, but so far nobody had figured out that there might be a single cause to link them all together.

After Mass was assured by the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta that there was no evidence of an emerging “gay cancer,” Mass wrote an article titled, “Disease Rumors Largely Unfounded,” which began:

Last week there were rumors that an exotic new disease had hit the gay community in New York. Here are the facts. From the New York City Department of Health, Dr. Steve Phillips explained that the rumors are for the most part unfounded. Each year, approximately 12 to 24 cases of infection with a protozoa-like organism, pneumocystis carinii, are reported in the New York City area. The organism is not exotic; in fact, it’s ubiquitous. But most of us have a natural or easily acquired immunity.

“What’s unusual about the cases reported this year,” Mass explained, “is that eleven of them were not obviously compromised hosts. The possibility there exists that a new, more virulent strain of the organism may have been ‘community acquired.’” But Mass reported that there was not enough evidence (yet) to make a clear connection between the new disease and the gay community.

It wouldn’t be long before that link was made. Chroniclers of the AIDS crisis now recognize Dr. Mass as being the first to write about the emerging epidemic in print. Dr. Mass went on the help found the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, and was the principle author of the organization’s Medical Answers About AIDS through four revisions spanning ten years.

CA Supreme Court Upholds Decision for Lesbians Denied Restaurant Seating: 1984. On January 13, 1983, Zandra Rolon and Deborah Johnson made dinner reservations at Papa Choux, a very elegant Los Angeles restaurant. They specifically reserved a “Romantic Booth” in the restaurant’s Intimate Room, which featured sheer curtains around the booths, strolling violinists, and a measure of privacy. When they arrived for dinner, they were seated at the reserved booth, at first, but then they were told that they had to move. The manager told them, falsely, that a city ordinance prohibited such seating.

The couple filed suit, and were represented by civil rights attorney Gloria Allred, who told reporters, “We intend to end this dinner discrimination and give Papa Choux’s their just desserts.” Papa Chou’s owner, Seymour Jacoby, countered with a newspaper ad declaring that “Papa Choux’s will never allow this charade. It would certainly make a mockary of true romantic dining.” But Rolon and Johnson won, and the case was upheld on appeal.

On May 18, 1984, the California denied the restaurant’s request for a hearing, and Jacoby took out another ad saying that “true romantic dining died on this date.” Allred countered, “This is not the death of romance. It is the death of discrimination.” A few days later, about 100 or so bar customers gathered for a “wake” as the restaurant closed its six curtained booths.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Patrick Dennis: 1921. His 1955 novel, Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escapade, based on growing up with his real life Aunt, Mame Dennis, became one of the best-selling books of the 20th century. It remained  on the New York Times bestseller list for 112 weeks, and became the basis for the movie Auntie Mame in 1958 starring Rosalind Russel. But that wasn’t fabulous enough. It went on to become a Broadway musical in 1966 starring Angela Lansbury and Bea Arthur. From there it became a Hollywood musical starring Lucille Ball and Bea Arthur. Mame’s outrageous main character defined camp. Mame’s commitment to imagination and style can best be summed up in her most famous line: “Life is a banquet, and most poor sons of bitches are starving to death. Live!”

Dennis married in 1948 and had two children. He struggled with his bisexuality and was said to have been a fixture in Greenwich Village. He tried to commit suicide at one point, and after years of leading a double life, he decided to leave his family after he had fallen in love with another man. By the 1970s, his novels fell out of favor and out of print. His caviar tastes and extravagant nature, not unlike those of his quasi-fictional Mame, soon had him flat broke. He began a second career as a butler, and a rather anonymous one at that. He worked at the estate of Ray Kroc, founder of McDonalds, where it is said that his employers had no idea who he really was.

Don Bachardy: 1934. He met the famous writer, Christopher Isherwood (see Aug 26), on Valentine’s day when he was eighteen and Isherwood was 48, and they remained together as partners until Isherwood’s death in 1986. Bachardy still lives in the house they shared together in Santa Monica. It’s a shame that virtually every biography about Bachardy starts with that association with the acclaimed author because he is a talented painter in his own right. He studied at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles and the Slade School of Art in London. His first one-man exhibition was held in 1961 at London’s Redfern Gallery. Most of his work is portraiture, and several of his sketches appeared in Isherwood’s novels.

If Bachardy was sometimes overshadowed by his relationship with Isherwood, he seems to have come to terms with it. But it did pose problems between them earlier in their relationship. During a particularly difficult period when Bachardy was studying in London, they almost broke up. Isherwood imagined what it would be like to live without Bachardy, and wrote A Single Man in which Bachardy’s character was already dead before the novel began. If you know the novel’s story, the result is not a happy one.

But they did remain together, and were life-long collaborators as artists and as a couple, sharing in each other’s successes. As Bacardy explained in the 2007 documentary Chris & Don. A Love Story:

I don’t take any credit for what’s happened to me in my life. It all seems fate — my destiny and Chris’s destiny. We were actually exactly what the other wanted and needed, whether we knew it or not. Well, Chris knew it. I didn’t for a long time …. I know that Chris would agree that the last ten years or so were our best — not the early years when we were younger and beautiful, but the later years when we really just enjoyed each other’s company and worked together in a variety of ways. It all just enhanced our basic unity — unity with each other, our harmony.

They continued collaborating, even as Isherwood was dying of cancer, when Bachardy would sketch him every single day, sometimes nine or ten times. “Chris was in a lot of pain towards the end,” he told The Sunday Times. “But he had sat for me so often over the years, and I knew this was something we could still do together. Each day, I could be with him intensely for hours on end.” On the day he died, Bachardy kept working on a sketch, a sketch of the man’s body with whom he had spent his entire adult life. “Chris would have been proud of me,” he said in the documentary. “He’d have said ‘that’s what an artist would do.’ And that’s what an artist did.”

[Source: Chris Freeman. "Lives in Art: Isherwood and Bachardy." The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide 15, n0. 5 (September-October 2008) 30-33.]

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?

The Era of Civil Unions Is Coming To An End

Jim Burroway

May 17th, 2013

Remember when Civil Unions were the viable alternative to marriage equality? Robert Jones and Daniel Cox of the Public Religion Research Institute explain that those days are quickly drawing to a close:

The changing political composition of civil union supporters shows that the center of gravity of this debate has shifted significantly. The civil union option has moved from being a middle way dominated by political moderates a decade ago to one that is, today, most attractive to political conservatives. And looking ahead, there is evidence that the civil union option may have a limited future, at least if younger Americans are any indication. When given a three-way choice, civil unions are the least popular option among Millennials (Americans born after 1980). Only slightly more than 1-in-10 (13%) Millennials prefer civil unions, while 67% say they support allowing gay and lesbian people to marry, and 15% oppose any legal recognition of a gay couple’s relationship.

Orthodox Priests Lead Violent Attack On LGBT Rights Rally in Tbilisi, Georgia

Jim Burroway

May 17th, 2013

Orthodox priests led a mob of anti-gay extremist in a violent confrontation with LGBT rights marchers in the Georgian capitol of Tbilisi in observance of the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia. Georgian police, which had been charged with protecting the pro-gay march, were forced to evacuate the fifty marchers onto buses as 10,000 Orthodox Christians began pressing against police lines:

But heavy police cordons failed to contain furious anti-gay activists led by priests, who rushed to the new gay parade location. Upon breaking into the public garden, the agitated crowd engaged in a violent pursuit, beating and throwing stones at all the people who were thought to be representing and advocating for the minorities.

At least 28 people were injured in clashes, and 14 of them hospitalized, Georgian Minister of Health David Sergeenko said. A journalist suffering blunt force trauma to the head and a passer-by who had his leg broken were among the injured.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili said  that LGBT people “have the same rights as any other social groups” in Georgia. When Georgian authorities announced that they would provide protection for the pro-LGBT rally after last year’s violent confrontations, Georgian Patriarch Ilya II said that the rally would be “an insult to Georgian morals” and described homosexuality as an “anomaly and illness.” According to the BBC,:

The Patriarch is by far the most respected public figure in Georgia, with approval ratings consistently at around 90%. All the anti-gay demonstrators our correspondent spoke to said the Patriarch’s comments had inspired them to attend Friday’s protest, which was organised with the help of Orthodox priests.

France’s Marriage Equality Bill Clears Final Hurdle

Jim Burroway

May 17th, 2013

France’s Constitutional Council turned back a challenge by marriage equality opponents and gave its approval to the marriage bill passed by the National Assembly in April. After the historic vote, opponents appealed to the Constitutional Council in a final attempt to derail the measure before it goes to President François Hollande for his signature. According to The Local:

France made history on April 23 when it became the 14th country to vote gay marriage into law but opposition UMP deputies referred the bill to the Council, which has the right to throw it out if it is against the country’s constitution.

However “Les Sages” as the council members are known has suggested they would not intervene with the wishes of parliament and on Friday they stuck to their word.

A statement by the council said that gay adoption did not automatically mean the “right to a child” and that the “interest of the child” would be the overriding factor in such cases.

Hollande has said that he may sign the bill as soon as tomorrow. Marriages will begin sometime in June.

The Daily Agenda for Friday, May 17

Jim Burroway

May 17th, 2013

TODAY’S AGENDA:
International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHO): Worldwide. The day is observed with conferences and workshops around the world to devise strategies to improve the legal and cultural standing of LGBT people. Other activities are aimed at drawing media attention to homophobia and transphobia, and lobbying for equal rights. Events are scheduled throughout the world, including Russia and several Middle-Eastern and African nations, many of which treat gay relationships as felonies. According to the IDAHO Comittee’s Facebook page:

1.5 billion people still live under regimes that deny the simple right to love. 45 million people, the size of the population of Spain, are considered criminals under these laws.

This year, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon will join the mobilizations for the International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia with a statement for the International IDAHO Conference taking place in The Hague, in presence of H.M. Queen Maxima.

May 17 was chosen to coincide with the anniversary of the World Health Organization’s removal of homosexuality from its list of mental disorders (see below).

Pride Events This Weekend: Brussels, Belgium; Chisinau, Moldova; Düsseldorf, Germany; Hannover, Germany; Kraków, Poland; Long Beach, CA; New Hope, PA; Oklahoma City, OK; Springfield, IL.

AIDS Walks This Weekend: Buffalo, NY; Orlando, FL; Minneapolis, MN; New York, NY; Poughkeepsie, NY.

Other Events This Weekend: Harvey Milk Day, various locations and dates.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Gays Cured Worldwide: 1990. It’s amazing that it took so long, but the World Health Organization finally removed homosexuality from the tenth edition of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (also known as ICD-10). It took the WHO nearly seventeen years to catch up with the American Psychiatric Association, and when they did they followed the APA’s same cautious approach by including the diagnosis of “Ego-Dystonic Sexual Orientation,” for those who were troubled by their homosexuality. That diagnosis served as a loop-hole allowing therapists to continue to try to “cure” gay people of a mental disorder that no longer existed. The APA removed that diagnosis from its list of mental disorders in 1987. It is still in the WHO’s list of disorders.

Massachusetts Begins Issuing Same-Sex Marriage Licenses: 2004. Six months earlier, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, in a 4-3 ruling, found that the state could not bar same-sex couples from marrying and gave the legislature 180 days to “take such action as it may deem appropriate” before issuing licenses to gay couples (See Nov 18). The state Senate responded by asking whether civil unions would suffice, but the four justice who made up the majority of the original decision wrote, “”The dissimilitude between the terms ‘civil marriage’ and ‘civil union’ is not innocuous; it is a considered choice of language that reflects a demonstrable assigning of same-sex, largely homosexual, couples to second-class status.”

Republican Gov. Mitt Romney issued a statement supporting an amendment to the state constitution which would have banned both same-sex marriage and civil unions (reversing a 2002 campaign promise that he had made to gain the endorsement of the Log Cabin Club of Massachusetts) but the legislature narrowly defeated it. The second proposal, a compromise amendment which would have banned marriage equality only,” mustered enough support, with Romney’s reluctant support (he still preferred the first proposal) to be held for a second vote a year later (proposed constitutional amendments require 25% support in two consecutive years before being passed on to voters). Meanwhile, the legislature took no action to implement the court’s decision.

On May 17, the day the court’s decision was due to go into effect, Gov. Romney cited a 1913 law prohibiting non-residents from marrying in Massachusetts if the marriage would not be valid in their home state, and instructed town clerks to deny marriage licenses to out-of-state gay couples. The 1913 law, which had been enacted to block interracial marriages for out-of-state couples subject to Jim Crow laws in their home states, hadn’t been enforced in decades.

When the compromise proposed constitutional amendment came up for a second vote in 2005, Gov. Romney withdrew his support, saying that it confused voters who wanted to ban both same-sex marriage and civil unions. The measure lost the necessary support in the legislature. Romney then backed a revival of the first proposed amendment which would have banned marriage and civil unions both, but that proposal failed to gain the necessary 25% support in the state legislature in 2006. Romney left office in 2007, and the  so-called “1913 law” was repealed in 2008.

IOC Allows Trans People To Compete In Assigned Gender: 2004. The International Olympic Committee ruled that post-operative transgender people will be able to compete in events in Athens according to their self-identified gender, provided the new gender is legally recognized and the athlete is two years into post-operative hormonal therapy. IOC Medical Commission Chairman Arne Ljungqvist announced the rule change in response to the increasing numbers of transgender athletes attempting to qualify for Olympic competition. “Although individuals who undergo sex reassignment usually have personal problems that make sports competition an unlikely activity for them, there are some for whom participation in sport is important,” he said. The IOC’s rule change came about after it become apparent that case-by-case evaluations were insufficient. Transgender advocates criticized the post-operative requirements, noting that many athletes cannot afford the surgeries where national or private health insurance doesn’t cover it.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Howard Ashman: 1950. Playwright and lyricists, Ashman first achieved acclaim for his collaboration with Alan Menken on Little Shop of Horrors. That collaboration put the songwriting duo on a course for greater hits to come. In 1986, Ashman wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation and wrote the lyrics for two new songs, “Some Fun Now” and “Mean Green Mother From Outer Space.” The latter of two received an Academy Award nomination. In 1989, he was co-producer, lyricist and occasional writer for Disney’s The Little Mermaid. It was his idea to give Sebastian the Crab a Jamaican accent, and the calypso song, “Under the Sea,” earned Ashman and Menkin the 1989 Oscar for Best Original Song. Asman died in 1991 of complications from AIDS shortly after completing work on the Disney films Beauty and the Beast and before he could complete Aladdin. Ashman was posthumously named a Disney Legend in 2001, and Beauty and the Beast is dedicated to him. Ashman was survived by his partner, architect William Lauch.

Annise Parker: 1956. The Houston native had worked for over 20 years in the oil and gas industry as a software analyst, but she was never far from public service. In 1986, she was president of the Houston GLBT Political Caucus, which is the South’s oldest LGBT organization. Taking the position at the height of the AIDS scare was daunting “It was a scary, very different time,” she said. “The two most visible lesbian activists in Houston were myself and Sue Lovell (who later became a City Council member). We had regular death threats, our tires slashed, vandalism.”

But the narrow focus of LGBT politics wasn’t a good fit for her. “I was bored with gay stuff,” she said. “I threw myself just as hard into 10 years of neighborhood activism.” That neighborhood activism led to her becoming president of the Neartown Association in 1995, and in 1997 she won an at-large seat on Houston’s City council, making her the first openly gay individual elected to citywide office in Houston. In 2003, she won her bid to become city controller, the second highest office in city government. But her greatest triumph came in 2009, when she overcame blistering attacks from anti-gay groups to win the race to become Houston’s mayor on December 12, 2009. When she assumed office on January 2, 2010, Houston became the largest U.S. city ever to have an openly gay mayor. She won a second term in 2011.

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?

The Daily Agenda for Thursday, May 16

Jim Burroway

May 16th, 2013

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Events This Weekend: Brussels, Belgium; Chisinau, Moldova; Düsseldorf, Germany; Hannover, Germany; Kraków, Poland; Long Beach, CA; New Hope, PA; Oklahoma City, OK; Springfield, IL.

AIDS Walks This Weekend: Buffalo, NY; Orlando, FL; Minneapolis, MN; New York, NY; Poughkeepsie, NY.

Other Events This Weekend: Harvey Milk Day, various locations and dates.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
“Homosexual Coed Tries to End Life”: 1950. That was the headline of a brief United Press article, datelined May 16 in Seattle:

A 25-year-old University of Washington co-ed, who police said admitted being a homosexual for the last eight years, was in jail today after threatening to kill herself.

The pretty coed, whose name police refused to divulge, telephoned the police department late yesterday and told officer Kenneth Dahl she had a high-powered 30.06 rifle “and I’m going to use it.”

“I haven’t anything else to live for,” she sobbed hysterically.

Dahl persuaded her to give him her address and he wold try to help her out of her trouble. Meanwhile, four prowl cars were sent speeding to the rooming house district adjacent to the university campus. In the basement of one of the houses officers found the woman with the rifle she had taken from a locker.

Detective L.W. Webb said she begged to be locked up. She said she just “gave up” and after quitting school last week decided she might as well kill herself. The woman told officers she had wanted to become a social worker but every time she applied she was turned down because of her affliction. She said she was from Los Angeles and that she had been studying zoology at the university before she quit.

Webb said the girl would be examined by a psychiatrist today and “probably be committed to a mental institution.”

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
115 YEARS AGO: Tamara de Lempicka: 1898. The polish Art Deco painter known as “la belle Polonaise,” she personified the glamor of the Great Gatsby society of the interwar years. In 1978, The New York Times called her the “Steel-eyed goddess of the automobile age.” Her famous self-portrait, Auto-Portrait (Tamara in the Green Bugatti) portrayed a woman who was utterly free, independent, and self-assured. Automobiles provided women with a freedom and mobility that they had never known before, and the portrait’s depiction of a 400 horsepower Bugatti added raw speed and power to the mix.

During the roaring twenties, Tamara lived the bohemian life in Paris, hanging out with Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, and André Gide. She was famously, infamously bisexual, and she was uncompromising in her very public affairs in a way that was scandalous at the time. She reveled in it. “I live on the fringe of society,” she announced, “and the rules of normal society have no currency for those on the fringe.”

In 1928, she earned a commission to paint a portrait of the mistress of Baron Raoul Kuffner. By the time she was finished, she replaced the mistress’s position, and eventually became Kuffner’s wife in 1933. In 1939, the couple took an “extended vacation” to America, and ended up staying through the Second World War, where she became a favorite in Hollywood. But by the time the War ended, her style was no longer popular. She switched from using a brush to a pallet knife, but critics savaged her work. She retired from active painting in 1962, determined never to show her work again.

In subsequent years, she not only complained that the paints and materials were now inferior to the “old days,” but that people in the 1970s lacked the qualities and “breeding” that inspired her art. After her husband died, she moved to Cuernavaca, Mexico in 1978 to rejoin the society of aging artists and aristocrats. By then, the art world was rediscovering the Art Deco era and her paintings were rediscovered and became highly sought after. She died in 1980, and her ashes were scattered over the volcano Popocatepetl.

Liberace: 1919. Born Wladziu Valentino Liberace, he was known as Lee to his friends, Walter to his family, and Liberace to everyone else. His father, a french horn player, loved music but his mother saw it as an unfordable luxury. His father prevailed, taking his children to concerts and insisting on excellence in their music lessons. Liberace later recalled, “My dad’s love and respect for music created in him a deep determination to give as his legacy to the world, a family of musicians dedicated to the advancement of the art.”

On “Mr. Showmanship’s” terms, the advancement of the art took on an entirely new meaning. The word “synonymous” doesn’t do justice to the connection between Liberace’s name and flamboyance. He raised eyebrows by wearing a relatively simple white tuxedo at the Hollywood Bowl in 1952, and he continued to wear it so he could be easily seen in darkened concert halls. But it didn’t take long before that gave way to sequined jackets, then entire rhinestone-encrusted, fur-trimmed monstrosities that were “just one tuck short of drag,” as he put it. In the 1950′s he installed a Plexiglas lid on his piano so as to not obstruct the view; by the 1960s his pianos were often encrusted with jewels and mirrors. And then there was the candelabrum. Always the rococo candelabrum. His entrances at the start of his Las Vegas shows were legendary. Sometimes he’d step out of a sequined limousine that rolled onto stage (driven by his very young and handsome lover, Scott Thorson), sometimes he flew in by invisible wires. After making a grand runway walk, he’d hold out his arms to show off his outfit and yet, “I hope you like it! You paid for it!” The audience roared back their approval.

He was as out as any closeted gay man could possible be, and as closeted as every fearful performer was determined to be. But the difference between Liberace and everyone else is that, his verbal denials aside — he even sued London’s Daily Mirror in 1956 when they questioned his sexuality in print and, incredibly, won! — he didn’t otherwise put a lot of effort into trying to fool his audience while on stage. Art critic Dave Hickey, in his essay “A Rhinestone as Big As The Ritz,” I think, put it best:

He never came out of the closet; he lived in it like the grand hypocrite that he was, and died in it, of a disease he refused to acknowledge. But neither, in fact, did Wilde come out of it, and he, along with Swineburn and their Belle Époque cronies, probably invented the closet as a mode of subversive public/private existence. Nor did Noel Coward come out of it. He tricked it up with the smoke and mirrors of leisure-class ennui and cloaked it in public-school double entendre. What Liberace did do, however, was Americanize the closet, democratize it, fit it out with transparent walls, and take it up on stage and demand our complicity in his “open secret.” …”A bit like cousin Ed, ain’t he,” my grandfather said. Getting it but not saying it.

In 1982, Thorson, by then Liberace’s 24-year-old lover of five years, sued Liberace for $113 million in palimony after they broke up. The lawsuit made for sensation headlines, but Thorson wound up settling for a pittance. Liberace’s closet remained sealed right up until he died in 1987. The official cause of death was cardiac arrest due to congestive heart failure brought on by sub-acute encephalopathy. Before he died, Hank Greenspun, publisher of the Las Vegas Sun, wrote in a front-page story that he had known Liberace for 40 years and that he, Greenspun, had the medical records, laboratory reports and other documentation to prove that Liberace had AIDS. Liberace and his handlers continued to deny the reports. After Liberace’s death, Thorson published a tell-all book, Behind the Candelabra: My Life With Liberace, in which Thorson described the “tender love” he shared with Liberace and their reconciliation at Liberace’s death bed. But despite that, and even despite Betty White’s 2011 revelation that she was a beard for some of Liberace’s dates for publicity’s sake, Wikipedia still — yes still! — has an entire section devoted to his “allegations of homosexuality.”

A biopic, Behind the Candelabra, based on Thorson’s book and starring Michael Douglas as Liberace and Matt Damon as Thorson, will premiere on HBO May 25. Thorson won’t be able to see it however. The Washoe (NV) County jail, where he is being held for burglary and identity theft, doesn’t get HBO.

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?

The Daily Agenda for Wednesday, May 15

Jim Burroway

May 15th, 2013

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Events This Weekend: Brussels, Belgium; Chisinau, Moldova; Düsseldorf, Germany; Hannover, Germany; Kraków, Poland; Long Beach, CA; New Hope, PA; Oklahoma City, OK; Springfield, IL.

AIDS Walks This Weekend: Buffalo, NY; Orlando, FL; Minneapolis, MN; New York, NY; Poughkeepsie, NY.

Other Events This Weekend: Harvey Milk Day, various locations and dates.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
“Writhing Bedfellows”: 1826. Few intimate letters between men survive from the early nineteenth century, which makes this one so remarkable. Back when the nation was young, Jefferson Withers, 22, wrote to his dear friend, James Hammond, 18, a letter which is both frank and playful — even “campy”:

Dear Jim:

I got your Letter this morning about 8 o’clock, from the hands of the Bearer . . . I was sick as the Devil, when the Gentleman entered the Room, and have been so during most of the day. About 1 o’clock I swallowed a huge mass of Epsom Salts — and it will not be hard to imagine that I have been at dirty work since. I feel partially relieved — enough to write a hasty dull letter.

I feel some inclination to learn whether you yet sleep in your Shirt-tail, and whether you yet have the extravagant delight of poking and punching a writhing Bedfellow with your long fleshen pole — the exquisite touches of which I have often had the honor of feeling? Let me say unto thee that unless thou changest former habits in this particular, thou wilt be represented by every future Chum as a nuisance. And, I pronounce it, with good reason too. Sir, you roughen the downy Slumbers of your Bedfellow — by such hostile — furious lunges as you are in the habit of making at him — when he is least prepared for defence against the crushing force of a Battering Ram. Without reformation my imagination depicts some awful results for which you will be held accountable — and therefore it is, that I earnestly recommend it. Indeed it is encouraging an assault and battery propensity, which needs correction — & uncorrected threatens devastation, horror & bloodshed, etc. …

[The letter goes on for two more pages on unrelated matters, then signs off--]

With great respect I am the old
Stud,
Jeff.

Withers would later become a judge in South Carolina and delegate to the conferences that established a provisional government for the Confederacy. He also served as a Congressman for the Confederacy from South Carolina. Hammond became a Congressman, Senator and Governor of South Carolina, and one of the South’s more important advocate for slavery as a Christian institution, as a blessing and a moral good. the greatest of all the great blessings which a kind Providence has bestowed upon our glorious region.” Slavery was also, according to Hammond, “is not only not a sin but especially commanded by God through Moses and approved by Christ through His Apostles.” Hammond’s personal diaries revealed he made sexual advances on his three teenage nieces, and he detailed his sexual relationship with a slave who bore him several children, and his sexual exploitation of her twelve year old daughter who bore several more children. Neither Withers nor Hammond, from the standpoint of American history, come across as admirable people, yet Hammond has become a modern-day hero for David Barton and others who promote the “Christian Nation” view of American history.

But all of that came later. Meanwhile back in 1826, Hammond replied to Wither’s letter  on June 3, although that letter is now lost. But Withers followed with another  letter the following September (see Sep 24.)

[Source: Martin Duberman. "'Writhing Bedfellows': 1826." Journal of Homosexuality 6, no. 1 (1981): 85-101. Available online here.]

Homosexual Drives As Menstrual Cycles: 1950. This was a time when Congress was preoccupied with two color-coded scares: The Red Menace of imaginary communists hiding in every cupboard and The Pink Menace of homosexuals working in federal offices. Congressman Aurthur L. Miller (R-Nebr) was particularly incensed over the latter. He was also a doctor and a surgeon, which made this speech during a committee hearing particularly strange:

Some of these people are dangerous. They will go to any limit. These homosexuals have strong emotions. They are not to be trusted and when blackmail threatens they are a dangerous group. … It is found that the cycle of these individuals’ homosexual desires follow the cycle closely patterned to the menstrual period of women. There may be three or four days in each month that this homosexual’s instincts break down and drive the individual into abnormal fields of sexual practice.

Episcopal Church Allows Ordination of Gay Deacons: 1996. An Episcopal Church court threw out a heresy charge and ruled that an Bishop Walter C. Righter, did not violate the church’s core doctrine when he ordained openly gay Barry Stopfel as a deacon, the rank below that of a priest, in the Dioceses of Newark in 1990.

FIVE YEARS AGO: California State Supreme Court Strikes Down Ban on Same-Sex Marriages: 2008. In a 4-3 decision, the California State Supreme Court ruled:

“[T]he language of section 300 limiting the designation of marriage to a union “between a man and a woman” is unconstitutional and must be stricken from the statute, and that the remaining statutory language must be understood as making the designation of marriage available both to opposite-sex and same-sex couples. In addition, because the limitation of marriage to opposite-sex couples imposed by section 308.5 can have no constitutionally permissible effect in light of the constitutional conclusions set forth in this opinion, that provision cannot stand.”

The decision took effect on June 16, 2008, when gay rights pioneers Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin’s 55-year relationship was solemnized by the first official same-sex wedding in San Francisco. But two weeks earlier, California’s Secretary of State reported that marriage equality opponents had turned in enough signatures to place a proposed amendment banning same-sex marriages on the November ballot. Prop 8 passed, but was later declared unconstitutional in Federal Court. That decision is now working its way through the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, where a three-judge panel has upheld the lower court’s ruling but narrowed its reasoning. The case was then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments last March. A final ruling is expected by the end of June.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Jasper Johns: 1930. He probably best known for his 1955 painting Flag, which is, just as its name implies, simply a painting of an American Flag. His focus on the mundane as subjects have led some to consider him a pop artist with an abstract impressionist streak, but it’s probably more accurate to see him as a ne0-Dadaist. Flag exemplifies that movement by taking an object or a popular image imbued with intense meaning and removing it from its context and thereby reducing it to a simple abstract design. Map (1961) does the same thing. It’s an ordinary map of the United States portrayed in an abstract impressionist style which reduces the iconic image to a series of color splotches and shapes. Flags, maps, stenciled words and numbers — all of these mundane yet symbolic images were subjects for Johns’s paintings.

Johns was born in South Carolina and studied for three semesters at the University of South Carolina before moving to New York to study briefly at the Parson’s School of Design in 1949. After a stint in the military during the Korean War, Johns returned to New York where he met Robert Rauschenberg and they became lovers for eight years. It was through his connection with Rauschenberg that Johns was discovered by the art world.  When prominent gallery owner visited Rauschenberg’s studio in 1958 and saw Johns’s work, he offered Johns a show on the spot. At that debut show, the Museum of Modern Art anointed Johns as a major figure in the art world by purchasing three of his paintings. By the 1980s, John’s paintings fetched higher prices than any other living artist in history. In 2011, Johns was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama, making him the first painter to receive the award since 1977.

Andy Towle: 1967. His last name is pronounced “toll,” not “towel,” making his blog, Towleroad, a homophone for the New Jersey Turnpike. That’s right, I said homophone. Anyway, before becoming a full-time blogger, Towle was editor-in-chief for Genre magazine. Today, Towleroad (a site with homosexual tendencies) has become one of the highest trafficked LGTB blogs with its focus on popular culture and the arts with a heavy dose of politics thrown in.

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?

It’s Official! Minnesota Is An Equality State!

Jim Burroway

May 14th, 2013

You remember how every time a new state or country completed the process of granting marriage equality for same-sex couples, we’d post a picture of fireworks. But in the past two weeks, we’ve had Rhode Island and Delaware do that, and we’ve had a hard time mustering the energy to Google “Fireworks Providence” to find a photo to swipe. And it’s not just BTB. I noticed our local paper, the otherwise somewhat left-of-center Arizona Daily Star, burying the Minnesota story deep inside — in the B section, no less, under one of those “Around the Nation” aggregations.

But when Minnesota’s Gov. Mark Dayton (DFL) signed that state’s marriage equality legislation in an outdoor ceremony on the Capital steps this afternoon, Minnesota became the first Midwestern state to legalize same-sex marriage as a result of legislative action and not by court order, and it became the twelth state nationally to provide marriage equality. As Gov. Dayton said:

“Progress has often been difficult, controversial and, initially, divisive,” Dayton said. “However, it has always been the next step ahead to fulfilling this country’s promise to every American.”

That next step will take place on August 1 when the new marriage law goes into effect.

Brazilian Council declares nationwide marriage equality

Timothy Kincaid

May 14th, 2013

From ENCA.com

The National Council of Justice, which oversees the Brazilian judicial system and is headed by the chief justice of the Supreme Court, said government offices that issue marriage licenses had no standing to reject gay couples.

The Supreme Court “affirmed that the expression of homosexuality and homosexual affection cannot serve as a basis for discriminatory treatment, which has no support in the Constitution,” said Chief Justice Joaquim Barbosa on the council’s website, referring to a 2011 ruling by the top court.

Barbosa also said there was no reason for the government’s marriage licensing offices to wait for the Brazilian Congress to pass a law authorising same-sex marriage.

Currently a same-sex couple can create a union in any state in the nation. They then can have a judge rule that union to be a marriage. In 14 of Brazil’s 27 jurisdictions, a marriage license can be provided directly, without the two step process. This appears to resolve the remaining jurisdictions and allow same-sex couples in any state to marry without an extra burden.

The decision can be appealed to the Supreme Court. But as the Supreme Court’s chief justice announced the ruling, I am not clear as to whether such an appeal would be made or has any likelihood of success. So it may be that Brazil is the 15th country to offer nationwide offer marriage equality.

The countries which currently provide marriage equality are:

Netherlands (2001)
Belgium (2003)
Spain (2005)
Canada (2005)
South Africa (2006)
Norway (2009)
Sweden (2009)
Portugal (2010)
Iceland (2010)
Argentina (2010)
Denmark (2012)
Uruguay (2013)
New Zealand (2013)
France (2013)

The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, May 14

Jim Burroway

May 14th, 2013

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Minnesota Become #12: St. Paul, MN. It happened far quicker than I ever thought it would. Imagine — this time last year, Minnesotans were arguing over whether to permanently ban same-sex marriage in the state constitution after a Republican-controlled legislature put the question on the ballot. Come November, Minnesotans not only decided against it, but they also decided to change both houses to DFL control. Six months later, that over-reach by marriage equality opponents led, in very short order, to the House approving marriage equality last week, followed by the Senate yesterday. Today, Gov. Mark Dayton will sign the bill into law in a ceremony on the Capital steps at 5:00. p.m.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Canada’s Parliament Votes to Decriminalize Homosexuality: 1969. In 1967, Justice Minister Pierre Trudeau introduced a large omnibus bill, The Criminal Amendment Act of 1968, in the 27th Canadian Parliament, which, if passed, would have had far-ranging effects on Canadian Law. The bill proposed, among other things,to allow provinces and the federal government to set up lotteries, expand laws on gun possession, impose penalties on drinking and driving, regulate misleading advertising, allow abortions and contraception, and decriminalize homosexuality. In 1968 when Prime Minister Lester Pearson announced he was stepping down as Prime Minister and head of the Liberal party, Trudeau sought the party’s leadership and won. After elections that summer, Trudeau became Prime Minister and John Turner became Trudeau’s Justice Minister. Turner re-introduced the massive omnibus bill into the 28th Parliament and described it as “the most important and all-embracing reform of the criminal and penal law ever attempted at one time in this country.”

The most controversial elements of the bill, the provisions legalizing abortion and homosexuality, drew the sharpest criticism from the opposition. The government fought back amendments from Conservative and Creditiste party members to leave the homosexuality sanctions intact. MP Marcel Lambert (PC-Edmonton West) asked, “If it is right to remove the legal sanction from acts of homosexuality between consenting adults … and from certain acts between husband and wife, why do we not remove a whole gamut of offenses, including attempted suicide and other acts involving an individual only and not other human?” MP Andrew Fortin (Creditiste-Lotbiniere) claimed that homosexuality “like tuberculosis,” could be brought under control with proper treatment. MP Rene Matte (Criditiste-Champlain) found the whole debate an abomination, saying it was “almost scandalous to see representatives of the people being obliged to discuss these questions.” England had decriminalized homosexuality two years earlier, but Matte declared, “we’re not obliged to follow the decadence of England.”

Justice Minister Turner countered that the removal of homosexuality from the criminal code would merely lift “the taint or stigma of the law,” and repeated the government’s position that “areas of private conscience, private behavior had better be left to private judgment,” and added that a law that was not enforceable was not a good law. Trudeau also rose to defend the provisions, telling reporters that “there’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation, and what’s done in private between adults doesn’t concern the Criminal Code.” After the acrimonious debate finally came to a close, the criminal code amendments dealing with abortions and homosexuality cleared the House of Commons late on Wednesday night, May 13, 1969, in a 149-55 vote.

You can see the CBC’s archival newsclips of Trudeau speaking to reporters about decriminalizing homosexuality and other provisions of the omnibus bill here.

“Shock Doc” Protested at APA: 1970. Gay advocates had long observed that the APA’s labeling of homosexuality a mental disorder served as a handy excuse to enforce widespread discrimination and legal sanctions against LGBT people in all areas of life. What’s more, psychiatry’s attempts to cure homosexuality were often physically torturous, with electric shock aversion therapy a not uncommon method. One of the stars of aversion therapy, an Australian psychiatrist by the name of Nathaniel McConaghy, was in San Francisco Francisco to read a paper American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting, and gay advocates saw it as a perfect opportunity to confront the organization. As McConaghy coolly described the methods he used — his patients’ penises were wired to measurement devices and they were shown porn; once twinge of arousal and they were delivered powerful electric shocks — gay advocates in the crowd began shouting “vicious!” and “torture!” and “where did you take your residency, Auschwitz?”

When the moderator announced the next session, the gay advocates exploded and demanded to be heard. The moderator refused, and the meeting broke down into shouts and recriminations. Conference chairman Dr. John Brady told the protesters to restrain themselves, whereupon one demonstrator shouted back, “We’ve restrained ourselves for 5,000 years!” Another psychiatrist shouted back, “It won’t hurt to restrain yourselves for another half-hour. Another physician reportedly called for the police to shoot the protesters. Most psychiatrists left the room, but some stayed and the conversations that ensued over the next three years finally led to the APA’s delisting of homosexuality as a mental disorder.

In 1981, McConaghy was still unapologetic about his treatment of gay people. In an article he published in the journal Behavior Research and Therapy, he was still presenting the results of his electric shock experiments on gay men. He defended his work as ethical and continued to voice resentment over the interruption of his presentation eleven years earlier. By the mid 1980′s he abandoned aversion therapy, but he kept trying to cure an illness that no longer existed.

Somehow, his colleagues’ esteem for him remained intact. After he died in 2005, the Archives of Sexual Behavior published a memorial lauding him as a pioneer in behavioral therapy who “inspired many to pursue truth and beauty through his example.” The memorial was notable for three things: 1) it briefly mentioned his attempts to cure gay men and painted his response to the “near riot” of 1970 as heroic (“He remained a fearless champion of the application of scientific methods to the study of human sexuality.”), 2) the memorial neglected to mention his use of electric shock therapy, and 3) the memorial was unsigned.

First LGBT Civil Rights Bill Introduced in Congress: 1974. Bella Abzug, the Democratic Congresswoman for Manhattan and part of the Bronx, was a civil rights attorney before she entered Congress, where she became an outspoken supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment and opposed the Vietnam War. Her stands earned her a position on President Richard Nixon’s famed “Enemies List.” On this date in 1974, Rep. Abzug introduced the first federal gay rights bill, the Equality Act of 1974, with fellow New York City Rep. Ed Koch. The bill, which would have banned discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations, went nowhere then, and similar efforts to ban discrimination have come to naught in the 39 years since then.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
145 YEARS AGO: Magnus Hirschfeld:1868. Sometimes known as “The Einstein of Sex,” German-born Magnus Hirschfeld was the most prominent advocate of gay emancipation in his day. In 1897, Hirschfeld co-founded the Wissenschaftlich-humanitäre Komitee (Scientific-Humanitarian Committee), whose first project was to repeal Germanys infamous Paragraph 175, which criminalized homosexuality between men (women were unmentioned in the anti-gay code). While the committee managed to gather signatures of some 6,000 Germans calling for repeal, the committee failed in its goal. In 1919, Hirschfeld founded the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Science), and he became widely recognized as a prolific writer and speaker on sexual minority issues. He also figured in film history, when he made a cameo appearance in the 1919 film Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others, see May 28), the first film to portray a homosexual love story in a sympathetic light.

While Germany’s Wiemar Republic saw homosexuality becoming somewhat accepted in Berlin, extreme right-wing forces reacted with violence. In 1920, Hirschfeld was attacked and severely wounded in Munich after a conference, and in 1921 his skull was fractured in another attack. From 1929, Nazis repeatedly disrupted his lectures. In 1930, Hirschfeld began a lecture tour of the United States, which was expanded to a world-wide tour. By the time he returned to Europe in 1932, conditions in Germany had become so dangerous that he decided not to return to Berlin. On May 6, 1933, the Nazis attacked and destroyed the Institute for Sexual Science, and on May 10, they burned its library and files, the largest of its kind in the world. Hirschfeld wandered Europe before settling in Nice, France in 1934. He died there in 1935, with his death coming also on this very same date in history.

Julian Eltinge: 1881. He was, perhaps, America’s first famous drag queen. One story has it that he first donned women’s clothing at the age of ten for an appearance in Boston. Another one suggests that his mother helped him to dress in drag at a very young age to perform in the saloons in Butte, Montana, and that his father nearly beat him to death when he found out. Eltinge himself claimed that he learned to perform drag as a member of Harvard’s Hasting Pudding Club, but in fact he never attended school there.

At any rate, we do know that he was performing drag onstage and touring Vaudeville after the turn of the century, and unlike most female impersonators at the time, he didn’t place farcical caricatures of women for laughs. He sought to create the full illusion of actually being a woman. He toured Vaudeville under the his last name “”Eltinge,” which gave no hint of his gender. He sang, he danced, he recited soliloquies, and at the end of his act, he stepped forward on stage, and in a dramatic gesture emulated later in the 1982 film Victor/Victoria, he reached up and removed his wig to the surprise of his often unsuspecting audience. He arrived on Broadway in 1907 at the Alhambra Theater, and through the next decade he was reputed to be the highest paid stage actor. He started appearing in films in 1914, and by 1920, had one of the most lavish mansions in Southern California, where he lived with his mother.

Eltinge countered rumors of his homosexuality offstage by presenting a unrelentingly masculine presence in public. He smoked cigars, was an amateur boxer, got into bar fights, and had long engagements with women. Funny though, he never married. “I am not gay,” he protested, “I just like pearls.” But by the 1930;s, his heyday was over. He gained weight and started drinking as his career took a nose-dive. He was reduced to performing in a Hollywood nightclub catering to a gay clientele, but local laws intended to contain the “homosexual menace” banned dressing in drag. Eltinge had to perform in a tuxedo alongside mannequins dressed in his outfits. He’d point to them while enacting his characters. He died in 1941, reportedly of a brain hemorrhage, although some suspect suicide. His will, dated October 13, 1938, stated “I declare that I am a bachelor” and left everything to his mother.

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?

Minnesota Says “Yah, Sure! You Betcha!”

Jim Burroway

May 13th, 2013

The Minnesota Senate approved HF1054, the marriage equality bill, in a 37-30 vote this afternoon. One Republican — Branden Petersen (Andover) — voted for marriage equality. He was one of the bill’s co-sponsorsin the Senate, and the first Republican legislator to voice his support for the bill despite his district voting to approve the failed constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in 2012. Three DFLers — LeRoy Stumpf (Plummer), Lyle Koenenb (Clara City), Dan Sparks (Austin) — cast their lot on the wrong side of history. The final vote came after the Senate blocked a proposed amendment which would have eviscerated the state’s anti-discrimination laws. That amendment went down in a 25-42 vote.

Gov. Mark Dayton has announced that he will sign the bill during a ceremony tomorrow afternoon. When the bill goes into effect August 1, Minnesota will become the twelfth state, in addition to the District of COlumbia, to provide marriage equality for same-sex couples. It will also be the first Midwestern state to do so solely on a legislative action without a precipitating court order.

The Daily Agenda for Monday, May 13

Jim Burroway

May 13th, 2013

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Minnesota Senate To Vote On Marriage Equality: St. Paul, MN. Last Thursday, a marriage equality bill cleared its most difficult hurdle when the Minnesota House gave its approval in a 75-59 vote. The Senate, which is considered even more friendly territory for marriage equality, will take up HF1054 when it resumes at noon today. Gov. Mark Dayton (DFL) has promised to sign the bill if it reaches his desk. The bill would go into effect August 1, making Minnesota the twelfth state, in addition to the District of Columbia, to provide marriage equality for same-sex couples.

Minnesotans United for All Families will hold a rally calling for the bill’s passage beginning at 9:00 a.m.  on the front steps of the State Capital. They will be there to greet Senators as they arrive for work. The anti-gay Minnesota for Marriage group will also be there for “prayer and protest.”

TODAY IN HISTORY:
“Cambio de Sexo” Premieres: 1977. Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s death in 1975 brought a new permissiveness in Spanish film-making, and Catalonia-born director Vicente Aranda probed the limits in what was acceptable in a still-conservative society. Cambio de Sexo (“Change of Sex”), which debuted on May 13, 1977 to critical acclaim, starred Victoria Abril as José Maria, a shy, introverted teenager living in the outskirts of Barcelona. Bullied and harassed by his schoolmates, José is expelled from his school. His father tries everything to “cure” him of his effeminate mannerisms, including, in a pivotal scene, taking him to a strip club in Barcelona. But unbeknownst to his father, one of the acts in the strip club is a pre-operative transgender. The father, clueless to the situation and determined to see his son lose his virginity, insists that José goes home with the stripper. Let’s just say the entire experience is revelatory as José understands that he was actually meant to be a girl. But the movie is more than just a story of the teen’s metamorphosis into a young woman. The transgender theme served as a reflection of the larger social changes which were just beginning to overtake Spain.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Bea Arthur: 1922. After serving thirty months in the Marine Corps as one of the first members of the Women’s Reserve. Her enlistment officer wrote that she was “officious — but probably a good worker — if she had her own way!” That would have described just about every one of the characters she would portray on television. After working on and off Broadway, she landed the breakout part as Maude Findlay on Norman Lear’s groundbreaking sit-com All in the Family. The Maude character was Edith Bunker’s cousin who was the polar opposite of bigoted Archie Bunker. That 1971 episode led to her own spin-off in 1972, Maude. As the theme-song said, she was “uncompromisin’, enterprisin’, anything but tranquilizing.” The series tackled women’s liberation, menopause, drug and alcohol addiction, and spousal abuse. In one memorable two-part episode which aired two months before Roe v Wade, Maude decided to terminate a late-life pregnancy with an abortion. Maude ended in 1978.

After a few other roles in television and the movies, she landed the role of Dorothy Zbornak in the hit series Golden Girls. Between Maude and Golden Girls, Arthur became an LGBT icon. The Advocate in 1999 asked her why she thought that was. “You play strong, honest people,” she said, “and gays buy it because it’s real and it’s slightly anti-establishment.” She was certainly real. Also she was on Broadway in Mame, so there’s that, too. Arthur died in 2009, after a battle with cancer. Three days later, the lights of Broadway dimmed for one minute in her honor.

Armistead Maupin: 1944. He was born in Washington, D.C. but grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. He began working as a newspaper reported in Charleston, S.C. before he moved to San Francisco in 1971 to work for the Associated Press, In 1976, he released the first installment of his Tales of the City serials. first in a now-defunct Marin County newspaper and later in the San Francisco Chronicle. Those columns were re-worked into a series of books in 1978. In 2007, Maupin married his husband Christopher Turner in Vancouver. During a trip to Australia in 2011, Maupin and his husband were denied the use of a restroom at a saloon in Alice Springs where they were having lunch. The bartender told them to go across the street because their rest room was reserved for “real men.” “So we did what real men do and crossed the street to the visitor’s center where we filed a complaint,” Maupin wrote. “Impressively we received an e-mail apology from the bartender that afternoon. Fair dinkum, mate. Next time don’t [expletive] with the poofters.”

Alan Ball: 1957. Screenwriter, director, actor and producer Alan Ball was born in Atlanta George and graduated from Florida State University with a degree in theater arts. He has written two films, American Beauty (for which he won an Oscar for best original screenplay) and Towelhead. He is more familiar to television audiences for his role as creator, writer and producer of the HBO drama series Six Feet Under (for which he won an Emmy in 2002) and True Blood, a series that has been seen as a paper-thin allegory for the LGBT community. Ball has called the comparison “kind of lazy”, adding “I just hope people can remember that, because it’s a show about vampires, it’s not meant to be taken that seriously. It’s supposed to be fun.”

Ball not only has to contend with critics, but in 2011 he and his partner, actor Peter Macdissi, got tangled in a legal tussle with their neighbor, Quentin Tarantino, who filed a lawsuit claiming that the pair’s collection of exotic birds constantly emit “blood-curdling” and “pterodactyl-like screams” each day which have disrupted Tarantino’s work as a writer. That lawsuit between neighbors was quietly buried six feet under.

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?

The Daily Agenda for Sunday, May 12

Jim Burroway

May 12th, 2013

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Call Your Mother. Today is Mother’s Day. Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!

Events This Weekend: Pride Bergen, Norway; Boston LGBT Film Festival, Boston, MA; BeachBear Weekend, Ft. Lauderdale, FL; Houston Splash, Houston, TX; BigHorn Rodeo, Las Vegas, NV; Pride Maspalomas, Gran Canaria; Pride Mykolayiv, Ukraine.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Time Magazine Reports on the First Gay Students Group: 1967. “Equal rights” was a common catchphrase on college campuses in 1967 as students across the country became politically engaged in issues of racial equality and women’s rights. Time magazine reported on another group that had formed to protest discrimination and injustice when Columbia University recognized the Student Homophile League, making the campus the first major university in the country to offer recognition to a gay rights student group. Getting the group officially recognized was a challenge; in 1967, no gay or lesbians students felt that it was safe to come out:

The University Committee on Student Organizations at first denied the league recognition, since it refused to name its organizers The dozen interested students then shrewdly enlisted eight officers of other campus organizations, all presumably heterosexual, to sign as sponsors, under a university rule that their names need not be made public. The committee then decided that it had no legal reason not to grant the group official status.

While declining to identify himself or other members by name (“We would be losing jobs for the rest of our lives”), the league’s chairman insists the group is educational, not social, and “plans no mixers with Harvard.” So far, Columbia students seem little interested in joining. Shrugged Sophomore Elliot Stern: “As long as they don’t bother the rest of us, it’s O.K.” The league’s biggest problem will probably be its self-imposed secrecy. As some students asked: How do you treat them equally when you don’t know who they are?

California Decriminalizes Homosexuality: 1975. Efforts to repeal California’s Sodomy law began in 1969 when San Francisco Assemblyman Willie Brown introduced what became known as the Brown Bill into the lower House. He reintroduced the bill every year until its passage in 1975. That year, the bill advanced through the House only to run into trouble in the Senate. The vote stood at a 20-20 tie when Senate Majority Leader George Moscone (who later became mayor of San Francisco) locked the chamber’s doors until Lt. Gov. Mervyn Dymallyin could fly in from Denver to deliver the tie-breaking vote. Gov. Jerry Brown signed the bill into law when it finally reached his desk.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Katharine Hepburn: 1907. Star of Morning Glory, The Philadelphia Story, The African Queen, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, The Lion In Winter, and On Golden Pond among countless others, she holds the record for the most Best Actress Oscar wins — four out of twelve nominations. She was born in Hartford, Connecticut, the daughter of suffragist Katharine Martha Houghton (who co-founded Planned Parenthood) and Dr. Thomas Hepburn, a urologist from Virginia. He insisted that his daughters learn to play tennis and golf, to ride and to swim, an activity she especially enjoyed. She attended Bryn Mawr College where she earned a degree in history and philosophy. She also earned a suspension for smoking and breaking curfew: after dark, she would swim naked in the college’s “Cloisters” fountain.

Her background and drive are what make Hepburn widely admired today, but she was very unconventional and controversial in her day. She disdained makeup and often went to interviews dressed in men’s suits, saying they were more comfortable. She was straightforward, outspoken, and unabashedly intellectual, earning her the nickname, “Katharine of Arrogance.” She was also fearless. While filming The African Queen on location with Humphrey Bogart and director John Houston, she asked to go along when the two went big game hunting. Houston described her as a “Diana of the Hunt” who was able to shoot with the best of them. She recognized no limits. “I can remember when walking as a child, it was not customary to say you were fatigued. It was customary to complete the goal of the expedition.”

Bruce Voeller: 1934. Where to begin? He was a tireless gay rights advocate who co-founded the National Gay Task Force in 1973 and served as its director until 1978. He was a talented biologist, having studied biochemistry, developmental biology and genetics. That put him on the front lines as a researcher for a new disease that others started calling Gay-Related Immune Disorder (GRID), a name that he challenged for its medical inaccuracy. It is Voeller who is credited for giving the new disease the more accurate name of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).

Voeller had married Dr. Kytja Scott Voeller, whom he met in grad school. Together they had three children. He came out in 1964 when he was 29, and the resulting divorce was messy. Voeller had to fight all the way up to the Supreme Court to gain child visitation rights. By then, he was heavily involved in the resurgent gay rights movement. He was among the founders of the Gay Activists Alliance in 1969 and served as its third president. But where the GAA was more interested in street activism, he sought to bring gay activism into the mainstream of political discourse. In 1973, he left the GAA and founded NGTF (later, NGLTF), and built it into a nation advocacy organization. As NGTF director, he attended a historic White House meeting in 1977 with thirteen other LGBT advocates to raise awareness about discriminatory laws and policies.

In 1978, Voeller left he NGTF and established the Mariposa Education and Research Foundation to conduct human sexuality research. Among his concerns was that books, papers, and other ephemera on the LGBT movement was easily lost or destroyed, posing a danger that LGBT history itself would vanish. So he created a network of volunteers to search for and gather as much as possible, and that extensive collection was donated to the Cornell University Library in 1988. With the advent of AIDS, Voeller returned to his biologist’s roots and the Foundation shifted its focus to reducing the risks of sexually transmitted diseases. His 1989 study warned that mineral oil lubricants caused rapid deterioration of latex condoms, leading to a shift to water-based sexual lubricants. He pioneered the use of nonoxynol-9 as a spermacide and topical virus-transmission preventative,, and he studied the reliability of various brands of condoms in disease prevention. The results of that study even appeared in Consumer Reports, making the information widely available and accessible to the public. He was conducting studies on viral leakage for the (then) recently approved “female” condom when he passed away in 1994 of an AIDS-related illness.

Jared Polis: 1975. Polis earned his fortune when he founded American Information Systems, an Internet access, web hosting and application service provider. He also co-founded an online greeting card company and an online florist. After selling those companies during the height of the dot-com bubble, he used his wealth to found the Jared Polis Foundation in 2000, with the mission to “create opportunities for success through education and access to technology.” The foundation has refurbished and donated more than 3,500 computers each year to schools and other non-profits. He also founded two charter schools for at-risk students, and another school for older immigrant youths. He founded another school in Denver to serve youth who are homeless or living in unstable conditions.

When he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives for Colorado’s Second District in 2008, he was the first openly gay man to be elected as a freshmen (all the other gay Representatives came out while already in office). He is also the first openly gay parent in Congress. As Congressman, he has been a tireless advocate for LGBT equality. In 2011, he launched the Fearless Campaign, dedicated to “empowering our political leaders with the moral courage it takes to vote fearlessly on the politically charged issues of today, regardless of the perceived political risk.”

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?

The Daily Agenda for Saturday, May 11

Jim Burroway

May 11th, 2013

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Events This Weekend: Pride Bergen, Norway; Boston LGBT Film Festival, Boston, MA; BeachBear Weekend, Ft. Lauderdale, FL; Houston Splash, Houston, TX; BigHorn Rodeo, Las Vegas, NV; Pride Maspalomas, Gran Canaria; Pride Mykolayiv, Ukraine; AIDS Walk Ogunquit, ME.

THIS MONTH IN HISTORY:
Frank Kameny Declares “We Are the True Authorities on Homosexuality”: 1965. That was a bold declaration to make in 1965. It’s almost impossible to overstate the degree of deference that was accorded the mental health profession a half century ago. Psychiatrists —  by virtue of their degrees, university affiliations, books and lectures — commanded a great deal of deference in society and they were the recognized authorities on everything touching on the human condition.  When psychiatrists conducted research into a given population and declared it sick, they more or less had the last word on the matter. Many — though certainly not all — gay activists went along with those pronouncements. If a doctor said someone was sick, they reasoned, then who else had the standing and the credentials to say differently?

This led to some strange arguments in the pages of  ONE magazine, the Mattachine Review, and the Daughters of Bilitis’ newsletter, The Ladder. Those who deferred to the psychiatric profession’s belief that gay people were sick developed arguments for why gays and lesbians deserved equal rights (or at the very least, “understanding”) either despite or because of their sickness. Others argued that gay people weren’t sick — and they, too, could count on a number of psychiatrists and psychologists who agreed with them — and they called for even more psychological research which, they reasoned, would somehow open the door to “understanding” on the part of the public. While the two sides disagreed over whether gay people were sick, they both agreed on one thing: that psychiatry would ultimately settle the question, and when they did everyone else would fall in line. Early gay activists were so beholden to that belief that almost all of the early gay rights organizations included the sponsorship or promotion of research as part of their mission statements.

In 1965, gay rights pioneer Frank Kameny (see May 21) put forth an argument that obliterated the very foundation on which those arguments rested. In an essay published in Daughters of Bilitis’s The Ladder, Kameny challenged psychiatry’s monopoly on deciding the mental status of gay Americans. His declaration of independence from the psychiatric profession was part of a broader shift taking place that year in the gay rights movement, when activists shifted from putting forward “reasonable” discussions on whether gay people deserved equal treatment to staging public protests demanding that America treat gay Americans as full citizens (see Apr 17, Apr 18, Apr 25, Jul 4, Jul 31). Kameny’s declaration so clearly crystalizes the debate as it occurred in 1965 that I decided to present it here in full:

Does Research Into Homosexuality Matter?

By Dr. Franklin E. Kameny.

(Franklin E. Kameny, Ph.D., is a physicist and astronomer in private industry. He is founder and former president, and is currently on the Executive Board, of the Mattachine Society of Washington which recently adopted this resolution: “The Mattachine Society of Washington takes the position that in the absence of valid evidence to the contrary, homosexuality is not a sickness, disturbance, or pathology in any sense, but is merely a preference, orientation, or propensity, on par with, and not different in kind from, heterosexuality.”)

PART I: ON SOME ASPECTS OF MILITANCY IN THE HOMOPHILE MOVEMENT

As little as two years ago, “militancy” was something of a dirty word in the homophile movement. Long inculcation in attitudes of cringing meekness had taken its toll among homosexuals, combined with a feeling, still widely prevalent, that reasonable, logical, gentlemanly and ladylike persuation (sic) and presentation of reasonable, logical argument, could not fail to win over those who would deny us our equality and our right to be homosexual and to live as homosexuals without disadvantage. There was — and is — a feeling that given any fair chance to undertake dialogue with such opponents, we would be able to impress them with the basic rightness of our position and bring them into agreement with it.

Unfortunately, by this approach alone we will not prevail, because most people operate not rationally but emotionally on questions of sex in general, and homosexuality in particular, just as they do on racial questions.

It is thus necessary for us to adopt a strongly positive approach, a militant one. It is for us to take the initiative, the offensive — not the defensive — in matters affecting us. It is time that we began to move from endless talk (directed, in the last analysis, by us to ourselves) to firm, vigorous action.

We ARE right; those who oppose us are both factually and morally wrong. We are the true authorities on homosexuality, whether we are accepted as such or not. We must DEMAND our rights, boldly, not beg cringingly for mere privileges, and not be satisfied with crumbs tossed to us. I have been deeply gratified to note in the past year a growing spirit of militancy on the part of an increasing number of members of the homophile organizations.

We would be foolish not to recognize what the Negro rights movement has shown us is sadly so: that mere persuasion, information and education are not going to gain for us in actual practice the rights and equality which are ours in principle.

I have been pleased to see a trend away from weak, wishy-washy compromise positions in our movement, toward ones of strong affirmation of what it is that we believe and want, followed by a drive to take whatever action is needed to obtain our rights. I do not of course favor uncontrolled, unplanned, ill-considered lashing out. Due and careful consideration must always be given to tact and tactics. Within the bounds dictated by such considerations, however, we must be prepared to take firm, positive, definite action — action initiated by us, not merely responding to the initiatives of others. The homophile movement increasingly is adopting this philosophy.

PART II: ON THE HOMOPHILE MOVEMENT AND HOMOSEXUALITY AS A DISEASE

Among the topics to which we are led by the preceding, is that of our approach to the question of homosexuality as a sickness. This is one of the most important issues — probably THE most important single issue — facing our movement today.

It is a question upon which, by rationalization after rationalization, members of the homophile movement have backed away from taking a position. It is a question upon which a clear, definite, unambiguous, no-nonsense stand MUST be taken, must be taken promptly, and must be taken by US, publicly.

There are some who say that WE will not be accepted as authorities, regardless of what we say, or how we say it, or what evidence we present, and that therefore we must take no positions on these matters but must wait for the accepted authorities to come around to our position — if they do. This makes of us a mere passive battlefield across which conflicting “authorities” fight their intellectual battles. I, for one, am not prepared to play a passive role in such controversy, letting others dispose of me as they see fit. I intend to play an active role in the determination of my own fate.

As a scientist by training and by profession, I feel fully and formally competent to judge good and poor scientific work when I see them — and fully qualified to express my conclusions.

In looking over the literature alleging homosexuality as a sickness, one sees, first, abysmally poor sampling technique, leading to clearly biased, atypical samplings, which are then taken as representative of the entire homosexual community. Obviously all persons coming to a psychiatrist’s office are going to have problems of one sort or another, are going to be disturbed or maladjusted or pathological, in some sense, or they wouldn’t be there. To characterize ALL homosexuals as sick, on the basis of such a sampling — as Bieber, Bergler, and others have done — is clearly invalid, and is bad science.

Dr. Daniel Cappon, in his recent appalling book TOWARD AN UNDERSTANDING OF HOMOSEXUALITY (perhaps better named “Away from an Understanding of Homosexuality” or “Toward a Misunderstanding of Homosexuality”) acknowledges at least this non-representative sampling and actually shows some faint signs of suggesting that perhaps there are two classes of homosexuals: patients and non-patients.

Notwithstanding Dr. Bieber’s cavalier dismissal of it, Dr. Evelyn Hooker’s work involving non-clinical homosexual subjects, with its very careful sampling technique and its conclusions of non-sickness, still remains convincing.

One sees secondly, in the literature alleging homosexuality as sickness, a violation of basic laws of logic by the drawing of “conclusions” which were inserted as assumptions. Dr. Bieber does this (and by implication, attributes it to his entire profession) in his statement: “All psychoanalytic theories ASSUME that homosexuality is psychopathological.” Dr. Cappon says: “…homosexuality, BY DEFINITION, is not healthy…” (Emphasis supplied in both quotations.) Obviously, if one assumes homosexuality as pathological or defines it as unhealthy at the outset, one will discover that homosexuals are sick. The “conclusions,” however, can carry no weight outside the self-contained, rather useless logical structure erected upon the assumption or definition. The assumptions must be proven; the definitions must be validated. They have not been.

I am able to speak as a professional scientist when I say that we search in vain for any evidence, acceptable under proper scientific standards, that homosexuality is a sickness or disorder, or that homosexuals per se are disturbed.

On the basis of a disguised moralistic judgement (sometimes not at all disguised, as with Dr. Cappon), mixed both with a teleological approach to sexual matters, and with a classification as sickness of any departure from conformity to the statistical societal norms (on this basis, Dr. Cappon seems to come close to defining left-handedness as sickness), homosexuality has been DEFINED as pathological. We have been defined into sickness.

In logic, the entire burden of proof in this matter rests with those who would call us sick. We do not have to prove health. They have not shouldered their burden or proof of sickness; therefore we are not sick. These are things which it is our duty to point out, and, having pointed them out, to take strong public positions on them.

Then there are those who say that the label appended really doesn’t matter. Let the homosexual be defined as sick, they say, but just get it granted that even if sick, he can function effectively and should therefore be judged only on his individual record and qualifications, and it is that state of being-judged-as-an-individual, regardless of labels, toward which we must work. This unfortunately is a woefully impractical, unrealistic, ivory-tower approach. Homosexuality is looked upon as a psychological question. If it is sickness or disease or illness, it becomes then a mental illness. Properly or improperly, people ARE prejudiced against the mentally ill. Rightly or wrongly, employers will NOT hire them. Morally or immorally, the mentally ill are NOT judged as individuals, but are made pariahs. If we allow the label of sickness to stand, we will then have two battles to fight — that to combat prejudice against homosexuals per se, and that to combat prejudice against the mentally ill — and we will be pariahs and outcasts twice over. One such battle is quite enough.

Finally, as a matter of adopting a unified, coherent, self-consistent philosophy, we MUST argue from a positive position of health. We cannot declare our equality and ask for acceptance and for judgement as whole persons, from a position of sickness. More than that, we argue for our RIGHT to be homosexuals, to remain homosexuals, and to live as homosexuals. In my view and by my moral standards, such an argument is immoral if we are not prepared, at the same time, to take a positive position that homosexuality is not pathological. If homosexuality indeed IS a sickness, then we have no right to remain homosexuals; we have the moral obligation to seek cure, and that only.

When we tell the various arms of organized society that part of our basic position is the request for acceptance as homosexuals, freed from constant pressure for conversion to heterosexuality, we are met with the argument of sickness. This occurred recently at a meeting between Washington Mattachine members and eleven representatives of all three major faiths, at which we asked for such acceptance of the homosexual into the religious community. Our entire position, our entire raison d’etre for such meetings, falls to the ground unless we are prepared to couple our requests with an affirmative, definitive assertion of health — as we in Washington did in that instance.

I feel, therefore, that in the light of fact and logic, the question of sickness is a settled one and will remain so until and unless valid evidence can be brought forth to demonstrate pathology. Further, I feel that for purposes of strategy, we must say this and say it clearly and with no possible room for equivocation or ambiguity.

PART III: ON RESEARCH AND THE HOMOPHILE MOVEMENT

Movements tend to get themselves tied up with certain ideas and concepts, which in time assume the status of revealed and revered truth and cease being subjected to continuing, searching re-examination in the light of changed conditions. As an habitual skeptic, heretic, and iconoclast, I wish here to examine critically if briefly the value and importance to the homophile movement of research into homosexuality, of our commitment to it, and of the role, if any, which such research should play in the movement and in the activities of the homophile organizations.

I recognize that, with the deference granted to science in our culture, it is very respectable and self-reassuring and impressive to call one’s group a research organization or to say that the group’s purpose is research. However, at the outset one fact should be faced directly. For all their pledges of allegiance to the value of research, for all their designation of themselves as research organizations, for all their much-vaunted support and sponsorship of research, NO American homophile organization that I know of has thus far done any effective or meaningful research, has sponsored any research, has supported or participated in any truly significant research. (With the single exception of Dr. Evelyn Hooker’s study, and while I grant that to be a major and important exception, the participation involved nothing more than supplying candidates for experimentation.) The homophile movement’s loss from its failure to contribute to research has been not from that failure, but from the diversion into talking (“maundering” might be a better term) about research — diversion of effort, time, and energy better expended elsewhere.

For purposes of this discussion, we can divide the objectives of relevant research into two loosely delineated classes: research into the origins and causes of homosexuality, and research into collateral aspects of the homosexual and his life and his community.

Almost always, when the homosexual speaks of research on homosexuality, he means the former class in one aspect or another: “What is the nature of homosexuality?” “What are its causes?” “Why am I a homosexual?” “Is homosexuality a sickness?” “Can the homosexual be changed?” Objectionably, “How can homosexuality be prevented?” etc.

A consideration of the rationale behind the homosexual’s interest in such questions will quickly show that they are symptomatic of a thinly-veiled defensive feeling of inferiority, of uncertainty, of inequality, of insecurity — and most important, of lack of comfortable self-acceptance.

I have never heard of a single instance of a heterosexual, whatever problems he may have been facing, inquiring about the nature and origins of heterosexuality, or asking why he was a heterosexual, or considering these matters important, I fail to see why we should make similar inquiry in regard to homosexuality or consider the answers to these questions as being of any great moment to us. The Negro is not engrossed in questions about the origins of his skin color, nor the Jew in questions of the possibility of his conversion to Christianity.

Such questions are of academic, intellectual, scientific interest, but they nor NOT — or ought not to be — burning ones for the homophile movement. Despite oft-made statements to the contrary, there is NO great need for research into homosexuality, and our movement is in no important way dependent upon such research or upon its findings.

If we start out — I do, on the basis presented in Part II above — with the premises (1) that the homosexual and his homosexuality are fully and unqualifiedly on par with, and the equal of, the heterosexual and his heterosexuality; and (2) (since others have raised the question) that homosexuality is not an illness -then all these questions recede into unimportance.

We start off with the fact of the homosexual and his homosexuality and his right to remain as he is, and proceed to do all that is possible to make for him -as a homosexual (similarly, in other contexts, as a Negro and as a Jew) -as happy a life, useful to self and to society, as is possible.

Research in these areas therefore is not, in any fundamental sense, particularly needed or particularly important. There is no driving or compelling urgency for us to concern ourselves with it. Those who do allege sickness have created THEIR need for THEIR research; let THEM do it.

In the collateral areas mentioned, well planned and executed research on carefully chosen projects can be of importance, particularly where it will serve to dispel modern folklore. Evelyn Hooker’s research (referred to above) showing no difference outside their homosexuality itself, in its narrowest, denotive sense, between homosexuals and heterosexuals, is one case in point. A study in the Netherlands by a Dr. Tolsma, which showed that the seduction of young boys by homosexuals had no effect upon their adult sexual orientation, is another. The study now under way by the Mattachine Society of Washington to obtain the first meaningful information on the actual susceptibility of homosexuals to blackmail, will probably be a third.

These are all useful projects. Dr. Hooker’s has turned out to be one of our major bulwarks against the barrage of propaganda currently being loosed against us by the agents of organized psychiatry. (However, as I pointed out above, this is a bulwark not needed, in strict logic.) I shall in fact probably be using the .results of all three of these collateral research projects from time to time in my presentations of our case. But these studies are not of the vital importance which could properly lead many of our homophile groups to characterize themselves as research organizations (only one of these projects actually involved a homophile organization to any significant degree) or to divert into research resources better expended elsewhere.

Research does not play the important role in our movement which much lip-service attributes to it. It plays a very useful and occasionally valuable supporting role, but not more than that.

More important than the preceding, however, is the matter of this emphasis upon research, in terms of the evolution of our movement. In the earlier days of the modern homophile movement, allegiance to the alleged importance of research was reasonable. As the philosophy of the movement has formed, crystallized, and matured, and more important, as our society itself has changed — and it has changed enormously in the past fifteen years and even in the past two — the directions and emphases in our movement have changed too. As indicated in Part I of this article, the mainstream has shifted toward a more activist mode of operation.

Continued placing of primary or strong emphasis within our movement upon research w1ll only result in the movement’s loss of the lead which it is taking in the shaping, formation, and formulation of society’s attitudes and policies toward homosexuality and the homosexual.

Thus, while as a scientist I w1ll never derogate the value of research for its own sake in order to provide additional knowledge, as an active member of the homophile movement my position must be quite different. It is time for us to move away from the comfortingly detached respectability of research into the often less pleasant rough-and-tumble of political and social activism.

[Source: Franklin E. Kameny. “Does Research Into Homosexuality Matter?” The Ladder 9, no. 8 (May 1965): 14-20.]

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Valentino: 1932. The Italian designer set the fashion bar in the 1960s, when he became a favorite designer for such celebrities and taste-makers as Elizabeth Taylor, Sophia Loren, Jane Fonda, Audrey Hepburn, Cate Blanchett, and Princess Margaret, many of whom were also his personal friends. Jackie Kennedy wore Valentino when she married Aristotle Onassis in 1968, and in a testament to his enduring style, he was the most-worn designer at the 2007 Oscars. It’s likely he would have repeated that achievement in 2008 if he hadn’t chosen to retire that year.

Valentino and his partner, Giancarlo Giammetti, have been the ultimate power couple in the fashion world for more than 50 years, with Giammetti serving as his business partner from very nearly the time they first met in 1960. In the documentary film Valentino: The Last Emperor, Valentino estimated that if one were to add up all of the time the two men have spent apart, it would not amount to more than eight weeks.

Billy Bean: 1964. The former outfielder and left-handed hitter for the Detroit Tigers, Los Angeles Dodgers, and San Diego Padres made headlines in 1999 when he became only the second baseball player to publicly come out, three years after his retirement from baseball. It was a long struggle to get there. As a closeted pro athlete, he struggled to juggle his secret and his career. He divorced his wife in 1993 and secretly moved in with his first lover. When his lover died of AIDS, Bean didn’t attend the funeral because he was too frightened that his secret would be revealed. “Why was it so impossible to think that a baseball player could grieve for a man?” he later reflected. “That was a terrible, terrible decision I made.”

His 2003 book, Going the Other Way: Lessons from a Life In and Out of Major League Baseball, chronicles the ups and downs of his life as a gay man and baseball player.

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?

The Daily Agenda for Friday, May 10

Jim Burroway

May 10th, 2013

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Events This Weekend: Pride Bergen, Norway; Boston LGBT Film Festival, Boston, MA; BeachBear Weekend, Ft. Lauderdale, FL; Houston Splash, Houston, TX; BigHorn Rodeo, Las Vegas, NV; Pride Maspalomas, Gran Canaria; Pride Mykolayiv, Ukraine; AIDS Walk Ogunquit, ME.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
80 YEARS AGO: Book Burning in Berlin: 1933. After having raided the Institute for Sexual Research and looted its vast library and archives (see May 6), the German Student Association (Deutsche Studentenschaft) proclaimed a nationwide “Action against the Un-German Spirit”, which culminated in the “cleansing” (“Säuberung”) by fire on May 10, 1933 of an estimated 25,000 volumes of “un-German” books. Book burnings took place throughout Germany, and the bulk of the books burned in Berlin came from the ISR. About 40,000 people watched in the Opernplatz as propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels declared “No to decadence and moral corruption!” LGBT advocacy, which had developed as a strong scientific and social institution in Germany over the past several decades, was shut down virtually overnight.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Max Lorenz: 1901. The Düsseldorf native’s powerful performances as a heroic tenor (heldentenor, in German) in Wagner’s operas is probably what saved his life in Nazi Germany — or at the very least, the life of his Jewish wife, whom he married in 1932 despite his homosexuality. The very next year, he established his dominance at the Bayreuth Festival, the annual Wagner festival began by Richard Wagner himself, just as the Nazis came to power. Later, when Lorenz was caught “in flagrante” with a young man at Bayreuth, Hitler forbade his future performances at the prestigious festival. Winifred Wagner, the festival’s director, answered that she would would close the festival because without Lorenz, “Bayreuth can’t be done.” Such was Hitler’s love for Wagner’s operas that he backed down and let Lorenz perform. In 1943, when the SS stormed Lorenz’s home while he was away to take his wife and mother-in-law off to the concentration camps, Hermann Göring personally intervened and placed the entire family under his personal protection.

Lorenz’s career lasted almost three decades. He was particularly renowned for his performances as Siegfried (in Siegfried and Götterdämmerung), Tristan (in Tristan und Isolde) and as Walther (in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg) After the war, Lorenz became an Austrian citizen, but his reputation was sullied by the assumption that he had been a Nazi. He died in Salzburg in 1975.

Steve Gunderson: 1951. The first openly gay Republican to serve in Congress, the Wisconsin representative was outed on the floor of the House of Representatives by a fellow Republican, the virulently anti-gay Rep. Bob Dornan of California. The confrontation occurred during a debate on a measure that would have prohibited any school which received federal funding from “promoting homosexuality as a positive lifestyle.” Gunderson objected to some of the defects in how the measure was written, saying it “has the effect of prohibiting school counseling and guidance. It has the effect of prohibiting AIDS education.”

Dornan rose to object, saying that Gunderson has “a revolving door on his closet. He’s on, he’s out, he’s in, he’s out, he’s in. I guess you’re out because you went up and spoke to a huge homosexual dinner, Mr. Gunderson.” Dornan later complained to reporters, “We have a rep on our side who is a homo who goes in and out of the closet. I have just had it with him saying he takes second place to no one in this House … (in) upholding Christian principles.”

That “homosexual dinner” was the annual Human Rights Campaign Fund dinner in Baltimore two weeks earlier, where Gunderson told the gathering about the beach house at Rehoboth Beach that he shared with “Rob” and “our two dogs.” Gunderson also told attendees how he and Rob had been touched by the AIDS crisis in the past year. “Two of our closest friends died from AIDS, and while for Rob and I this was the first personal loss from this tragic disease, it makes its impact no less painful to each of us. He also urged gays and lesbians to come out of the closet, saying that “unless a son or brother is gay, a daughter or sister is lesbian, most families will not encounter challenges to their traditional values.”

But in the immediate aftermath of Dornan’s outburst, Gunderson refused to confirm or deny his sexuality to reporters, saying that he wouldn’t dignify Dornan’s comments with a response. But in 1994, refusing to deny it was all that was really needed. Rep. Barny Frank (D-MA) observed, “This is not an easy situation he finds himself in. In a perfect world none of this would be necessary.” Gunderson won re-election later that year, and he became the lone Republican vote against the Defense of Marriage Act two years later. He chose not to seek re-election in 1996. In January 2010, Gunderson was appointed by President Barack Obama to the President’s Commission on White House Fellows. He is currently the President and CEO of the Council on Foundations, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit membership association of approximately 2,000 grantmaking foundations and corporations.

Michele Van Gorp: 1977. Born in Warren, Michigan, Michele Van Gorp played women’s collegiate basketball at Purdue University for her freshman and sophomore years, then transferred to Duke University, where she led Duke to the school’s firs NCAA final. She was drafted into the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA). Van Gorp was the only open lesbian in the WNBA from 2002 (when Sue Wicks retired) until 2005, when Sheryl Swoopes and Latasha Byears came out. Van Gorp retired from the WNBA in 2005 following injuries, and she is now coaching in France.

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?

Minnesota House Approves Marriage Equality

Jim Burroway

May 9th, 2013

Following three hours of debate, the Minnesota House of Representatives passed HF1054, a bill which grants marriage equality for same-sex couples. The tally had been expected to be close with no Republican support in the DFL-controlled legislature (DFL: Democratic, Farm, Labor, what the Minnesota Democratic party calls itself). But in the end, David FitzSimmons (R-Albertville), Pat Garofalo (R-Farmington), Andrea Kieffer (R-Woodbury) and Jenifer Loon (R-Eden Prairie) joined seventy-one DFLers to pass the bill with a vote of 75-59. None of the Republicans had declared their support before the debate. According to the St. Paul Pioneer Press:

Loon says she decided during the debate. Garofalo and FitzSimmons say an amendment to fortify religious protections was key. Kieffer was unavailable for comment.

The two DFLers against the marriage bill were Patti Fritz of Faribault and Mary Sawatzky of Willmar. Both come from districts that heavily supported a gay marriage ban.

A good chunk of the three hour debate dealt with an amendment offered by Rep. Tim Kelly (R-Red Wing) which would have converted the entire bill into a civil unions bill. That amendment was rejected 22-111. Another amendment proposed by FitzSimmons which added the word “civil” before the word “marriage” wherever it appeared in the Minnesota statutes. That amendment passed on a voice vote, which brought FitzSimmons and Garofalo on board.

Observers had expected that the marriage bill would have had a tougher time passing the House than the Senate. But with that hurdle out of the way, the bill is now expected to be approved by the Senate soon, perhaps as early as Monday. Gov. Mark Dayton (DFL) has promised to sign the bill if it reaches his desk. The bill would go into effect August 1.

Minnesota is poised to become the twelfth state, in addition to the District of Columbia, to provide marriage equality for same-sex couples. It will also become the first state in the Midwest to do so as the result of a legislature initiative.

The Daily Agenda for Thursday, May 9

Jim Burroway

May 9th, 2013

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Minnesota House to Vote on Marriage Equality: St. Paul, MN. Things are suddenly moving very quickly in the Gopher State. A bill to provide marriage equality for same-sex couples has been introduced in both houses of the Minnesota Legislature, where supporters expected an easier path in the Senate than in the House. But earlier this week, House Speaker Paul Thissen (DFL-Minneapolis) announced that he has the 68 votes needed to pass HF1054, and has scheduled it for a vote today, with the session beginning at noon. If the bill passes the House, the Senate may vote on it as early as Saturday. Gov. Mark Dayton says he’ll sign it if it reaches his desk. If passed, the law would go into effect August 1.

Nevada House Committee to Consider Marriage Equality Bill: Las Vegas, NV. Last month, the Nevada Senate voted 12-9 to approve Senate Joint Resolution 13, which would repeal the state’s constitutional amendment limiting marriage to one man and one woman, and replace it with a provision requiring the recognition of all marriages between two people “regardless of gender.” This afternoon, the Nevada Assembly Committee for Legislative Operations and Elections will hold hearings on the bill. The hearings will begin at 4:00 p.m. in Room 4401 of the Grant Sawyer State Office Building in Las Vegas. Once the meeting is underway, you should be able to access its video feed online from this page. If SJR13 is passed by the lower house this year, and because the resolution seeks to repeal a constitutional amendment approved by voters in 2002, it will again have to pass both houses in 2015 before being sent to voters for their approval.

Events This Weekend: Pride Bergen, Norway; Boston LGBT Film Festival, Boston, MA; BeachBear Weekend, Ft. Lauderdale, FL; Houston Splash, Houston, TX; BigHorn Rodeo, Las Vegas, NV; Pride Maspalomas, Gran Canaria; Pride Mykolayiv, Ukraine; AIDS Walk Ogunquit, ME.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Three Hanged for Sodomy: 1726. In July of 1725, Gabriel Lawrence, 43 and “a Papist” — that alone was also a crime in 18th century England — was indicted “for committing, with Thomas Newton, aged 30 years, the heinous and detestable sin of Sodomy, not to be named among Christians.” They were arrested at the famous “molly house” of Margaret Clap, a “place of rendezvous for Sodomites.” Newton described the place: “For the more convenient establishment of her customers, she had provided beds in every room of the house.” Newton testified against Lawrence, taking upon himself the role of innocent victim even though he, too, was at the “molly house” and arrested.

Newton claimed that he didn’t know that Claps’s establishment was a molly house. He must have been pretty dumb, because he apparently spent a lot of time there. He not only testified against Lawrence, but also against two others at the house: William Griffin, 43, and Thomas Wright, 32, who “often fetched me to oblige company that way.” All three defendants were found guilty and sentenced to death. On May 9, 1726, Lawrence, Griffin, and Wright were hanged at the infamous gallows known as “the Tyburn Tree.” In exchange for his testimony, Newton was granted immunity from prosecution.

[Sources: Ian McCormick. Secret Sexualities: A Sourcebook of 17th and 18th Century Writings.

The historian Rictor Norton has also  posted trial records for Lawrence, Griffin and Wright at his web site.]

Ignorance Is Bliss: 1871. Dressed as Lady Stella Clinton and Miss Fanny Winifred Park, Ernest Boulton, 22, and Frederick William Park, 23 both scandalized and titillated Londoners when they attended a performance at the Strand Theatre and were arrested by police. A search of their homes turned up more than a dozen dresses, petticoats, bodices and bonnets. Their landlady described their dresses as very extreme. They were charged with conspiracy to commit sodomy.

The two defendants appeared in court in drag. The whole thing was baffling to the Attorney General, who testified on May 9, 1871 that the lack of detailed British knowledge on the topic as one of the country’s virtues. He thought it “fortunate [that] there is little learning or knowledge upon this subject in this country; there are other countries in which I am told learned treatises are written as to the appearance to be expected in such cases. Fortunately Doctors in England know very little about these matters.” Ignorance reigned, and it was to Boulton and Park’s benefit. Sure, they dressed funny, engaged in “disgraceful behaviour,” and wrote piles of letters describing their exploits — an entire day was spent reading them into the record — but none of that counted as evidence of a conspiracy to commit sodomy. And since wearing dresses itself wasn’t against the law, the jury found them not guilty.

[Source: Ivan Crozier. "Nineteenth-Century British psychiatric writings about homosexuality before Havelock Ellis: The missing story." Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 68, no. 1 (Jan 2008): 65-102.]

35 YEARS AGO: Wichita Voters Repeal Gay Rights Ordinance: 1978. Anita Bryant’s success in defeating a gay rights ordinance in Miami at the ballot box the year before (see Jun 7) inspired voters in St. Paul to repeal their ordinance the following spring by more than a two-to-one margin (see Apr 25). Two weeks later, the fight moved to Wichita, Kansas, where an ordinance banning discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations due to “sexual or affectional preferences” was the subject of a special repeal election. Rev. Richard A. Angwin, who headed the St. Paul repeal effort, traveled to Wichita fresh off of his St. Paul victory and told a Wichita audience that the Minnesota vote proved that “from the conservative Bible-belt of Dade County, Florida, to the liberal progressive north of Minnesota, that the American people are not willing to accept homosexuality as a legitimate intrusion into human rights ordinances.” He also argued that gay people were second-class citizens. “I think anyone who is immoral is a second-class citizen,” he said. “But I don’t say it out of hatred. I love the murderer, but I’m still going to limit his behavior in society.”

Wichita voters apparently agreed, more or less. They repealed Wichita’s anti-discrimination ordinance by a five-to-one margin. Forty-four percent of the city’s 128,888 registered voters turned out, making it the largest turnout for a city election in years. Rev. Ron Adrian, president of Concerned Citizens for Community Standards which campaigned for the repeal, was elated. He had only expected a two-to-one victory margin. “I think God’s using this vote to openly rebuke the pro-homosexual forces,” he said.

Robert Lewis, co-director of the Homophile Alliance, was initially bitter about the results. “Obviously there are a lot of bigots in Wichita,” he told reporters. But later, after cooling off at a local gay bar, Lewis put a better face on the defeat. “It’s like a New Year’s Eve party here. You would never know gay rights had been defeated. Gay people in Wichita are feeling much better about themselves as a result of this campaign.”

Two days later, it was revealed that Miami-based Protect America’s Children, which was linked to another tax exempt organization called “Anita Bryant Ministries,” had poured $20,000 into the Wichita and St. Paul battles. At $74,000 in today’s dollars, it represented big money for city elections in 1978. Their next target was a special election in Eugene, Oregon, to repeal its gay rights ordinace, scheduled for May 23.

15 YEARS AGO: Dana Goes International: 1998. The music world is shocked when judges at that year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Birmingham, England choose openly MtF Dana International as their champion. Ultra-Orthodox Jews and Israeli conservatives were shocked and demanded that next year’s telecast not be held in the winning country, as tradition holds, due to the “shame” of her being transsexual. Dana countered, “My victory proves God is on my side. I want to send my critics a message of forgiveness and say to them: try to accept me and the kind of life I lead. I am what I am and this does not mean I don’t believe in God, and I am part of the Jewish Nation.”

Here is how Dana International’s win looked on German television:

1 YEAR AGO: President Barack Obama Announces Support for Marriage Equality: 2012. Through much of his presidency, Barack Obama had long opposed the abolition of same-sex marriages via state and federal constitutional amendments, and during his 2008 primary campaign against then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, he distinguished his position from hers by calling for the full repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act in its entirety. (Her position was to repeal the provision barring federal recognition of same-sex marriages while keeping Section 2, which allows states to ignore other states’ marriages.) In 2011, his Justice Department announced that they would no longer defend DOMA in Federal Court, arguing that heightened scrutiny was called for in examining the law’s constitutionality, and that DOMA fails under that standard. But on the critical question of whether Obama supported same-sex marriage itself, he famously said that he was “still evolving” on the issue.

That evolution was completed when, during an interview with ABC News, Obama revealed that he now supported the rights of same-sex couples to marry”

I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.

Obama’s announcement came three days after Vice President Joe Biden told David Gregory on NBC’s Meet the Press that he was “absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women and heterosexual men and women marrying one another are entitled to the same exact rights.”

Obama’s announcement made him the first sitting President to announce his support for marriage equality for same-sex couples. Conventional wisdom had held that such a position would be political suicide for national office, but Obama proved that wrong in November when he became the first presidential candidate to win an election on a platform calling for marriage equality. That same election also saw voters in three states — Maryland, Maine and Washington — make history by approving same-sex marriage at the ballot box, and voters in Minnesota turned back an attempt to write discrimination into its state constitution for only the second time in history. In the year following Obama’s announcement, the number of states providing marriage equality nearly doubled from six to eleven, after legislators in Rhode Island and Delaware passed legislation legalizing same-sex marriages.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Alan Bennett: 1934. The English performer and playwright is best known for The Madness of George III and the film adaptation, The Madness of King George. He received an Academy Award nomination for the screenplay. In August 1960, he achieved instant fame as a comedy actor at the Edinburgh Festival by appearing in a satirical review with Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller and Peter Cook. His first play, Forty Years On, debuted in 1968. His critically acclaimed The History Boys won three Lawrence Olivier Awards in 2005 and Six Tony Awards on Broadway in 2006. His memoir, Untold Stories, appeared in 2005. He thought it would be published posthumously because he was undergoing treatment for cancer when he wrote it. The cancer went into remission, but the book went ahead anyway. In the biographical sketches, Bennett wrote openly for the first time about his homosexuality, although he said that he was “reluctant to be enrolled in the ranks of gay martyrdom, reluctant, if the truth be told, to be enrolled in any ranks whatsoever.”

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?

A Conversation, Not a Lecture

Rob Tisinai

May 8th, 2013

I’m thinking we could start a whole new blog about all the things our opponents do that doom them to failure. For instance, right now the National Organization is pushing really hard on a strategy that seems to assume no one actually knows any gay people.

NOM, you understand, has proof — proof! — that gays just want to destroy marriage. It comes from a lesbian activist I’d never heard of, Masha Gessen, who spoke at the Sydney Writers’ Festival (which, despite its name, is apparently where All Official Pronouncements of the Gay Agenda come from):

It’s a no-brainer that (homosexuals) should have the right to marry, but I also think equally that it’s a no-brainer that the institution of marriage should not exist. . . . Fighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we are going to do with marriage when we get there—because we lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change, and that is a lie.

The institution of marriage is going to change, and it should change. And again, I don’t think it should exist.

NOM takes this statement as proof that:

Same-sex marriage activists certainly do want marriage …but not for the reasons you might think.

And this is a:

…frank (but honest) statement of a viewpoint more common than most people think among those who purport to favor same-sex marriage.

“Purport”? Nice word choice. And finally:

The fact is that ending marriage as we know it is a stated objective of the people pushing this agenda!

[All emphasis theirs.]

A few decades ago, NOM could have lectured America about Masha Gessen and it very well may have worked. But not anymore, because NOM doesn’t seem to understand that in 2013 we’re having a conversation, not lecture. A few decades ago, most people only heard about gays and lesbians from our opponents. Today, though, a huge segment of the straight population now has the power to find a gay person they trust and simply ask: “Hey, you really looking to destroy marriage?” But do they even need to?

Will’s conservative family doesn’t think Will and I are trying to destroy marriage.

My co-workers don’t think Will and I are trying to destroy marriage.

The neighbors who bring their dogs to our home for playdates don’t think Will and I are trying to destroy marriage.

All these people take Will and me more seriously than they do Masha Gessen, and NOM merely destroys its credibility when it tells them Will and I are lying. The only people who think Will and I are trying to destroy marriage are those who don’t know us, who aren’t friends with gay people, who are so insulated they can view teh gays as an abstraction instead of someone they sit with at lunch or family dinners. And that backward population — that population is shrinking.

Will Minnesota Be Number Twelve?

Jim Burroway

May 8th, 2013

It’s suddenly looking that way. The Minnesota House has called for a vote on a marriage equality bill for tomorow:

House Speaker Paul Thissen, DFL-Minneapolis, said he believes the 73-member DFL majority has the 68 votes needed to pass the bill allowing same-sex couples to wed, even without a single Republican vote.

As of late Tuesday, no GOP House members have said publicly they would vote “yes.”

Meanwhile, Senate Democratic leaders say they also have the votes to pass a same-sex marriage bill, and DFL Gov. Mark Dayton says he’ll sign it.

The Senate may vote on the bill as early as this Saturday. One GOP Senator, Branden Petersen (Andover), supports the bill. Some state Republicans, despite their opposition, see marriage equality as inevitable:

“Is it inevitable? I’d say probably,” said Rep. Michael Beard, R-Shakopee. “I mean, marriage is what it is, but they are redefining words and redefining meanings that have been in use for centuries because it is the cause of the week, the flavor of the month.”

The law, if passed, will go into effect August 1.

The Daily Agenda for Wednesday, May 8

Jim Burroway

May 8th, 2013

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Events This Weekend: Pride Bergen, Norway; Boston LGBT Film Festival, Boston, MA; BeachBear Weekend, Ft. Lauderdale, FL;  Houston Splash, Houston, TX; BigHorn Rodeo, Las Vegas, NV; Pride Maspalomas, Gran Canaria; Pride Mykolayiv, Ukraine; AIDS Walk Ogunquit, ME.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Tom of Finland: 1920. Born Touko Laaksonen, Tom of Finland was famous for his stylized homoerotic and fetish art. Over a forty year career, he produced some 3,500 drawings in his unique exaggerated style. If Barbie dolls proportions represent an anatomically impossible ideal for women, Tom of Finland’s hypermasculine characters were portrayed in similarly fantastical idealization of manly men. His style was partly influenced by “beefcake” and “physique” magazines which skirted on the edge of U.S. censorship codes in the 1950s and 1960s. But as the codes were struck down in the 1960s over First Amendment issues, his drawings became more explicit and more overtly sexual. His drawings became the definitive style guide for leathermen through his portrayal of policemen, lumberjacks, sailors and bikers. Several examples of his “dirty drawings ” — his unabashed term for his artwork — have been acquired by New York’s Museum of Modern Art. He died of a stroke brought on by emphysema on November 7, 1991.

Darren Hayes: 1972. The singer-songwriter was the front man of Savage Garden. Their 1987 album by the same name peaked at #1 in Australia, #2 in the U.K., #3 in the U.S. Their biggest American hit was “Truly Madly Deeply.” Their follow-up album yielded another #1 hit in the U.S. with “I Knew I Loved You.” In 2002, he launched his solo career, and by 2005 it was clear that Savage Garden was through.

Darren married his “childhood sweetheart” in 1997. They divorced in 2000 after he told her that he was gay. After years of public speculation about his sexuality, Hayes came out on July 18, 2006, when he announced that he had married (via civil partnership) his boyfriend a month earlier. In April, 2007, he told The Advocate, “First of all, it took me a long time to even accept that I was gay. And then it took me a long time to be happy that I was gay.” That summer he headlined London’s Gay Pride at Trafalgar Square. You can see his video for “It Gets Better” here. His fourth solo album, Secret Codes and Battleships, was released in 2011.

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?