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The FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics aren’t as complete as they ought to be, and their report for 2004 was no exception. In fact, their most recent report has quite a few glaring holes. Holes big enough for Daniel Fetty to fall through.The Daily Agenda for Wednesday, June 5
Jim Burroway
June 5th, 2013
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Albany, NY; Anchorage, AK; Athens, Greece; Birmingham, AL; Blackpool, UK; Boston, MA; Brooklyn, NY; Des Moines, IA; Detroit, MI; Edmonton, AB; El Paso, TX; Indianapolis, IN; Innsbruck, Austria; Karlsruge, Germany; Key West, FL; Long Island (Huntington), NY; Los Angeles, CA; Ljubljana, Slovenia; Milwaukee, WI; Oxford, UK; Philadelphia, PA; Shanghai China; Söderhamn, Sweden; Split, Croatia; Spokane, WA; Turin, Italy; Washington, DC; Zurich, Switzerland.
Other Celebrations This Weekend: Razzle Dazzle Dallas, Dallas, TX; Connecticut Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Hartford, CT; Sierra Stampede, Rio Linda, CA; AIDS Lifecycle, San Francisco to Los Angeles, CA (Sponsor BTB’s Rob Tisinai here!); Tel Aviv LGBT International Film Festival, Tel Aviv, Israel.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
Pneumocystis Pneumonia — Los Angeles: 1981. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published this notice in the June 5, 1981 edition of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. This report would be the first clinical description of a new disease which we would later know as AIDS.
Pneumocystis Pneumonia — Los Angeles
In the period October 1980-May 1981, 5 young men, all active homosexuals, were treated for biopsy-confirmed Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia at 3 different hospitals in Los Angeles, California. Two of the patients died. All 5 patients had laboratory-confirmed previous or current cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection and candidal mucosal infection. Case reports of these patients follow.Patient 1: A previously healthy 33-year-old man developed P. carinii pneumonia and oral mucosal candidiasis in March 1981 after a 2-month history of fever associated with elevated liver enzymes, leukopenia, and CMV viruria. The serum complement-fixation CMV titer in October 1980 was 256; in may 1981 it was 32.* The patient’s condition deteriorated despite courses of treatment with trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (TMP/SMX), pentamidine, and acyclovir. He died May 3, and postmortem examination showed residual P. carinii and CMV pneumonia, but no evidence of neoplasia.
Patient 2: A previously healthy 30-year-old man developed p. carinii pneumonia in April 1981 after a 5-month history of fever each day and of elevated liver-function tests, CMV viruria, and documented seroconversion to CMV, i.e., an acute-phase titer of 16 and a convalescent-phase titer of 28* in anticomplement immunofluorescence tests. Other features of his illness included leukopenia and mucosal candidiasis. His pneumonia responded to a course of intravenous TMP/.SMX, but, as of the latest reports, he continues to have a fever each day.
Patient 3: A 30-year-old man was well until January 1981 when he developed esophageal and oral candidiasis that responded to Amphotericin B treatment. He was hospitalized in February 1981 for P. carinii pneumonia that responded to TMP/SMX. His esophageal candidiasis recurred after the pneumonia was diagnosed, and he was again given Amphotericin B. The CMV complement-fixation titer in March 1981 was 8. Material from an esophageal biopsy was positive for CMV.
Patient 4: A 29-year-old man developed P. carinii pneumonia in February 1981. He had had Hodgkins disease 3 years earlier, but had been successfully treated with radiation therapy alone. He did not improve after being given intravenous TMP/SMX and corticosteroids and died in March. Postmortem examination showed no evidence of Hodgkins disease, but P. carinii and CMV were found in lung tissue.
Patient 5: A previously healthy 36-year-old man with clinically diagnosed CMV infection in September 1980 was seen in April 1981 because of a 4-month history of fever, dyspnea, and cough. On admission he was found to have P. carinii pneumonia, oral candidiasis, and CMV retinitis. A complement-fixation CMV titer in April 1981 was 128. The patient has been treated with 2 short courses of TMP/SMX that have been limited because of a sulfa-induced neutropenia. He is being treated for candidiasis with topical nystatin.
The diagnosis of Pneumocystis pneumonia was confirmed for all 5 patients antemortem by closed or open lung biopsy. The patients did not know each other and had no known common contacts or knowledge of sexual partners who had had similar illnesses. Two of the 5 reported having frequent homosexual contacts with various partners. All 5 reported using inhalant drugs, and 1 reported parenteral drug abuse. Three patients had profoundly depressed in vitro proliferative responses to mitogens and antigens. Lymphocyte studies were not performed on the other 2 patients.
Reported by MS Gottlieb, MD, HM Schanker, MD, PT Fan, MD, A Saxon, MD, JD Weisman, DO, Div of Clinical Immunology-Allergy; Dept of Medicine, UCLA School of Medicine; I Pozalski, MD, Cedars-Mt. Siani Hospital, Los Angeles; Field services Div, Epidemiology Program Office, CDC.
Editorial Note: Pneumocystis pneumonia in the United States is almost exclusively limited to severely immunosuppressed patients (1). The occurrence of pneumocystosis in these 5 previously healthy individuals without a clinically apparent underlying immunodeficiency is unusual. The fact that these patients were all homosexuals suggests an association between some aspect of a homosexual lifestyle or disease acquired through sexual contact and Pneumocystis pneumonia in this population. All 5 patients described in this report had laboratory-confirmed CMV disease or virus shedding within 5 months of the diagnosis of Pneumocystis pneumonia. CMV infection has been shown to induce transient abnormalities of in vitro cellular-immune function in otherwise healthy human hosts (2,3). Although all 3 patients tested had abnormal cellular-immune function, no definitive conclusion regarding the role of CMV infection in these 5 cases can be reached because of the lack of published data on cellular-immune function in healthy homosexual males with and without CMV antibody. In 1 report, 7 (3.6%) of 194 patients with pneumocystosis also had CMV infection’ 40 (21%) of the same group had at least 1 other major concurrent infection (1). A high prevalence of CMV infections among homosexual males was recently reported: 179 (94%) had CMV viruria; rates for 101 controls of similar age who were reported to be exclusively heterosexual were 54% for seropositivity and zero fro viruria (4). In another study of 64 males, 4 (6.3%) had positive tests for CMV in semen, but none had CMV recovered from urine. Two of the 4 reported recent homosexual contacts. These findings suggest not only that virus shedding may be more readily detected in seminal fluid than urine, but also that seminal fluid may be an important vehicle of CMV transmission (5).
All the above observations suggest the possibility of a cellular-immune dysfunction related to a common exposure that predisposes individuals to opportunistic infections such as pneumocystosis and candidiasis. Although the role of CMV infection in the pathogenesis of pneumocystosis remains unknown, the possibility of P. carinii infection must be carefully considered in a differential diagnosis for previously healthy homosexual males with dyspnea and pneumonia.
References
- Walzer PD, Perl DP, Krogstad DJ, Rawson G, Schultz MG. Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia in the United States. Epidemiologic, diagnostic, and clinical features. Ann Intern Med 1974;80:83-93.
- Rinaldo CR, Jr, Black PH, Hirsh MS. Interaction of cytomegalovirus with leukocytes from patients with mononucleosis due to cytomegalovirus. J Infect Dis 1977;136:667-78.
- Rinaldo CR, Jr, Carney WP, Richter BS, Black PH, Hirsh MS. Mechanisms of immunosuppression in cytomegaloviral mononucleosis. J Infect Dis 1980;141:488-95.
- Drew WL, Mintz L, Miner RC, Sands M, Ketterer B. Prevalence of cytomegalovirus infection in homosexual men. J Infect Dis 1981;143:188-92.
- Lang DJ, Kummer JF. Cytomegalovirus in semen: observations in selected populations,. J Infect Dis 1975; 132:472-3.
House Speaker Tom Foley (D-WA)
Republicans Conduct Whisper Campaign Against House Speaker: 1989. Just as Rep. Tom Foley (D-WA) was about to take the gavel from recently-disgraced former Speaker Jim Wright (D-TX), the Republican National Committee’s communications director Mark Goodin began circulating a memo among state party chairmen and GOP Congressmen titled “Tom Foley: Out of the Liberal Closet.” The memo compared Foley’s voting record with that of Rep. Barney Frank’s (D-MA), who had come out of the gay closet only two years earlier (see May 29). GOP Chairman Lee Atwater, who had made his reputation smearing reputations left and right, stood by Goodin’s memo, caling it “no big deal” and “factually accurate,” and professed astonishment that anyone could interpret the memo as a slur. The memo didn’t come right out and accuse Foley of being gay (labelling someone as gay in 1989 would be taken as an accusation rather than a mere description), but the subtext was unmistakable. And while Atwater was protesting the memo’s innocence, other Republicans cheered the memo and sought more personal assaults on Democratic leaders.
GOP Chairman Lee Atwater
Republican minority Whip Newt Gingrich (R-GA) even spent several days calling dozens of reporters trying to get the rumor into print. one of those reporters, Lars-Erik Nelson of the New York Daily News, finally went public on June 5, saying that one of Gingrich’s top aides called him saying The Washington Post was going to run the story, saying “we hear it’s little boys.” The Post confirmed that they had been contacted but refused to run it. When Rep. Frank learned of the memo, he blasted GOP leaders for circulating it and threatened to expose closeted Republicans.
Soon, other Republicans began disassociating themselves from the memo, including President George Bush, whose White House Chief John Sununu told reporters that both he and Bush had reprimanded Atwater. “The President was very upset,” Sununu said. “I was upset. It went too far. It was wrong. The innuendo was wrong. It’s wrong not because it damages our relationship with the Democrats. It’s wrong because it’s wrong. It’s a terrible thing to happen at this time. It was not appropriate or fair.” Sen. Bob Dole (R-KS) called the memorandum “garbage” and House Minority Leader robert Michel (R-IL) also denounced it.
Goodin took the fall, resigning on the same day that Bush rebuked Atwater. Atwater also tried to remove his fingerprints. “I think it was bad taste and bad judgment,” Atwater said. “I told Mark that. I play hardball politics, but I don’t cross the line. This memo crossed the line.” With Goodin’s departure, Bush stood behind the GOP chairman. “Lee Atwater is doing a great job,” he said during a meeting with state party chairmen a week later. Dole quickly fell in line: “The president has spoken and Lee Atwater is staying.”
Atwater didn’t stay GOP chairman for long. The following year, he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer, and died a year later in 1991. During that interval, he converted to Catholicism and personally apologized to many of the politicians who he had personally attacked over the years. One of those receiving an apology was Tom Turnipseed, who Atwater mercilessly attacked during a 1980 Congressional campaign in South Carolina. Atwatter planted a story that Turnipseed “has had psychotic treatment.” When Turnipseed’s campaign demanded an apology, Atwater said he wouldn’t respond to someone who had “got hooked up to jumper cables.” A decade later as Atwater was confronting his own mortality, he wrote to Turnipseed. “It is very important to me that I let you know that out of everything that has happened in my career, one of the low points remains the so-called ‘jumper cable’ episode,” he wrote. “My illness has taught me something about the nature of humanity, love, brotherhood and relationships that I never understood, and probably never would have. So, from that standpoint, there is some truth and good in everything.”
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
130 YEARS AGO: John Maynard Keynes: 1883. The British economist has had a profound influence on macroeconomics and government economic policy. His ideas now carry his name — Keynesian economics — which argued that free markets didn’t always provide the best solutions in times of economic turmoil. He argued that counter cyclic spending during economic downturns could provide vital demand to keep businesses and industries afloat in times of lower employment levels. He advocated economic stimulus policies to keep people employed. “With men and plants unemployed, it is ridiculous to say that we cannot afford these new developments,” he wrote in 1928 of the need for spending on public works. “It is precisely with these plants and these men that we shall afford them.”
Keynes’s economic policies weren’t the only thing revolutionary about him in the early twentieth century. He was also very open about his sexuality. Between 1901 and 1915, he kept separate diaries where he tabulated his sexual encounters in a kind of a code that has baffled historians and biographers since then. He was a member of the Bloomsbury Group, a group of English writers, artists and philosophers which included E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Lytton Stratchy, and the artist Duncan Grant, who is said to have been Keynes’s great love. Stratchy was also a lover, but he must have gotten a glimpse at Keynes’s diary: Stratchy was put off by Keynes’s manner of “treat[ing] his love affairs statistically.” Keynes eventually married the Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova, and their marriage did appear to have been a satisfactory one.
115 YEARS AGO: Federico García Lorca: 1898. Born in a small town to the west of Granada, García Lorca abandoned law studies at the University of Grenada to pursue literature and theater. When he staged his first play, El Maleficio de la Mariposa (The Butterfly’s Evil Spell, 1920, about an impossible love between a cockroach and a butterfly), it was laughed off the stage, which encouraged García Lorca to instead turn his energies to poetry and fiction. His poetry collections included Impresiones y Paisajes (Impressions and Landscapes, 1918), Libro de Poemas (Book of Poems, 1921), Canciones (Songs, 1927) and Romancero Gitano (Gypsy Ballads, 1928). García Lorca became a fixture in Spain’s avant-guarde as a member of Generación del 27, an influential group of authors and poets who came of age between 1923 and 1927. Others influenced by García Lorca (and who, in turn, influenced him) included the surreal painters Salvador Dali and Óscar Domínguez, and filmmaker Luis Buñuel.
In 1929, García Lorca tarveled to New York to study English at Columbia Iniversity, but he spent his time writing instead of studying. The result was another poetry collection, Poeta en Nueva York (A poet in New York), was published posthumously in 1942). Influenced by the Wall Street crash of 1929 which García Lorca had witnessed while there, Poeta en Nueva York condemned materialistic values and explored alienation, isolation, and the oppression of the African-American community he encountered there. When he returned to Spain in 1930, his iconoclastic art and left-leaning politics found instant favor in the newly-established Spanish Republic. He was appointed director of a university student theatre company and was paid by the Ministry of Education to bring modern performances to remote rural areas free of charge. “The theatre is a school of weeping and of laughter,” he wrote, “a free forum, where men can question norms that are outmoded or mistaken and explain with living example the eternal norms of the human heart.”
When civil war broke out in 1936 between the Republic and rebellious Nationalists led by General Francisco Franco, García Lorca’s habit of “questioning norms” may have marked him as the Nationalists’ enemy, although contemporaries note that he maintained friendships on both sides of the battle lines. García Lorca’s sexual orientation, also, wouldn’t help matters. On August 18, 1936, his brother-in-law, mayor Manuel Fernández-Montesinos, was shot, and García Lorca was arrested that same afternoon. Controversy still surrounds the details of García Lorca death — who shot him and why — but it is believed that he was shot with three others outside of Granada on August 19. One executioner is reputed to have said, “I fired two bullets into his ass for being a queer.” A year later, an article appeared in a Nationalist newspaper lionizing García Lorca, calling him “the finest poet of Imperial Spain,” but Franco placed a general ban on his work until 1953 when a censored Obras Completas (Complete Works) was published.
Suze Orman: 1951. She started out with a B.A. in social work and worked as a waitress in Berkeley before becoming a financial adviser for Merril Lynch. In 1983, she moved to Prudential Bache Securities, where she became vice-president of investments. Four years later, she quit to found her own financial firm. Not bad for someone without an MBA. In 2007, she began appearing on television. After she gave away a million copies of her e-book, Women and Money,following an appearance on Oprah, she began hosting her own financial advice program, The Suze Orman Show, which airs on weekends on CNBC. She is also a regular columnist for Oprah Winfrey’s O magazine, and she continues to appear occasionally on Oprah’s OWN network. In 2010, Orman married Kathy Travis, a co-producer of on The Suze Orman Show.
Chad Allen: 1974. I didn’t know this: one of Chad’s early major roles was on the television series St. Elsewhere, where he played the autistic son of Dr. Westphall from 1983, to 1988. He also appeared in Our House and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. In 1996, he was outed by the supermarket tabloid The Globe, which published photos of him kissing another man in a hot tub. When he was cast to play the role of real-life Christian missionary Nate Saint in the 2006 docudrama End of the Spear, conservative Christians were outraged over an openly gay man in the role. The real Steve Saint, Nate’s son, however put aside his own reservations. After seeing the film, he felt that God was pleased with Chad playing his father. End of the Spear became one of the few independently released Christian movies to draw more than a million dollars in its first three weekends of release. In 2007, he took on Christian themes again when he starred in Save Me, about a drug-addicted man who entered an ex-gay program. In 2011, he co-produced and appeared in Hollywood to Dollywood, a documentary about twin brothers who travel across country in an RV named “Joline” to meet their idol, Dolly Parton.
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?
Marriage advances in House of Lords
Timothy Kincaid
June 4th, 2013
By jove, they did it! (telegraph)
After two days of intense debate, peers supported gay marriage by a margin of more than two to one.
There will now be a series of other votes but the clear signal from the proceedings was that the legislation will now pass into law.
The Lords, however, were still a bit concerned.
In a bid to appease religious leaders critical of the Bill, Baroness Stowell, the deputy Tory chief whip in the House of Lords, said that ministers will now consider changes to the legislation to offer churches further protection if they refuse to conduct same-sex marriage ceremonies.
It would appear that the quadruple lock is deemed insufficient. Therefore Stowell is contriving and quintuple lock. Should anyone dare even suggest that a church which has not opted in be frowned at for refusing to conduct same-sex marriage ceremonies, they will be sent directly to Azkaban.
UK Marriage Bill Clears Hurdle In House of Lords
Jim Burroway
June 4th, 2013
Following two days of debate, peers in the British House of Lords voted down a proposed wrecking amendment, 390 to 148. The Guardian notes that it is highly unusual to block a vote at second reading and that many of the votes in favor at this stage may merely be in indication by some that they oppose blocking the bill this way. Nevertheless, the comfortable 242 vote margin bodes well for the bill now that it has been forwarded to the Committee Stage. There may still be amendments attached to the bill which would send it back to Commons, but at this stage it looks increasingly certain that the bill will make it into law before next summer.
During the debate, Lord Waheed Alli, an openly gay Muslim Labour peer, congratuated Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron for his “courageous” support for marriage equality:
“I ask you vote for this bill because everyone deserves the right to have their love recognised equally by the state.” Lord Alli added he was “proud” that “so many” Conservative MPs voted for the bill at last month’s third reading in the House of Commons. “There can be no doubt that David Cameron has shown a huge amount of personal courage”, he said.
…He spearheaded the campaign to repeal Section 28, which banned the “promotion” of homosexuality in schools and also fought to equalise the age of consent. It was during a heated exchange with conservative opponents, led by Baroness Young, that he informed his fellow peers that he was gay in April 1999.
In yesterday’s debate, Baroness Liz Barker (Lib-Dem) spoke in favor of the bill and publicly came out of the closet at the same time:
The Liberal Democrat peer, who was among the first to speak, said she had to “declare an interest”. “Many years ago, I had the great good fortune to meet someone,” she said. “She and I have loved each other ever since.”
The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, June 4
Jim Burroway
June 4th, 2013
TODAY’S AGENDA:
House of Lords Continue Marriage Equality Debate: London, UK. The British House of Lords will hold its second day of debate on a marriage equality bill which passed in Commons two weeks ago. The Lords spent much of yesterday debating Ex-chief constable Lord Geoffrey Dear’s amendment’s amendment which would wreck the bill altogether and prevent it from reaching a second reading. Dear actually had the audacity to justify his amendment with a bit of concern trolling:
He said: “I fear the Bill, should it become law, could well create such opposition to homosexuals in general that the climate of tolerance and acceptance in this country, that we have all championed and supported and seen flourish over the years, could well be set back by decades.”
…But Lord Black of Brentwood, a gay Tory peer and executive director of the Telegraph Media Group, hit back at Lord Dear in a powerful speech. “This is 2013,” he said. “Gay people don’t want to be tolerated in this society. They want to be equal in this society.”
The vote on the amendment is expected to take place at around 5:00 p.m. London time, and peers are calling it to close to call. Peers are also warning that if the bill is rejected by the Lords, then it will precipitate a constitutional crisis after the bill enjoyed such strong cross-party support in Commons.
Multiple Hate Groups To Protest At HRC Headquarters: Washington, D.C. Peter LaBarbera (Americans for Truth about Homosexuality), Linda Harvey (Mission America) and Diane Gramley (American Family Association of Pennsylvania) — all three of who head SPLC-identified anti-gay hate groups – will be joined by Liberty University’s Matt Barber and Eric Holmberg of the Apologetics Group for a press conference in front of the headquarters of the Human Rights Campaign. Their press release states:
“Why are so many cities proudly celebrating a harmful sexual preference that undermines health, undermines families, and leads children astray?” asks Linda Harvey, talk show host and founder of Mission America. “The Human Rights Campaign is simply wrong to continue its business of selling this lifestyle to America. There’s nothing here to be proud of, but instead, this organization should be very ashamed.”
Peter LaBarbera, President of the Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, explained: “On Tuesday morning we will gather in front of the world’s most powerful homosexual lobby group, Human Rights Campaign, in Washington, D.C., during so-called ‘Gay Pride Month’ (June) to proclaim the politically incorrect truth: that proud homosexuality is against God; against Nature; very unhealthy; and a serious threat to children and religious freedom. Thankfully, it is also changeable — as proved by the existence of countless thousands of happy former ‘gay’ men and ex-lesbians.
“Our bottom line is that homosexuality is nothing to be proud of. In fact, practicing homosexual behavior, a destructive sin, is something to be ashamed of. Out-and-proud homosexualism — far from being a ‘human right’ — is actually a human wrong.”
The news conference will take place today at 11:00 a.m. in front of the HRC building at 1640 Rhode Island Ave. NW in Washington, D.C.
THIS MONTH IN HISTORY:
95 YEARS AGO: Inverts Of Social Value: 1918. Since the late 1880s, American medical and mental health professionals had been struggling with the question of what to do with those who fell outside of conventional gender roles and sexual expressions. For centuries, such people were considered criminals and were severely punished, often with their lives. In the nineteenth century, a new science of sexology had emerged which characterized the experience that today we would consider gay or transgender as “constitutional” rather than transgressive. The truly liberal-minded reformers of the era called for scrapping criminal codes against these “intermediate” types, but what to do next was a matter of debate. But as Dr. E.S. Shepherd, writing for the June 1918 issue of the American Journal of Urology and Sexology, that debate wasn’t always a high-minded one:
THIS paper had its origin in a remark by the editor that perverts should be given a dose of HCN [Hydrochloric Cyanide - JB]. One is frequently tempted to agree with that prescription, but it might be well to first make sure that such wholesale elimination would not remove a number of valuable citizens. When this was suggested to the editor he advised that I sketch for the Journal a few intermediates who were of social value. Such a sketch presents insuperable difficulties. Out of the prevailing ignorance there arises a serious prejudice which maintains that intermediacy and perversity are synonymous. To call a man an intermediate is, in the popular conception of the word, equivalent to calling him a fellatrist and the mere accusation of such iniquity will ruin any man, even though he can prove his innocence, and show that the accusation was made with intent to kill him. We are never really able to b!lieve that the accused was innocent, partly I fear, because we hope he was guilty. …
One is therefore compelled to cling to quite general statements. As is well known, our unsatisfied sexuality motivates that particularly cruel and malignant persecution which we mete out to those suspected of sexual trespasses and this persecution is intensified manyfold where the trespass involves what we have designated as perversity. Possibly our own repressed perversities find relief in such outbursts, just as vice-crusading serves similarly for the normal sex: hunger. At any rate one can not tell the truth as frankly as one might desire without involving many innocent people in a most unjust persecution. Physicians, for the most part, see only the lower classes of intermediates — those neurotics who are both perverse and mentally inferior or the spiritually feebleminded who call for treatment of one disease or another. Hence arises a distorted perspective which ignores those buoyantly healthy intermediates who frequently do not know that they are different trom other men and who often are not so, judged by the physician’s standards. The doctor thus falls into the vulgar error of supposing that a mixed psyche (the fundamental criterion of intermediacy) is synonymous with fellatio, sodomy, and the various sadistic-masochistic methods of detumescence. This supposition is true in about the same degree as the assumption that all normal men have sexual relations, or desire them, with all of their female acquaintances — some do, some don’t, more or less, according to the individual and the circumstances.
What’s fascinating about this paper is that Shepherd named the very problem that stood in the way of studying LGBT people for the next half decade: that almost all studies would be of LGBT people who sought (or were compelled to seek) psychological treatment. Since doctors only saw LGBT people who were disturbed, the medical and mental health professions concluded that all LGBT people were disturbed. “The problem,” he wrote,” is greatly obscured by the fact that most intermediates pass unrecognized even by their most intimate friends, since any hint of intermediacy involves under the prevailing ignorance the accusation of perversity which means ruin.”
Shephard’s paper was light years ahead of its time in the way he not only laid bare the question of what was “normal,” but questioned why “intermediates” didn’t pass muster under that definition.
It can not be too soon realized that intermediates are, in common with others, human beings and subject to the same environmental forces either elevating or degrading. Furthermore, there are all degrees of intermediacy both psychic and physical. There are, for example, fellatrists who, in intellectual acumen, spiritual elevation, or altruism and artistic creativeness, are wonderfully endowed. That they are not recognized as such is merely a question of our social conventions and the correlated defensive measures. On the other hand we have the male prostitute of the streets and beaches whose grossness is in no way better or worse than that of the pimp or rogue. In between lie all degrees of physical ‘normality’ combined with an intermediate psyche and the reverse. The point to keep in mind is that we have all degrees from the spiritually-gifted intermediates or pseudo-normals, grading down to the grossest natures. Nor should it be forgotten that many a libidinous male who boasts his ‘normality’ is spiritually mere sewage.
[Source: E.S. Shepherd. "Contribution to the study of intermediacy." American Journal of Urology and Sexology 14, no. 6 (June 1918): 241-252. Available online via Google Books here.]
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 Monday, June 3
Jim Burroway
June 3rd, 2013
TODAY’S AGENDA:
House of Lords to Debate Marriage Bill: London, UK. Last month, a marriage equality bill was approved by Britain’s House of Commons following several last-minute efforts by Tory MP’s to derail the measure. Labour MP’s swept in and rescued the bill from a Tory revolt which saw a majority of voting Conservatives going against their own leadership. Now the bill goes to the House of Lords, where it received its first reading — a formality — two weeks ago. Beginning today, Lords will hold a debate ahead of its second reading, which would send the bill to the Committee Stage for a more thorough review before being returned to the full House for the Report Stage and final Third Reading.
Already several Peers are maneuvering derail the bill before it can even reach its second reading. The first crisis was averted when only one day — today — was scheduled for debate, which would push the vote on the bill’s second reading well past midnight. Marriage equality supporters feared that pushing the vote that late might jeopardize its passage, so Conservative leadership scheduled a second day of debate, with a vote expected to take place at about 5:00 p.m. tomorrow. But the bill still isn’t out of the woods yet. Part of the debate expected to take place today will be on a “fatal motion” which would kill the bill before it can be sent to the committee stage. Labour peer Lord Alli, a strong supporter for marriage equality, warns that if the Lords fail to pass the bill, it could precipitate a constitutional crisis:
If they win the vote then the Bill doesn’t come to us and the Commons can’t do anything about it,” he said. “The Government could use the Parliament Act but the argument against it is that the issue was not a manifesto commitment. In my view they could legitimately do it because it was a free vote – but it’s a constitutional crisis,” he added.
By “manifesto commitment,” he means that the issue was not included in the Conservative party manifesto (similar to a party platform in the U.S.) during the last election. (The latest Conservative manifesto is here (PDF: 3.2MB/131 pages))
…The 1949 Parliament Act has only been used four times since it was amended more than 60 years ago. It allows a law to be passed without the approval of the House of Lords and is sometimes billed as Parliament’s “nuclear deterrent”, a term that highlights the magnitude of using the contentious legislation.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
“Morals Raids” Staged in Tampa: 1961. Deputies staged a series of raids in what Hillsborough County Sheriff Ed Blackburn called “the biggest morals crackdown, to my knowledge, in the history of the state of Floria.” Thirty-six gay people were arrested in a series of early morning raids by a team of city, county, and state agents, with another 100 more expected to be taken into custody by the time the operation was finished. A few days later, Tampa police chief Neil Brown also spoke on the “ever growing problem” of homosexuality in Tampa. “We’re going to clean them up and get them out of town,” he declared. “I don’t know where they will go, but we’re going to get them out of town.” City police then rounded up 48 people from “known homosexual hangouts.”
The crackdown was the result of a year-long investigation in which city and county officers compiled “mug books” containing names, addresses, and other identifying information on gay people either living in Tampa or visiting on weekends. The data was compiled from court records beginning in the year 1955. Tampa vice squad detective Bill Whitmer said that he still had about three more years’ worth of dockets to go through.
Among those arrested was a thirty-five-year old-principal of Citrus Park Elementary School, who was being held on a $1,000 bond. Others arrested included a doctor, a former Air Force Major, and a sixty-seven year old retired psychology professor who had operated a school for mentally-retarded boys at Brooksville, Florida, about 45 miles north of Tampa. The names of both educators were emblazoned on Associated Press reports nationwide. Local papers printed the names and addresses of everyone arrested.
Later that month, State Attorney Paul B. Johnson told reporters, “Investigations have shown this problem to be even more widespread than we first anticipated. We have arrested at least 130 persons for crimes against nature, and lewd and lascivious acts in the past 90 days. Most have admitted their guilt.”
ONE magazine received a letter from a reader in Tampa filling in more details. It read:
On June 16th I received a letter from my best friends. The two have been living together for 11 years. One is a teacher the other a doctor. They have a lovely home outside Tampa on.. .. ” A part of the letter reads, ” I don’t know what you have read in the papers or whether radio or TV has carried the news in your city or not. At any event our worst fears have been realized, the reign of terror struck Tampa and made front pages here.
On June 2nd, B was arrested without warning at … and charged with a ‘crime against nature.’ He is awaiting trial and is out of jail on $2,000 bond. [$2,000 is equivalent to about $15,500 in today's dollars] Being a school teacher he enjoyed adequate publicity. Needless to say, just about everything has collapsed for us.
“Fortunately, I am not involved legally, but of course otherwise, especially financially, we’ve had it. I don’t know how we’ll get through the next few months . . ..”
[Sources: Del McIntire (Don Slater) "Tangents -- Tampa Tempest" ONE, 9, no. 8 (August 1961): 24-25.
Associated Press. "Morals raid held in Tampa." (June 4, 1961).
Associated Press. "Morals crackdown staged in Florida." (June 5, 1961).]
Aversion Therapy in Management of 43 Homosexuals: 1967. An article under that title by M.J. MacCulloch and M.P. Feldman appeared in the June 3, 1967 edition of the British Medical Journal. While electric shock aversion therapy was an expensive form of therapy, it was also surprisingly common. The authors reported the results of 41 men and two lesbians who they treated at Crumpsall Hospital in Manchester, U.K. The treatment consisted of administering painful electric shocks while projecting photos of attractive men (or women, in the case of the two lesbians). Of the 43 subjected to this torturous treatment, five were between the ages of 15 to 20. Eighteen were being treated under court order. Seven dropped out without completing the treatment, and 11 were “unimproved.” That left 25 who claimed that they were “improved” after twelve months. The “failures,” they said, tended to have a higher Kinsey rating — in other words, they didn’t have a basis in bisexuality to work with.
The authors concluded that “In our opinion the approximately 60% rate of improvement achieved in our series (over other reported studies) is mainly due to the use of an aversion therapy technique which has been carefully designed to make the most effective use of the findings of the experimental psychology of learning.” As far as other therapists were concerned, this paper confirmed the value of electric shock aversion therapy as a relatively highly effective means for “curing” homosexuality.
That confirmation however fell apart ten years later, when Dr. Sheelah James and colleagues from Hollymoor Hospital in England published the results of their own study which failed to replicate MacCulloch and Feldman’s findings. Among the second group’s problems was a very high dropout rate, one which was much higher than what MacCulloch and Feldman reported. “It appears that the Feldman and MacCulloch group had undergone some clinical preselection before referral,” they wrote, a process which would have inflated Feldman and MacCulloch’s so-called “success” rate. (In a subsequent paper, James advocated an alternative therapy for “curing” gay people involving hypnosis.) Ten years later still, aversion therapy would finally be largely abandoned — not just for ethical reasons, but also because of the growing realization that it simply didn’t work.
[Sources: M.J. MacCulloch and M.P. Feldman. "Aversion therapy in management of 43 homosexuals." British Medical Journal 2, no. 5552 (June 3, 1967): 594-597. Available as a free downloaded from the National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health.
Sheelah James, A. Orwin, R.K. Turner. "Treatment of homosexuality, I. Analysis of failure following a trial of anticipatory avoidance conditioning and the development of an alternative treatment system." Behavior Therapy 8, no. 5 (November 1977): 840-848.
Sheelah James. "Treatment of homosexuality, II. Superiority of desensitization/arousal as compared to anticipatory avoidance conditioning: Results of a controlled trial." Behavior Therapy 9, no. 1 (January 1978): 28-36.]
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Alla Nazimova: 1879. The larger-than-life Russian-born Hollywood silent film star was as exotic and flamboyant off the screen as on. Her screen debut in 1916 led to eleven more films in two years. Her specialty was outrageously exotic yet tragic characters. Her most famous role was that of the title character in Camile, a 1921 film which featured Rudolf Valentino. It was at about that time that she became a producer, specializing in experimental artistic masterpieces which, unfortunately, were commercial flops. 1923′s Salome was particularly scandalous, as was her thinly concealed bisexuality off screen. Her “marriage” with gay actor Charles Bryant didn’t fool anyone. Her home, which she named “Garden of Allah,” was the scene for many glamorous private parties, and her name was connected with several Hollywood starlets and women of the arts. She is the credited with coining the phrase “sewing circles” to refer to lesbian or bisexual actresses who concealed their true sexuality. Her career ended in 1925 with the advent of the Hayes Code, although she had some minor film appearances in the 1940s (she was Doña Maria in The Bridge of San Luis Rey). She died in 1945.
George Quaintance: 1902. “My ancestors were all farmers,” he later wrote of his family in Shenandoah Valley hamlet of Luray, Virginia. “There were no artists or talented people among them, yet I drew, painted and modeled in clay as early as I can remember, and I did it with the assurance and the ability of experience, while the mysteries of running a farm… are still very great mysteries to me, after all these years.” Quaintance — he later became one of those artists known only by his last name — left Luray for New York City to become a dancer in 1920, but not before leaving behind a mural for his mother’s church, that of a spectacularly broad-shouldered (though fully clothed) Christ being baptized in the River Jordan by a similarly handsome John the Baptist. While in New York, he became a vaudeville dancer, women’s hair designer, and commercial illustrator.
In the early 1940s, Quaintance became increasingly focused on male figurative art in the style of the emerging “physique” magazines. His lover (and later business partner) Victor Garcia and his friendship with photographer Lon Hanagan (a.k.a. Lon of New York) supplied him with a steady stream of models, and Canadian bodybuilding publisher Joe Weider signed him to illustrate the covers of several of his physique magazines. In 1946, Weider appointed Quiantance art director of Your Physique, Wieder’s best-selling magazine, where Quaintance’s paintings became regular fixtures on the magazine’s covers. In 1947, Quaintance left Weider, and he and Victor moved out west, first to Los Angeles and then Phoenix. There, Quantance branched out into physique photography — he had always photographed his models as portrait studies, so selling those photographs wasn’t that much of a stretch for him. But he remained focused on his paintings.
It was during this time that his paintings took on a distinctly western flair. Quaintance’s exaggerated form of the ideal male dressed in denim and boots would define an esthetic for an entirely new subculture of Levi aficionados. He would also influence other artists like Tom of Finland, who would become something of a Quaintance of Leather. After Quaintance died in 1957, Victor kept the business going, but the business fell off in the late 1960s after full male nudity and porn became legal. After that, he simply disappeared.
In 1988, Durk Dehner of the Tom of Finland Foundation tried to track him down, but the trail ran cold at Victor’s last known address near West Hollywood, where he found several of Quaintance’s scrapbooks and paintings abandoned in an otherwise empty carport. Fifty-five canvases are believed to have been created, but eighteen of them are list. A diptych turned up at an antique store in Dallas in the early 1990s, but now its whereabouts are unknown. In 2010, Taschen published Quaintance
Josephine Baker: 1906. The Jazz Age icon and Art Deco chanteuse was born in St. Louis, but after a brief stint in New York during the Harlem Renaissance, she quickly moved to Paris where her career as actress, dancer and singer achieved instance success. Everything about her was made for Paris, and Paris for her. Her erotic dancing and nearly-nude performances were appreciated by her French audiences, and her exotic beauty as an African-American posed far fewer challenges in France than in the U.S. She become a French citizen in 1937 when she married a Frenchman, Jean Lion, who was Jewish. During World War II, she left Paris and went to her home in the south of France and, later, Morocco, where she provided assistance to the French Resistance. As an entertainer, she was able to continue touring Europe, particularly non-combatant nations like Switzerland and Purtugal. In her travels, she smuggled secrets for the French Resistance by writing them in her sheet music with invisible ink.
After the war, she supported the American civil rights movement, and whenever she toured the U.S., she refused to perform before segregated audiences. But through the rest of her life, her home remained in France. She married four times, and had twelve children — all of them adopted. She also had a string of female lovers, including the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. Her son, Jean-Claude Baker, interviewed over 2000 people for Josephine: The Hungry Heart
“She was what today you would call bisexual, and I will tell you why. Forget that I am her son, I am also a historian. You have to put her back into the context of the time in which she lived. In those days, Chorus Girls were abused by the white or black producers and by the leading men if he liked girls. But they could not sleep together because there were not enough hotels to accommodate black people. So they would all stay together, and the girls would develop lady lover friendships, do you understand my English? But wait wait…If one of the girls by preference was gay, she’d be called a bull dyke by the whole cast. So you see, discrimination is everywhere.”
Allen Ginsberg: 1926. “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by / madness, starving hysterical naked, / dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn / looking for an angry fix…” Those were the opening lines of what is arguably the most infuential American poem of the twentieth century. Most Americans however have never read past those lines, but Allen Ginsberg’s Howl unleashed several forces which have had a lasting impact in American culture.
Howl was birthed not in print but at a celebrated 1955 public reading at Six Gallery in San Francisco, where Ginsberg’s disenchantment of American materialism, his identification with the outcasts of American society, and especially his frank discussion of sex — and most especially of homosexuality (one line described those “who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy”) caught the attention of Customs officials when when City Lights Press published Howl and Other Poems
Ginsberg was one of the defining figures of the Beat Generation. He also became an integral part of the the next generation’s hippie movement. He was sympathetic for the ideals of communism, but disdained its repression of free speech. He was invited to visit China, Cuba and Czechoslovakia when authorities believed his anti-capitalist statements would be propaganda coups, only to discover that this was the least of his concerns. He was unceremoniously deported from Cuba and Czechoslovakia after wearing out his welcome there, but the ideas he left behind in Czechoslovakia inspired another generation of artists, including playwright Václav Havel, to strive for freedom of expression. In 1974, his collection The Fall of America: Poems of These States 1965-1971
The 2010 film Howl, starring James Franco as Ginsberg, portrayed the poem’s debut at Six Gallery and the subsequent obscenity trial. This fall will see the premiere of John Krokidas’s film Kill Your Darlings, about a 1944 murder which brought together the three figures who would be known as the greatest poets of the beat generation: Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs (see Feb 5), with Daniel Radcliffe playing Ginsberg. You can hear Ginsberg himself reading Howl here.
Anderson Cooper: 1967. Kathy Griffin’s favorite New Year’s foil is the son of writer Wyatt Cooper and heiress Gloria Vanderbilt. The younger Cooper’s media exposure began early: he was photographed as an infant by Diane Arbus for Harper’s Bazaar, and his mother brought him along for a guest appearance on The Tonight Show when he was three. But it was his older brother’s death by suicide in 1988 that sparked Anderson’s interest in journalism. “Loss is a theme that I think a lot about, and it’s something in my work that I dwell on. I think when you experience any kind of loss, especially the kind I did, you have questions about survival: Why do some people thrive in situations that others can’t tolerate? Would I be able to survive and get on in the world on my own?”
After graduating from college, Cooper forged a press pass and went to Myanmar, where he filmed a series of reports about students fighting against the military dictatorship. He was able to sell those news segments to Channel One, a youth-oriented news program broadcast to junior and senior high scools in the U.S. He then moved to Vietnam for a year, where he filed more reports for Channel One about Vietnamese life and culture. He also filed reports from war-torn countries like Somalia, Bosnia and Rwanda. In 1995, he became a correspondent for ABC News, but he took a detour in 2000 to host the reality show The Mole “to clear my hed and get out of news a little bit.” After two seasons and 9/11, he decided it was time to get back into the news, this time with CNN. In 2002, he became CNN’s weekend prime-time anchor, and in 2003 he got his own show, Anderson Cooper 360°.
In 2012, he became what The New York Times called “the most prominent openly gay journalist on television” when he came out in an email published by Andrew Sullivan:
Andrew, as you know, the issue you raise is one that I’ve thought about for years. Even though my job puts me in the public eye, I have tried to maintain some level of privacy in my life. Part of that has been for purely personal reasons. I think most people want some privacy for themselves and the people they are close to.
But I’ve also wanted to retain some privacy for professional reasons. Since I started as a reporter in war zones 20 years ago, I’ve often found myself in some very dangerous places. For my safety and the safety of those I work with, I try to blend in as much as possible, and prefer to stick to my job of telling other people’s stories, and not my own. I have found that sometimes the less an interview subject knows about me, the better I can safely and effectively do my job as a journalist.
…Recently, however, I’ve begun to consider whether the unintended outcomes of maintaining my privacy outweigh personal and professional principle. It’s become clear to me that by remaining silent on certain aspects of my personal life for so long, I have given some the mistaken impression that I am trying to hide something – something that makes me uncomfortable, ashamed or even afraid. This is distressing because it is simply not true. …The fact is, I’m gay, always have been, always will be, and I couldn’t be any more happy, comfortable with myself, and proud.
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The Daily Agenda for Sunday, June 2
Jim Burroway
June 2nd, 2013
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations Today: Buffalo, NY; Cambridge/Kitchener/Waterloo, ON; Davenport, IA; Dresden, Germany; Los Ranchos, NM; Oxford, UK; Queens, NY; Salt Lake City, UT; Santa Cruz, CA; Shanghai, China; Sonoma Co, CA; Springfield, MA; Tulsa, OK; Washington, DC; Waterford, Ireland; Winnipeg, MB.
AIDS Walks Today: Beaver Lake, NY; Boston, MA; Long Beach, CA.
Other Events Today: Connecticut Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Hartford, CT; Cinépride LGBT Film Festival, Nantes, France; Gay Days Disney, Orlando, FL; Film Out, San Diego, CA; AIDS Lifecycle, San Francisco to Los Angeles, CA (Sponsor Rob Tisinai here!); Inside Out Toronto Film Festival, Toronto, ON.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
“Mama’s Boys” Deemed Unfit For Military Service: 1942. At a meeting in Boston of the American Psychiatric Association, Dr. Alexander Simon of St. Elizabeth Hospital in Washington, D.C., described the kinds of people who were more likely to end up in the psych wards after induction in the military: ”
…the chronic A.W.O.L’er; the lad who can’t stand the social gap between a private and Private First Class, the man or officer who can’t stand promotion, and the one who cant stand not to be promoted, the ‘Mama Boys’ who in peacetime (when there is no selective service) chose invariable the Navy and find that though the sea may be ‘Mama’ the Navy is definitely ‘Papa,’ and blow up promptly in the training station with the shock of the discovery; the lonely, the homesick, the timid, the despondent, the one who never took an order in his life; the one who can’t stand teasing, cussing, and dirty jokes, the alcoholic, the bad actor, the unexpectant father who gets a letter from the girl who met the fleet, the boy who didn’t know he was adopted until he went to get his birth certificate and who must find his own mother instead of fighting a war, the boy who wanted to study Diesels, but who was made a sergeant and had to keep drilling others, the Reserve Officer who thought the sergeant knew more than he did, the man with psychotic episodes prior to service and the man whose best friend went down on his sister ship.”
Dr. Simon commended the Boston draft board for being particularly adept at turning down those who he believed would later become troublesome in the military. According to the press report from Science Service, “This board not only turned down obvious mental disorders but also psychopathic personalities, asocial and criminal types, chronic alcoholics and homosexuals. In other words, Boston selectees were turned down if they seemed more likely than the average (1) to break down under strain or (2) to be trouble makers.”
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Candace Gingrich-Jones: 1966. The lesbian advocate and kid sister to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Candice publicly called her brother to task during his 2012 campaign for the GOP nomination for President over his support for California’s Prop 8. “What really worries me is that you are always willing to use LGBT Americans as political weapons to further your ambitions,” she wrote. ”That’s really so ’90s, Newt. In this day and age, it’s embarrassing to watch you talk like that.” Things didn’t change much for Newt, certainly not while he was courting votes from the party’s Tea Party base. He spent much of that year running like it was still 1994. (It was only after the campaign was over that Gingrich conceded that the Republican party should begin to think about coming to grips with a distinction between a “marriage in a church from a legal document issued by the state.”)
Candice has long been an outspoken advocate for gay rights, going as far back as 1995 when she became the Human Rights Campaign’s spokesperson for the National Coming Out Project. In 1996, she published her autobiography, The Accidental Activist: A Personal and Political Memoir
Zachary Quinto: 1977. He grew up in a suburb of Pittsburgh, raised by his mother after his father died of cancer when Zachary was only seven, attended Pittsburgh’s Central Catholic High School (where he won the Gene Kelly Award for best supporting actor in his school’s production of Pirates of Penzance), and graduated from Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama in 1999. In 2000, he made his first appearance on the short-lived NBC series The Others, which opened the way to guest appearances on several other programs before becoming a regular on Fox’s third season of 24 in 2003.
In 2007, it was announce that he would play the young Spock on the first installment of the Star Trek reboot. Leonard Nimoy, who played the original Spock, had casting approval over who would play his younger self. “For me Leonard’s involvement was only liberating, frankly,” Quinto said. “I knew that he had approval over the actor that would play young Spock, so when I got the role I knew from the beginning it was with his blessing.” His portrayal was widely praised. Since then, he has remained busy, mostly on the stage, including appearances in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, Tony Kushner’s Off-Broadway revival of Angels In America, and more recently, in the American Repertory Theatre’s production of The Glass Menagerie. This year, he returns again as Spock in Star Trek Into Darkness.
Quinto came out publicly as gay in 2011 in response to the suicide of Jamey Rodemeyer, a Buffalo high school freshman. “[I]n light of jamey’s death,” Quinto wrote in his blog, “it became clear to me in an instant that living a gay life without publicly acknowledging it – is simply not enough to make any significant contribution to the immense work that lies ahead on the road to complete equality.” Even before he came out, Quinto was an active supporter of the Trevor Project, the nation’s leading organization for suicide prevention among LGBT youth.
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).
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The Daily Agenda for Saturday, June 1
Jim Burroway
June 1st, 2013
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Aarhus, Denmark; Alkmaar, Netherlands; Angers, France; Bradford, UK; Boston, MA; Buffalo, NY; Cambridge/Kitchener/Waterloo, ON; Davenport, IA; Dayton, OH; Dresden, Germany; Göteborg, Sweden; Honolulu, HI; Kiel, Germany; Lille, France; Lorraine, France; Los Ranchos, NM; Oxford, UK; Plano, TX; Queens, NY; Regensburg, Germany; Salt Lake City, UT; Santa Cruz, CA; Shanghai, China; Sonoma Co, CA Springfield, MA; Staten Island, NY; Tulsa, OK; Washington, DC; Waterford, Ireland; Winnipeg, MB; York, UK.
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Beaver Lake, NY; Boston, MA; Long Beach, CA.
Other Events This Weekend: Connecticut Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Hartford, CT; Rainbow 5K Run/Walk, Indianapolis, IN; Cinépride LGBT Film Festival, Nantes, France; Gay Days Disney, Orlando, FL; Film Out, San Diego, CA; AIDS Lifecycle, San Francisco to Los Angeles, CA (Sponsor Rob Tisinai here!); Inside Out Toronto Film Festival, Toronto, ON.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
New York State’s Mazet Committee Investigation: 1899. Corruption was so rife in New York’s Tammany Hall that a special state special legislative committee was formed to investigate the mess. But much like today (and city’s Democratic bosses’ corruption notwithstanding), the Republican-led state investigation quickly took on a decidedly partisan tone, with committee members taking every opportunity to portray New York City as a den of filth and degeneracy. Among those called to testify was Joel S. Harris, a police investigator, who told of the goings-on at Paresis Hall, a popular hangout for “sexual degenerates”:
I was with Mr. (John R. Wood, another investigator) last night at Paresis Hall, No 392 Bowery. I observed the actions of the persons congregated there. I saw and heard immoral actions and propositions by degenerates there. Captain Chapman came in about five minute to 1, as we stepped out. … We had been in the place about an hour or so; plenty of time for information to get from Paresis Hall to the stationhouse. Captain Chapman didn’t say anything to us, but I overheard him say to the proprietor … that he would not stand for any dancing on souvenir night, and he wanted it shut up. I have been in that place before, recently, three or four times, and I have on each occasion noticed the same conduct as I have just testified to. That is a well-known resort for male prostitutes; a place having a reputation far and wide, to the best of my knowledge. I have heard of it constantly. I have never had any trouble in going in. You go in off the street with perfect ease. These men that conduct themselves there — well, they act effeminately; most of them are painted and powdered; they are called Princess this and Lady So and So and the Duchess of Marlboro, and get up and sing as women, and dance; ape the female character; call each other sisters and take people out for immoral purposes. I have had these propositions made to me, and made repeatedly. There is not difficulty in getting into that place.
Paresis Hall was one of several well-known “fairy resorts,” located on the Bowery at Fifth Street near Cooper Union. It was a combination of a brothel, dance hall and all-around proto-gay bar, patronized by working class immigrants and by organized parties of the well-heeled, who visited the establishments on “slumming” tours. Gender norms were much more definitional in those days, and so it was a common understanding , even among the gay men themselves though not necessarily a universal one, that in any coupling one would play the man and the other would play the woman — with the “man’s” heterosexuality remaining intact. It would take a number of years before the separation of sexual identity and sexual orientation as two distinct concepts would take hold. And so at the turn of the last century, dressing in drag carried greater significance beyond a style of entertainment or an expression of gender-bending. And when prostitution thrown in, it was also, for some of those in drag, a way of making a living, although not all male prostitutes dressed in drag. Those who didn’t tended to escape notice from tourists and police inspectors.
George P. Hammond, Jr., also testified:
I know this place called Paresis Hall, and under your directions I have visited it a number of times. I have been in the place since April 1st to the present time fully half a dozen times. I knew of it before, as an officer of the City Vigilance League. I am in the produce business. When this committee began its sessions I took a vacation on the produce business and came in to help you. The character of the place is such that what we call male degenerates frequent the place, and it is a nightly occurrence that they solicit men for immoral purposes. They have one woman who goes there they call a hermaphrodite. These male degenerates solicit men at the tables, and I believe they get a commission on all drinks that are purchased there; they get checks. I have observed five or six of these degenerates frequent that place, possibly more; the last we were there we saw a greater number than we did previously. Those five or six are always to be found there; almost invariably you will find them there .hey go from there across the street to a place called Little Bucks, opposite, and from there to Coney Island. I have never had any difficulty in getting in; not the least; I have been received with open arms. There are two ways of going in, one way up through the barroom, the other through a side entrance; any way at all that suits you can walk in … They have a piano there, and these fairies or male degenerates, as you call them, they sing some songs.
[Source: Jonathan Ned Katz. Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1976): pp 46-47.]
Police Impersonator Arrested in Blackmail Scheme: 1956. A small article in The Honolulu Advertiser highlighted a common danger that gay men faced in the 1950s:
A Honolulu fisherman has confessed he passed himself off as a vice-squad lieutenant to collect $27 “bail” money from a frightened restaurant worker, police said yesterday. [Note: $27 in 1956 is equivalent to about $230 today.]
The accused man, Bernal Waiwaiole, 28, of 1133 Maunakea St., is being held in custody until he puts up $50 bond for himself.
The 38-year-old restaurant worker told Detective Segundo Antonio he was resting on a bench in Waikiki shortly after midnight March 17 when Waiwaiole accosted him.
He said Waiwaiole flashed his wallet open and introduced himself as “Lt. Shaffer” of the vice squad. Then, he said, Waiwaiole demanded $25 “bail” money with the threat of locking him up.
The victim, frightened and with only $4.90 in his pocket, took a taxicab to his rooming house to borrow the balance of the money. Waiwaiole, who accompanied the restaurant worker, then demanded another $2.
The victim forked it over.
Waiwaiole was arrested Saturday morning after a friend of the restaurant worker told police about the incident.
Air Force Lab Suggests Development of “Gay Bomb”: 1994. In a scenario that sounds more like a Monty Python skit than an actual proposal for warfare, an Air Force lab suggested the development of some highly unusual non-lethal chemical weapons. According to a memorandum dated June 1, 1994, he Air Force’s Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, sought the development “Harassing, annoying, and “bad guy” identifying chemicals.
Three classes of chemicals were proposed. The first consisted of “chemicals that attract annoying creatures to the enemy position and make the creatures aggressive or annoying.” Rodents and stinging and biting bugs were suggested as suitable targets. The second class of chemicals would “make lasting but non-lethal markings on the personnel,” making them “easily identifiable (by smell or appearance) weeks later, making it impossible for them to blend with the local population.” If the chemicals had an irritating or annoying factor, so much the better. But it was the third category that was oddest of all:
Category #3: Chemicals that effect [sic] human behavior so that discipline and morals in enemy units is adversely effected [sic]. One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior. Another example would be a chemical that made personnel very sensitive to sunlight.
The brief memo conceded that such chemicals did not currently exist and “would need to be created. Manufacturing techniques would need to be developed for chemicals needed in large quantities.” Decontamination measures would also need to be developed. The entire development and testing program for all three categories of chemicals was projected to cost $7.5 million over six years, which was small potatoes for defense programs, even for 1994.
When news of the program broke in 2005, Marine Captain Daniel McSweeney told reporters that the memo was among hundreds of suggestions for non lethal weapons sent to the Pentagon each year, and said, “‘Gay Bomb’ is not our term. It was not taken seriously. It was not considered for further development.”
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).
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Illinois House Punts Marriage Bill To November
Jim Burroway
May 31st, 2013
The Illinois House of Representatives adjourned until November without taking a vote on SB 10, which would provide marriage equality for the state’s same-sex couples. Supporters had filled the gallery hoping to see history being made, but the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Greg Harris (D-Chicago), said that he didn’t call for a vote because he still didn’t have enough votes to pass it:
“As chief sponsor of this legislation, decisions surrounding the legislation are mine and mine alone. Several of my colleagues have indicated they’d not be willing to cast a vote on this bill today,” Harris said shortly after 7 p.m.
“And I’ve never been sadder to accept this request, but I have to keep my eye, as we all must, on the ultimate prize. They’ve asked for time to go back to their districts, talk to their constituents and reach out to their minds and hearts and have told me they’ll return in November with their word that they’re prepared to support this legislation.
“And I take my colleagues at their word they shall.
The bill cleared the state Senate on Valentine’s Day in a 34-21 vote, and Gov. Pat Quinn had promised to sign it into law if it reaches his desk.
Update: Here’s video of Harris’s announcement, followed by openly gay Rep. Deborah Mell:
The Daily Agenda for Friday, May 31
Jim Burroway
May 31st, 2013
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Last Chance For Marriage Equality: Springfield, IL. Today’s the last day of business before the Illinois legislature adjourns for the end of its spring session, and marriage equality supporters are asking the House Speaker to schedule a vote for the Religious Freedom and Marriage Fairness Act, which, if passed, would bring marriage equality to the Land of Lincoln. The Senate approved the measure on Valentine’s Day in a 34-21 vote. The bill’s chief sponsor, Greg Harris, has been holding off calling for a vote until he’s sure he has the votes to pass it, and right now he’s being quiet about exactly how many vote he has. Equality Illinois is calling for a rally today, beginning at 11:00 a.m. at the Capitol Rotunda in Springfield.
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Aarhus, Denmark; Alkmaar, Netherlands; Angers, France; Bradford, UK; Boston, MA; Buffalo, NY; Cambridge/Kitchener/Waterloo, ON; Davenport, IA; Dayton, OH; Dresden, Germany; Göteborg, Sweden; Honolulu, HI; Kiel, Germany; Lille, France; Lorraine, France; Los Ranchos, NM; Oxford, UK; Queens, NY; Regensburg, Germany; Salt Lake City, UT; Santa Cruz, CA; Shanghai, China; Sonoma Co, CA Springfield, MA; Staten Island, NY; Tulsa, OK; Washington, DC; Waterford, Ireland; Winnipeg, MB; York, UK.
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Beaver Lake, NY; Boston, MA; Long Beach, CA.
Other Events This Weekend: Connecticut Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Hartford, CT; Rainbow 5K Run/Walk, Indianapolis, IN; Cinépride LGBT Film Festival, Nantes, France; Gay Days Disney, Orlando, FL; Film Out, San Diego, CA; AIDS Lifecycle, San Francisco to Los Angeles, CA (Sponsor Rob Tisinai here!); Inside Out Toronto Film Festival, Toronto, ON.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
Scientists Trace AIDS To 1951: 1986. The summer of 1986 looked to be another terrible year in the nearly five-year-old AIDS epidemic. To be precise, that should be the five-year-old known AIDS epidemic. The CDC first noted the new disease in 1981 with the death of five young men, “all active homosexuals” whose immune system had been mysteriously and severely compromised. Out of the 23,000 known cases of people with AIDS between 1981 and the end of 1986, 56% were already dead (PDF: 32KB/5 pages).
While anti-gay activists rushed to declare that the so-called “gay plague” was a divinely inspired “terrible retribution,” scientists sought to figure out where the deadly disease came from. It wasn’t long before doctors in Europe and Africa noticed that the new disease first reported in America was remarkably similar to a mysterious illness striking the Congo River basin of Zaire and was already spreading eastward to Uganda. Swedish doctors remembered an infant born in Zaire who had contracted a similar disease in 1975 and finally died in 1982. Others recalled a Danish surgeon who died in 1977 after working in the Congo River region. Preserved blood and tissue samples tested positive for HIV, and this sent scientists scurrying to identify earlier possible samples which may offer clues to the disease’s origin.
On May 31, 1986, a team of American scientists published a letter in the British journal The Lancet announcing that they were able to determine that a blood sample that had been taken from an unknown patient at a Kinshasa hospital in 1959 tested positive for HIV. Nothing was known of the patient — neither a name nor medical records survive — but we can certainly guess at the suffering he or she must have endured. Nevertheless, this finding was an early clue that the epidemic itself was much older than previously thought. Later genetic analysis of the virus in that blood sample would indicate that the virus had actually entered the human population sometime around 1931. And later analysis still would push that estimate back to around 1908. But as early as 1986, it was already clear that it was only the stigma surrounding the disease, and not the disease itself, that was then approaching its fifth birthday.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Walt Whitman: 1819. Usually I commemorate famous birthdays by providing a brief biographical sketch. But when describing the life of the great American poet, it strikes me as unseemly to describe a man’s life when he has already written all that needs to be said:
When I Heard At The Close Of The Day.
WHEN I heard at the close of
the day how my name
had been receiv’d with
plaudits in the capitol, still it was
not a happy night for me that follow’d,
And else when I carous’d, or when my plans were accomplish’d,
still I was not happy,
But the day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect health,
refresh’d, singing, inhaling the ripe breath of autumn,
When I saw the full moon in the west grow pale and disappear in
the morning light,
When I wander’d alone over the beach, and undressing bathed,
laughing with the cool waters, and saw the sun rise,
And when I thought how my dear friend my lover was on his way
coming, O then I was happy,
O then each breath tasted sweeter, and all that day my food
nourish’d me more, and the beautiful day pass’d well,
And the next came with equal joy, and with the next at evening
came my friend,
And that night while all was still I heard the waters roll slowly
continually up the shores,
I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands as directed to
me whispering to congratulate me,
For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover
in the cool night,
In the stillness in the autumn moonbeams his face was inclined
toward me,
And his arm lay lightly around my breast and that night I was
happy.
This poem was originally part of a sequence of poems titled “Live Oak with Moss,” which tells the story of an unhappy affair with a man. When Whitman published the third edition of Leaves of Grass in 1860, he included them among the forty-five poems of “Calamus,” but re-arranged their order to obliterate the narrative. For the fourth edition of Leaves of Grass, two of the three poems dropped were “Live Oak ” poems, perhaps revealing that Whitman still feared that the poems told more than he could safely reveal. You can see the reconstructed “Live Oak” series at the Whitman Archive.
95 YEARS AGO: Bob Hull: 1918. The future co-founder of the Mattachine Society grew up near Minneapolis. While a student at the University of Minnesota, Hull met Chuck Rowland — another future Mattachine co-founder — and they became lovers, briefly. After the war, Rowland became a Communist organizer, and Hull soon followed. In 1948, Rowland left the party and moved to Los Angeles. Hull followed him to L.A., but remained in the party where he met Harry Hay (see Apr 7). When Hay discussed his idea for forming a support organization for gay people with Hull, Hull shared the idea Rowland and Hull’s then-current lover, Dale Jennings (see Oct 21). Together with Hay’s lover, Rudi Gernreich, the five met in November of 1950 and formed what would become the Mattachine Foundation, along with the individual discussion groups which were, collectively, the Mattachine Society.
Hull’s role in the Society was rather limited. He was best known for leading discussion groups and writing tracts for the organization. As the society grew and attracted new members, many of those new members were skittish over the communist ties of its founders and the Foundation’s high degree of secrecy. Few knew the names of those in leadership positions, and the founders organized the Societies so that each discussion group was compartmentalized so that if one member was picked up by the FBI — remember, this was at the height of the McCarthy anti-Communist and anti-gay witch hunts — the other members of the organization were protected.
But by 1953, newer members, mostly conservative members from San Francisco led by Hal Call (see Sep 20), demanded that the secrecy surrounding the leadership be abandoned and the organization cleared of Communists. Hull voiced concerns that some of those northern members might tip off a Senate Committee that Communists had founded the organization and questioned whether the founders could withstand such an investigation. (In fact, two new members from the Bay area were already FBI informants.) After the Foundation’s first constitutional in April broke down in disagreement (see Apr 11), a second meeting was called for May, when Hay, Rowland, and Hull stepped down. The remaining members declared the Mattachine Foundation disbanded and announced the formation of the newly reconstituted Mattachine Society.
When Hull left Mattachine, he also left advocacy behind. He briefly joined up with Rowland’s short-lived gay-affirming Church of One Brotherhood. But Hull’s personal demons soon caught up with him. A lifelong introvert, Hull struggled with depression for which he underwent years of therapy. Just days after his lover left him, Hull killed himself on May 1, 1962.
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?
NOM Gets Economics Wrong. Again.
Rob Tisinai
May 30th, 2013
Feeling wonkish?
The UCLA Williams Institute (I’ll call them “WI”) is predicting an economic boost of $54-103 million in new spending for Illinois if the state legalizes same-sex marriage.
NOM’s Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse does not agree:
The people and legislators of Illinois should not count on extra revenue as a benefit from redefining marriage. These forecasts are based on an elementary economic error as well as highly dubious forecasts. That is why the “Gay Marriage Economic Miracle!!!” predictions have not worked out so well in the past.
I’ve learned Dr. Morse doesn’t have strong analytical skills, but this is her field, so I hoped for more this time. She did not deliver.
Dr. Morse describes the “elementary economic error”:
The same-sex couples of Illinois would have spent that money on other things: vacations, theater tickets, home decorating, pets, cars, doctor bills. Every dollar spent on weddings is a dollar taken away from some other industry!!
Not…exactly. Despite the italics and double exclamation.
Morse’s point is based on simple economics — simplistic economics, rather. The idea is that when people receive income, they either spend it or they save it, and if they save it, then banks lend those savings out to businesses and other consumers to spend. So every dollar is spent one way or another, and every dollar of income spent one way is just a dollar that can’t be spent some other way.
But consider this: What if the economy’s not so great? In a climate of fear and uncertainty, households usually try to cut back their spending. And businesses have little incentive to invest or expand. Dollars go unspent. You end up with usable but shuttered storefronts, functional but empty factories, and qualified but unemployed workers.
Economists call this the liquidity trap. A perfectly sensible decision by consumers and and businesses to spend less and save more (be more “liquid”) results in lower spending overall, “trapping” the economy in a recession unless we somehow find a way to boost spending back up.
A few signs can tell you if you’re in a liquidity trap. When interest rates plummet, it means businesses must not be competing hard for bank loans to finance expansion. That’s the situation now. Also, it’s not a good sign if businesses are sitting on mountains of cash rather than putting it to productive and profitable use. That, too, is our situation now.
The experts at the Williams Institute, however, do understand the liquidity trap. First, they estimated the number of same-sex couples likely to marry, factored in the average cost per wedding in Illinois, and then made this adjustment:
Also, only spending that comes from couples’ savings would truly be “new spending” for the State’s businesses, rather than money diverted from some other expenditure. To take these factors into account, as in previous studies by the Williams Institute, we estimate here that same-sex couples spend one-quarter of the amount that different-sex couples spend on wedding arrangements.
Emphasis added. In other words, they figured same-sex couples would use savings to pay for about a quarter of their wedding costs, and this is the only spending they counted.
[Note to Dr. Morse: When you're rebutting someone, and they've already preemptively struck down your primary objection, then you need to deal with that instead of pretending it's not there. Failing to do so is either dishonest or sloppy.]
Dr. Morse does score a few hits by pointing out the gap in WI’s 2008 prediction for the state of Iowa, and its 2011 follow-up report.
- In 2008, WI predicted 2917 Iowa same-sex couples would marry in the first three years after it became legal, but in 2011 reported that only 866 had done so in the first year.
- In 2008, WI predicted sales tax revenue of $2.7 million per year for the first three years, but in 2011 reported it was only in the range of $850,000 to $930,000 for the first year.
As Dr. Morse says:
In addition, the gross but unacknowledged discrepancy between the inflated prediction of 2008 and the ecstatic report of success in 2011 cries out for explanation.
Fair enough. I’m disturbed that WI didn’t explain or even acknowledge the discrepancy, too. But Dr. Morse continues:
That explanation is simple: the Williams Institute seriously over-estimated the number of same-sex couples who would marry.
Well, it’s not quite that simple, especially if you’re trying to discredit the Illinois predictions.
First, as Dr. Morse should recall, the economy tanked a few months after WI issued its 2008 report. Marriage rates fell across the country (from 7.3% in 2007 to 6.8% in 2009), and it’s not unreasonable to think long-established couples delayed their ceremonies until the world settled down. In addition, the average spent per wedding dropped in Iowa, too.
I suppose it’s possible we’ll have another once-in-a-lifetime meltdown next year, but unless Dr. Morse is counting on it, those factors don’t apply to Illinois.
What WI really got wrong in 2008, though, was wedding tourism — the number of non-Iowans who would come to the state to marry. WI thought 54,723 out-of-state couples would do that, and this number was so far wrong it’s almost comical.
With some trepidation, then, I checked to see how much wedding tourism WI had factored into its Illinois forecast, and the answer is…
0.
That’s right, zero. WI learned from its mistake, and this year when it predicted a $54-103 million boost from legalizing same-sex marriage in Illinois, it didn’t factor out-of-state couples into its calculations.
That’s a huge correction from the Iowa analysis. Now, you’re free to remain skeptical of these estimates (as a former Ph.D. candidate in economics, I’m skeptical as hell!) but at least be an informed skeptic. Who knows whether Dr. Morse doesn’t understand that this correction occurred, or she understands but is ignoring it to buttress a false case against the Illinois forecast. It’s the standard NOM question: incompetence or deception? All we can know for sure is that if you want a rigorous, well-informed analysis…don’t go to Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse.
Nigeria House of Representatives Passes Anti-Marriage, Anti-Advocacy Bill
Jim Burroway
May 30th, 2013
Nigeria’s draconian legislation which not only criminalizes same-sex marriage and all other forms of domestic arrangements and even displays of affection, but also outlaws all advocacy on behalf of LGBT people, has passed the lower House of Representatives last Thursday, according to the Associated Press:
Lawmakers in Nigeria passed a bill Thursday banning gay marriage and outlawing anyone from forming organizations supporting gay rights, setting prison terms of up to 14 years for offenders.
Nigeria’s House of Representatives approved the bill in a voice vote, likely sending it immediately t0 President Goodluck Jonathan for him to potentially sign into law in Africa’s most populous nation. Whether he will approve it remains unclear, and both the United States and the United Kingdom raised concerns over a measure that could put foreign funding for AIDS and HIV outreach programs in jeopardy.
The bill was introduced in Nigeria’s Senate in September 2011. After several more provisions were added and penalties increased, it sailed through in December. (The full text of the bill, as passed by the Senate, is available here.) The Senate’s bill doesn’t just ban same-sex marriage; it imposes criminal penalties of ten to fourteen years imprisonment for entering into a marriage or civil union, conducting or witnessing a ceremony, or even performing a public display of affection. It also imposes criminal penalties for anyone who would provide services or advocacy on behalf of gay people. The relevant portions of the bill as passed by the Senate include:
5. (1) Persons who entered into a same sex marriage contract or civil union commit an offence and are each liable on conviction to a term of 14 years imprisonment.
(2) Any person who registers, operates or participates in gay clubs, societies and organisation, or directly or indirectly make public show of same sex amorous relationship in Nigeria commit an offence and shall each be liable on conviction to a term of 10 years imprisonment.
(3) Any person or group of persons that witness, abet and aids the solemnization of a same sex marriage or civil union, or supports the registration, operation and sustenance of gay clubs, societies, organisations, processions or meetings in Nigeria commits an offence and shall be liable on conviction to a term of 10 years imprisonment.
The bill also broadly defined “civil union:”
“Civil Union” means any arrangement between persons of the same sex to live together as sex partners, and shall include such descriptions as adult independent relationships, caring partnerships, civil partnerships, civil solidarity pacts, domestic partnerships, reciprocal beneficiary relationships, registered partnerships, significant relationships, stable unions, etc.
In other words, any two adults living together can reasonably be accused of violating the law and being subject to spending the next fourteen years in prison.
It is not clear whether the House version of the bill is identical to the Senate version. If it is, then the bill’s next stop would be the desk of President Goodluck Jonathan.
Ex-Gay Survivor Survey Shows Harms, Lasting Impacts Of Sexual Orientation Change Efforts
Jim Burroway
May 30th, 2013
Beyond Ex-Gay, the online forum for former clients of ex-gay ministries and therapists, has released the results of a wide-ranging survey of the experiences reported by 417 ex-gay survivors. To date, there has been little effort to examine this particular group of people. Conducted by Jallen Rix, therapist, ex-gay survivor, and author of Ex-Gay No Way: Survival and Recovery from Religious Abuse
All too often, the public eye is drawn to the “squeaky wheel” in terms of the reparative therapy/ex-gay debate. Usually this means the people that make the craziest claims, and the most outlandish presumptions get most of the attention. Indeed, those who happen to be leading such “ministries” are often looked to as so-called “experts in the field” when they rarely have any real sexuality education or training. Unfortunately, those who have been damaged by these organizations are left as a footnote, or don’t get mentioned at all. This gives the public a skewed view of what’s really going on in the ex-gay movement.
Because of the nature of the convenience sample in this survey, the numerical results should be taken as illustrative rather than quantitative. But the picture that emerges is that the motivation for entering ex-gay programs is predominately religious. The top three results for why people tried to change their sexual orientation included “To be a better Christian,” “I believed it was what God wanted me to do,” and “I feared I would be condemned by God.” After that comes such responses as a general desire to fit in, cultural pressures to conform, and a desire to please family and friends. But beyond the numbers lie the written responses of survey participants which illustrates the huge variety of their experiences:
I so wanted to be “normal.” I didn’t believe that God could possibly accept me the way I was, given that I myself couldn’t. Conventionally “feminine” religious women who focused their entire lives around being a “good wife and mother” seemed to be happy and at peace (unlike me); they were respected and valued. I thought that if I could only be like them that everything would be fine.
Because I have a messed up childhood filled with emotional, mental and some physical (but no sexual) abuse, and I saw connections between my experiences and the experiences that the ex-gay community claims cause homosexuality.
I was a student at a Bible College and saw no ministry future if I was “tainted” by this situation. Some of my motivations were self and then it was forced by family and church.
After coming out and becoming a GLBT activist, the GLBT community bullied the living Hell out of me for seven years prompting me to re-enter ex-gay therapy.
I was told to be gay was sinful, and Exodus was promoting “are you gay and not happy” – check out Exodus Int. That it was my gay life style that was making me sad and depressed. That to label oneself as gay would mean a life of promiscuity, depression, drug and alcohol abuse, AIDS. I heard about Matthew Manning through the 700 Club, later to find out he was a fraud and was removed from the 700 Club website.
I was told I had demons, and even had someone “name” those demons who were “tormenting” me.
No one forced me, and even my pastor said that I didn’t need Exodus, that if I was in Christ I was a new creation, and all the rest was, is, and will be forgiven by God.
My pastor at the time implored me to deal with this. I had no desire to change my sexual orientation. This was upon his insistence.
It’s these written responses that I find to be more informative than the numbers. Question 8 asked why they quit the ex-gay movement. The top answer, by far, was that they failed to become straight. But one disturbing answer given by nearly a quarter of respondents was that they had had a nervous breakdown. Again, the written responses are more interesting:
I saw that NOBODY was being changed, and some of those other guys had a lot more faith than I did. The only ones I ever met who claimed to have been changed were the leadership. And one of them was always hitting on me.
I watched the movie Latter Days, and cried heavily as I saw how much I desired homosexual love, how repressed, self-loathing and judgmental I had become, and how much I may need to give up to live honestly.
found all the therapy didn’t work. I wasn’t changing my orientation. My desires did not change even into my forties. I started being sexually active and found the world did not come to and end.
Over time, I began to feel like the people involved in the ministry were on some level deceiving themselves. I appreciated their desire to draw nearer to God and resolve conflict from our past, however, beyond that, I felt like my local church community was far more effective in growing me spiritually – not to mention the fact that I wasn’t becoming ‘straight.’
I tried to kill myself
My “exorcism” scared me so much, I did everything to prove my “change” and get away from those people.
Contemplated suicide as a next logical step in measures to keep my gay feelings in check. At that point I realized I needed to change to make being gay a friend rather than an enemy.
Once I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to become straight, I started hoping that I would get in an accident or get a disease or something so I could die because I was so unhappy but didn’t want to go to hell for suicide. Eventually I didn’t care if I would go to hell and I was suicidal. I knew that something had to change.
Basically, the nagging pressure that my relationship with my dad made me gay, and because I was believing that, my actually good relationship with my dad started to fall apart because of it…. and also, the main reason, if it was so wrong, why didn’t God heal me?
I saw Brokeback mountain which showed exactly how bad it could be if a gay man married a woman.
Our denomination underwent a drastic reformation out of legalism; and, in accepting the reality of grace, discovered that I was still gay. Grace didn’t change my orientation. I had to admit my negative preconceptions about being gay and Christian were wrong. I realized I could be a gay Christian without regrets.
I was taken to a deliverance service by well meaning Christian relatives – and had what I can only describe as a true deliverance experience, on the other side of which I quit believing that changing my orientation was necessary.
I was in Love in Action and they told me my time in the program was up. It didn’t work and I finally gave up trying to change.
Only a relatively small minority of this particular sample, less than ten percent, say they weren’t harmed by their participation in the ex-gay movement. Nearly half said they were “harmed a lot” or “devastated” by the experience. Nearly half said that they were still effected “a lot” or “all the time” today by their experiences. The kinds of harms respondents described were all over the map:
I think the most damaging piece was the reinforcing of the sexual binging and purging. It has made it difficult in my current relationship at times. I continue to fight old patterns although that continues to lessen over time.
As an intersex bodied person I was constantly pressured into having “corrective” surgery on my genitalia so I could fit into a certain gender role as a heterosexual. I also developed an eating disorder.
Multiple suicide attempts, two psychiatric hospitalizations. Diagnosed severe type 2 Bipolar disorder and moderate PTSD by multiple doctors in two different states. Ex-gay therapist had told me the symptoms from these illnesses were caused by my “sexual confusion.” After ex-gay, I dealt with substance abuse, impulsive and dangerous behavior, and unsafe promiscuity. Entered several unhealthy relationships, including one physically abusive one.
I feel that the ex-gay movement caused me harm by screwing up my sense of love and intimacy completely. I became very promiscuous, because I felt that if I am going to be sinful, I might as well go all out. I also came to believe that there is no such thing as romantic love between men, only lust. In other words, it pushed the exact opposite values that should be placed on sex and love. To this day, I find it hard to have romantic relationships with guys that go beyond physical, let alone commitment! Lastly, I’m surprised you do not have substance/alcohol abuse on your list, because I did that as well because of my experiences.
I abandoned my faith b/c I could not find a way to live with being both gay and Christian
Not just harm to myself, but also harm to my husband who is asked (by his wife) to not undress in front of his wife, who is asked not to touch his wife sexually, who is asked not to be a heterosexual man and husband. I am not the only victim here. How about my husband and all the spouses of the “ex-gays”??? Exodus and others don’t want to address that…
Developed sexual addictions in a way to try to fit the mold of ex-gay “healings” Before ex-gay ministry, I didn’t have any sexual experiences at all.
Giving a moral inventory (sharing a very personal experience related to a sexual encounter) in front of all the parents at a friends and family weekend caused embarrassment and a look on my parents’ faces that I will never forget.
My situation is difficult to determine harm or reward. I suffered from low self-esteem before sexuality developed. I did have to withdraw from college because of Scientology experience, and I did attempt suicide twice – once directly because I feared my orientation would be discovered. I would add that Evergreen was somewhat helpful as a first step of coming to self acceptance.
The second-to-last response above hints at a possible participation in Love In Action’s “Friends and Family Weekend.” I can’t imaging undergoing the appalling shaming that went on at that event.
The last response above leads to another question I find interesting, and it’s one I’ve heard asked at a couple of ex-gay survivor gatherings: “What good, if any, came out of your ex-gay experience”? About a fifth of respondents in this sample declined to give an answer, and another tenth answered that there was no benefit. But of the rest, most say that they are now better able to accept themselves, talk openly about sexuality (after all, that was a key component of the ex-gay experience), and they felt that they were part of a community of similar people:
Surprisingly, I was able to finally accept myself. I spent several months during therapy thinking of how much of a failure I was. Once I began to realize that all that it had been doing was making me hate myself, I said “Enough is enough. I refuse to spend anymore time like this.”
I suppose that I needed to see for myself that changing my sexual orientation was not possible, nor was it necessary. In other words, I had to try everything that I could find before I ‘gave up’ and admitted being gay, and ‘give in’ to living the “lifestyle” of a gay man.
I learned that I couldn’t pretend, I couldn’t “act” my way through the world 24 hours a day. I learned that there had to be somewhere that I could be real. I met a lot of really broken, but beautiful disasters. It was my first community and I liked living with others in intentional community. I have something of substance to say on this subject and actively participate in the ex-ex-gay movement.
Out of my ex-gay experience came motivation to further pursue a career in counseling and psychology to ensure other youth and young adults do not have to experience what I experienced.
I thought I was the only gay Christian, so when I found out about Exodus, I was relieved to not be so alone. I enjoyed many friendships!
Nothing- well, I did get married and have 2 wonderful children because of all of this- so I am very thankful for my children.
I witnessed first hand how privilege works in church and society. The more others believed I was a masculine heterosexual, the more valuable they treated me and the more doors opened socially, professionally, and religiously for me to serve and be a full fledged member of the group. Seeing this play out, helped me to get glimpses of similar oppression/reward systems for many group. I understand the world better because of the oppression I faced.
I learned valuable discipline. Not to mention that to keep it up, I had to dive into some pretty deep theological waters. It forced me to develop my intellectual faith.
For the first time, I met other GLBT Christians and we could talk about what it’s like to be Christians with same gender attractions.
My friend, trained in healing therapy, specifically through Living Waters and Andy Comisky himself, did help me identify problem areas in my life and places of brokenness that needed addressing. Contrary to what she taught me, however, the problems weren’t centered in my being gay.
I met some other guys who were also having the same issues I was, and it was nice to know I was not alone.
For the first time I was able to talk openly about my sexuality.
it helped me coming out of the closet and develop more mature friendships – growing spiritual intimacy with God
It provided my first contact to others who I knew certainly were also “gay”. Although they may not have been the best representations of what gay men should be, at least I didn’t feel alone. It also forced me to confront my sexuality (which I had really been avoiding) and come to terms with the issues between it, my faith, and my family.
It was the stepping stone that allowed me to come out to myself.
My group leader, was very understanding and accepting about other issues in my life, in ways that helped me *a lot*.
To a degree, it provided a sense of community, and diminished the sense of isolation.
Met other gay people and started dating in a safe space
Many of these responses illustrate what I’ve said before: they are us, and when you go to an ex-gay conference, you are attending one of the gayest events in that locality. For many of these people, being in an ex-gay ministry, ironically, is their first introduction to other gay people and the intentional community, as one respondent described it, that they formed. I think that this is what makes their stories so compelling to me. It’s not to say that their experiences weren’t all that bad after all. But the idea that ex-gay ministries can actually be a stepping stone for many toward their full acceptance of themselves as LGBT people can’t be a comforting thought to very many of those ex-gay leaders.
The Daily Agenda for Thursday, May 30
Jim Burroway
May 30th, 2013
No comparison.
TODAY’S AGENDA (Theirs):
NOM/Ruth Institute’s “It Takes A Family” Conference: San Diego, CA. Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels was responsible for implementing Nazi Germany’s “big lie,” which was, more precisely, a whole series of big lies. What made his “big lies” so successful was that there was sometimes of smidgen of, well, not truth exactly, but truthiness — that kind of a “truthy” quality that results when someone speaks from the gut and not the facts about something that just “feels right.”
Now I don’t know why I think about Goebbels whenever anti-gay extremist Robert Gagnon comes to mind. Well, I sort of do. Somewhere along the way, someone made a comparison. I don’t remember who made it, or whether they said one was worse than the other, but I do remember the comparison. And ever since then, the link was made in my mind: Gagnon, Goebbels; Goebbels, Gagnon.
What I do remember about that linkage was thinking that there’s nothing even remotely fair in the comparison — not even close. But I also remember the argument that, like Goebbels, Gagnon, too, depends on a huge pile of truthiness to support some of his more outrageous positions. I think that we can safely acknowledge that particular intersection of similarity between the two. Not that I’m comparing Goebbels to Gagnon. After all, Goebbels was part of Hitler’s inner circle, a trusted confidant who served an evil regime that sent some twelve million people, including six million Jews, to their deaths. Gagnon is an Associate Professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and is on the board of directors of the hard-core ex-gay breakaway group, Restored Hope Network. There’s just no comparing the two. But if someone held a gun to my head and forced me to compare them, then obviously one is way worse than the other, no question about it. But I really don’t see the point in pressing it.
Gagnon, too, has acquired a habit of linking wholly unrelated things in peoples’ minds. But when people accuse him of comparing wholly unrelated things and saying one is worse than the other, he denounces them for saying that he made that comparison. He calls them incompetent, duplicitous, things like that. Like, for example, that time when he wrote this email to other anti-gay activists last month where he defended the use of the word “perverse” to describe gay people:
…Bestiality is an even more unnatural form of sexual practice since it is cross-species. Adult-consensual incest is also a particularly perverse form of sexual practice since it involves sex with someone who is too much of a familial same. But Scripture treats homosexual practice as even more severely unnatural because the male-female requirement for sexual relations is foundational for all that follows (so Genisis and Jesus) and because sex or gender is a more constituent feature of sexual behavior than kinship.
Now I read that to mean that Gagnon thinks homosexuality is worse than bestiality and incest. Just about everyone else did too, although one BTB reader was able to closely parse the wording and say, no, that’s not what he meant. Gagnon himself sent me a rather nastily worded email in which he said (while addressing me in the third person, like someone who can’t look you in the eye):
Jim Burroway of the duplicitous “Box Turtle” site accuses me of saying that homosexual practice is worse than bestiality even though I specifically state (and he even twice quotes me as saying) that bestiality is worse (homosexual practice …is regarded by Scripture as worse than incest, comparing adult-consensual for both; I do stand by that; it is a point easy to demonstrate from Scripture). His inability to read for context is hardly surprising. Misinterpretation is a staple of the “Box Turtle” site.
It goes on from there, but you get the drift. He also complained to Jeremy Hooper, who first posted the excerpt from Gagnon’s earlier email. Hooper re-read that excerpt again and wrote:
An earlier version of this post’s headline said Mr. Gagnon repeated his belief that homosexual practice is worse than bestiality. I believe that is, in fact, what Mr. Gagnon was implying when, after mentioning both bestiality and incest in the fourth paragraph above, he claimed in a third, clarifying line that “Scripture treats homosexual practice as even more severely unnatural.” I’m not sure why anyone would interpret it differently. I mean, when a writer mentions two notions and then uses a “But… even more severely unnatural” setup to round out his thoughts, the logical reader believes he or she is referring back to the points that immediately precede that closing.
Mr Gagnon, however, claims my read was “incompetent.” This being the case, I will gladly limit his belief to just incest, since he has on many different occasions claimed that “homosexual practice” is worse than than inter-familial practice. I don’t mind making this change (while leaving Gagnon’s full text to your own interpretation) because I hardly see how it’s better for Gagnon’s cause.
I’ll leave it to Gagnon to give the final word on whether he thinks homosexuality is worse than bestiality or incest — or both or neither. But I can’t shake the observation that he sometimes likes to mention bestiality when discussing homosexuality — for what reason, I can’t say. I mean, the two have nothing to do with each other, and even Gagnon has argued elsewhere that, Biblically speaking, homosexuality isn’t as bad as bestiality. But if that’s what he believes, then why does he even bring it up? Why does he invite comparisons of homosexuality to bestiality and not, say, dodge ball? Why isn’t he writing anti-bestiality tracts instead? “Good Lord!,” he could write, “It’s even worse than homosexuality!” I’ll leave it for him explain and for you to decide. All I can say is that for whatever reason he enjoys linking the two.
I bring all of this up because Gagnon is among those who will be speaking this weekend at a conference with the unwieldy title, “It Takes A Family To Raise A Village.” The student conference kicks off tonight at the Town and Country Resort in San Diego, and continues through the weekend. It will be conducted by the Ruth Institute, which itself is the “think tank” arm of the National Organization for Marriage. Another scheduled speaker is Mark Regnerus, the disgraced author of the discredited so-called “gay parenting” study. Regnerus will give two talks: one on “The social science evidence on why hooking up doesn’t make people happy,” and another on “Understanding same sex parenting studies.” I presume the second one will be delivered without a trace of irony.
As for Gagnon, he will also give two talks: “Jesus and marriage” and “Paul and homosexual practice,” in which he may or may not link bestiality and homosexuality. If he does, then I may find myself writing about Gagnon and mentioning, in passing, Goebbels, even though — and I’ll say this again in case anyone misses it — I don’t really see any legitimate reason to link the two.
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Aarhus, Denmark; Alkmaar, Netherlands; Angers, France; Bradford, UK; Boston, MA; Buffalo, NY; Cambridge/Kitchener/Waterloo, ON; Davenport, IA; Dayton, OH; Dresden, Germany; Göteborg, Sweden; Honolulu, HI; Kiel, Germany; Lille, France; Lorraine, France; Los Ranchos, NM; Oxford, UK; Queens, NY; Regensburg, Germany; Salt Lake City, UT; Santa Cruz, CA; Shanghai, China; Sonoma Co, CA Springfield, MA; Staten Island, NY; Tulsa, OK; Washington, DC; Waterford, Ireland; Winnipeg, MB; York, UK.
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Beaver Lake, NY; Boston, MA; Long Beach, CA.
Other Events This Weekend: Connecticut Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Hartford, CT; Rainbow 5K Run/Walk, Indianapolis, IN; Cinépride LGBT Film Festival, Nantes, France; Gay Days Disney, Orlando, FL; Film Out, San Diego, CA; AIDS Lifecycle, San Francisco to Los Angeles, CA (Sponsor Rob Tisinai here!); Inside Out Toronto Film Festival, Toronto, ON.
Paul Guilbert and Aaron Fricke
TODAY IN HISTORY:
Male Couple attends Senior Prom: 1980. Aaron Fricke was a high school senior when he publicly came out as gay, stated dating Paul Guilbert, and asked him to the Cumberland (Rhode Island) High School senior prom. The year before, Guilbert gad tried to attend the junior prom with a male date, but he ran into opposition from both the principal and his father. This time, Fricke took the lead, but, as before, the principal refused to allow the couple to attend, saying the move “upset other students, sent the community abuzz, and rallied out-of-state newspapers to consider the matter newsworthy.” It also earned Fricke five stitches under his eye when he was attacked in the hallway.
Fricke filed a lawsuit in Federal court, charging that the school district was infringing on his First Amendment right to free speech. “I feel I have the right to attend,” he told the judge. “I feel I want to go to the prom for the same reason any other student would want to go.” The judge agreed (PDF: 60KB/7 pages), and not only ordered the school district to allow the couple to attend, but to beef up security in case there were any problems. And on this day in 1980, Frike and Guilbert attended the prom, slow-danced to Bob Seger’s “We’ve Got The Night,” and the case of Frike v. Lynch became an important legal precedent for other gay couples across the nation since then.
Fricke later wrote about his experiences in Reflections of a Rock Lobster: A Story about Growing Up Gay. He also collaborated with his father on another book about coming out, Sudden Strangers: The Story of a Gay Son and His Father
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Christine Jorgensen: 1926. She was born in the Bronx, and described herself as “frail, tow-headed, introverted little boy who ran from fistfights and rough-and-tumble games.” She also went by “George.” After a stint in the army following World War II, her identity as a woman was overwhelming — and her physical development as a man was underwhelming. As she attended dental school, she began taking the female hormone ethinyl estradiol on her own and looked into sexual reassignment surgery. At the time, the only surgeries being performed were in Sweden. But at a stopover in Copenhagen to visit relatives, she discovered Dr. Christian Hamburger, a Danish endocrinologist and specialist in rehabilitative hormonal therapy. Denmark’s Minister of Justice allowed her surgery to take place.
Christine’s surgery wasn’t the first of its kind, but that’s how it was portrayed on December 1, 1952 when the New York Daily News carried the front-page headline, “Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Beauty.” Within months, she was a national celebrity, and became the most written-about person in 1953. She tried to use her celebrity as an opportunity for education, which turned out to be a huge task. She acted in summer stock, toured the lecture circuit, wrote an autobiography, and made countless radio and television appearances. She was engaged to marry John Traub, but that engagement was called off. In 1959, she announced her engagement to Howard J. Knox, but the couple was unable to obtain a marriage license because Jorgensen’s birth certificate still listed her as a male. By the time they ended that engagement, Knox had been fired from his job over the publicity. Shortly before Jorgensen died in 1989, she said she had given the sexual revolution “a good swift kick in the pants.” She died of bladder and lung cancer just a month shy of her 63rd birthday.
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?
Auditor of “Gay Parenting” Study Warns of Christian Right’s Corruption of Social Science
Jim Burroway
May 29th, 2013
Last June, the journal Social Science Research published a controversial study by Mark Regnerus which claimed that children of gay and lesbian parents fared worse than children from other family configurations. BTB was the first to publish a review which demonstrated that the study was seriously flawed and the data was intentionally manipulated in order to draw conclusions that the data itself simply could not support. While Regnerus acknowledged a few of the studies flaws, he defended it on the whole and quickly became something of a spokesperson for anti-gay activists who were battling marriage equality in Federal court.
The massive controversy over the study’s flaws and its questionable rush to publication led Social Science Research editor Kames D. Wright to assign a member of the journal’s editorial board, Dr. Darren E. Sherkat of Southern Illinois University, to review how the paper and how its publication was handled. In that audit, Sherkat found problems with the study’s conclusions, its funding sources (nearly $700,000 from the Witherspoon Institute), conflicts of interests with the study’s reviewers, and the auspicious timing of the study’s publication, just ahead of the 2012 elections when marriage equality ballot initiatives were to be voted on in three states and a marriage ban in a fourth. Additional documents release last March revealed that Witherspoon Institute was more heavily involved with the contorted data analysis which led to the study’s false conclusions. Those documents also revealed that Witherspoon Institute president Luis Tellez exerted pressure get the study published before the marriage cases reached the Supreme Court.
Dr. Darren Sherkat
This morning, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Report published an interview with Dr. Sherkat, who explained further what he found when he examined how the journal handled the Regnerus paper. Sherkat described the pressures that editors face in filling their journals’ pages with content, and the slipshod way that many reviewers approach their work. Those factors are just a few which contribute to a general lack of rigor in social science journals, says Sherkat, and he warns that “conservative Christian scholars” are taking advantage of that opening:
Peer review is not perfect. The majority of people don’t do a bad job out of any kind of malicious intent. Having said that, Mark Regnerus is not alone. There are a large number of conservative Christian scholars in sociology, in political science, in family studies, and it’s surprising how many now are rising up into the top ranks. I’ve watched Mark throughout his career rise up through those structures that help to elevate conservative idea creators who are committed to the ideology of the Christian right and who are bright enough and hard-working enough to establish themselves in secular education. Regnerus has contemporaries who came up with him who today are also at prominent universities throughout the country.
Sherkat describes Regnerus’s method for identifying “gay and lesbian parents” as “simply a farce.” He also says that Regnerus “has been disgraced. All of the prominent people in the field know what he did and why he did it. And most of them know that he knew better.” But Sherkat worries that the funding of studies like Regnerus’s by conservative think tanks is creating an unlevel playing field:
One thing that’s disturbing to me about the Regnerus study is that Regnerus received a large amount of money from these foundations and this creates a very different scholarly and intellectual atmosphere. It creates a playing field that’s not level. Someone like Regnerus is now able to go out and buy his own data, if we’re to accept data of this quality.
Even if we were to say it’s high quality data, he is able to get a million dollars’ worth of influence — he was able to generate that kind of funding from these conservative foundations in a way that other intellectuals are not able to do. All of the traditional sources of social scientific funding have dried up over the last 20 years and there’s nowhere to go to get money, but these guys have it. There are talks in Congress about cutting the entire social science budget at the National Science Foundation. That is chilling, because then we’ll be completely reliant on people like Mark Regnerus and Brad Wilcox [of the University of Virginia] and Christian Smith [of Notre Dame University] and people like that for our information about potentially crucial or controversial issues.
