Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyJune 17th, 2016
Roger Jimenez, from the YouTube video that has since been removed.
Police were still identifying and removing bodies from the Pulse gay night club in Orlando when Sacramento pastor Roger Jimenez of Verity Baptist Church posted a sermon on YouTube equating gay people with pedophiles and wishing that more people were dead. “If we lived in a righteous government, they should round them all up and put them up against a firing wall, and blow their brains out,” he said. “The tragedy is that more of them didn’t die. The tragedy is — I’m kind of upset that he didn’t finish the job!”
The video was removed by YouTube for violating its standards on hate speech. But Jimenez was unrepentant on Tuesday, telling the Sacramento Bee:
All I’m saying is that when people die who deserve to die, it’s not a tragedy,” he added. Jimenez spoke these words in a kind monotone befitting a loan officer discussing interest rates at a local bank branch. …Though he didn’t talk long, he wanted people to know he wasn’t backing down from his words. “There are many people who agree with us,” he said. “In America, you are no longer allowed to have an opinion that goes against mainstream society.”
Jimenez is wrong on so many things, including about whether he’s allowed to have an opinion. Of course he is, and he’s also allowed to express it. And so do the hundred or so protesters who gathered at the Verity Baptist Church parking lot on Wednesday, for what had been planned as a silent protest. It became anything but silent:
Wearing a small LGBT pride heart on her T-shirt, Sakler watched as congregants filed past the crowd of activists and a line of police officers. They were men and women in church outfits, couples holding hands, parents with crying babies, small children giggling – all of them hurrying inside, ignoring the cries of “We are Orlando!” from the protesters.
For some queer protesters, seeing the families in attendance was a painful reminder that people in suburban California share the hateful and violent beliefs of Jimenez – and that the pastor is not just a fringe extremist preaching to anonymous bigots in the dark corners of YouTube.
“We have so far to go,” said Sakler, wiping tears from her eyes while clutching a rainbow candle.
The tense scene that unfolded outside the church – where protesters screamed “Would you kill me?” as the silent parishioners passed by – offered a window into the anguish of LGBT people across the country, who are coming to terms with the unprecedented attack on the queer community less than one year after same-sex marriage became the law of the land in the US.
And by the way, Jimenez has at least one other pastor coming to his defense:
Manly Perry, a Texas pastor who has given a sermon at Jimenez’s church, said in a phone interview on Wednesday that the Sacramento preacher was a “mentor” who is skilled at bringing people into the church – and has a wide reach.
“That church in my opinion has the best-organized program and outreach in the community,” he said. “He’ll be looked at as a hatemonger, but he’s actually the exact opposite … He’s got a genuine love for people. He wants to see people saved.”
Perry also repeated several times: “The Bible is very clear that homosexuals should have the death penalty.”
June 17th, 2016
Rebecca Ruiz at Mashable noticed something odd about the Republican National Committee’s statement about Orlando: a sentence is missing. when the statement was first released on Sunday, it contained an rather awkward sentence that nevertheless acknowledge the attack against the LGBT community. “Violence against any group of people simply for their lifestyle or orientation has no place in America or anywhere else,” it said. Clumsy, sure. A lot of people gagged on the “lifestyle” reference. But at least it was some kind of an acknowledgement, even if it sounded like it was written by Aunt Betty.
But by Monday, the statement was updated with no explanation, and that update obliterates all acknowledgment, klutzy or otherwise, of the attack on the LGBT community. An RNC Spokesman said the revision was meant to be “more inclusive.” Log Cabin Republican president Gregory T. Angelo wasn’t having it.
“Scrubbing an early draft of their press release for any specific mention of gay people or sexual orientation is indicative of the cowardice a lot of Republicans exhibited in the aftermath of the shootings,” Angelo told Mashable.
Gay Republican @ColtonBuckley on Orlando: "That could have been me." https://t.co/uyXMsVsfPv
— LogCabinRepublicans (@LogCabinGOP) June 14, 2016
This is mart of a larger pattern among several Republicans and social conservatives who have refused to mention exactly who was attacked. It’s as if the shooter had attacked a shopping mall or a Denny’s. As Ruiz notes:
The RNC’s decision to remove the sentence from its statement highlights the party’s challenges as it tries to embrace the victims and show solidarity with the LGBT community without alienating Republican voters who often describe so-called identity politics as divisive.
June 17th, 2016
Malik Gillani, a Shia Ismaili Muslim in Chicago who is married to his husband, Jamil Khoury, who is Antiochian Orthodox Christian. Gillani, has a fantasy. In involves the mosques of Chicago inviting gay people to share a meal with them during the holy month of Ramadan:
Come break bread with us, the imams would say, and let us hear your stories. Tell us what it’s like to be two men who love each other. To be two lesbians raising a child. To be a young gay man rejected by his family.
In Gillani’s fantasy, the recent massacre in an Orlando, Fla., gay nightclub would turn into an opportunity for gay people and Muslims to connect with each other through their stories of struggle.
The Orlando massacre has been particularly hard for Gillani:
Gillani was asleep Sunday at home in Chicago when his husband woke him with the Orlando news.
“Oh my God” was his first thought, “Who’s killing gays?”
And then he heard the shooter’s name, Omar Mateen, and he felt too sick even to get out of bed to gather with his gay friends to mourn.
He kept thinking, “Why are we killing gays?”
He felt the “we” of being Muslim as deeply as he felt the “we” of being gay. He identified with the killer and the victims. Guilt blended with sorrow.
“Collective guilt by association,” he says.
He came out to his family, involuntarily, when his brother outed him. His family accepted him. He was lucky. Another brother began driving him to Chicago’s Boystown because he wanted Gillani to be safe. When he married, his family also welcomed his husband. He wrote about all that for the New York Daily News on Tuesday.
June 17th, 2016
Luis Omar Ocasio-Capo, 20 years old
Omar was originally from Cleveland, where his mother still lives. a former teacher remembered him as “a ray of sunshine.” Omar’s sister, Belinette Ocasio-Capo said that Omar wanted to be a star. “He was one of the most amazing dancers,” she said. “He would always call me and say, ‘I’m going to be the next Hollywood star.’ He really did want to make it and be known. …Now his name ended up being all around the world, like he wanted — just not this way.” She said that Omar was due to audition for a play on Tuesday.
His cousin, Leonarda Flores, also remarked on his outgoing personality. “He did not care, he loved himself, and he loved others. He was very open, he lived who he was. He knew he was beautiful, he knew it, and he flaunted it.”
His 70-year-old coworker at a Starbucks located in a Target in Kissimmee found him brash at first, but she warmed to him after getting to know him. “I realized he had a very outgoing personality,” said Claudia Mason. “His sense of humor was definitely his defining personality trait. …Omar got along with everyone. Young, old, male, female, gay, or straight, it didn’t matter to Omar.”
Omar loved dancing. His friend Daniel Suarez-Ortiz said, “The reason why he moved to Orlando was for his acting and dancing career, and it hurts that he is not able to do that anymore.” The last image that his friends have of him is a video showing him dancing around Pulse with his friends. The Snapchat video was taken at about 12:30 a.m., just a couple of hours before the gunman opened fire.
In November 2015, after the massacre at Paris’s Bataclan nightclub, he updated his profile picture in solidarity with the French victim. This week, an entire cabin full of JetBlue passengers showed their solidarity with Omar’s grandmother.
June 17th, 2016
I didn’t want it to be a political speech. I just wanted to share what was in my heart, and that’s what came out.
…I think it’s pretty sad that a speech by a Lieutenant Governor in Utah is getting this much attention just by saying that we should love each other. I mean, how low is the bar in our country?
You can see Utah Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox’s speech and read a transcript here.
June 17th, 2016
His real name was Wladziu Valentino Liberace (May 16), but like Cher and Madonna and other gay icons, he was known by a single name. He started as a classical pianist, but he quickly added schmaltz and elements of Las Vegas showmanship (extravagant costumes, massive diamond rings, and his signature candelabra) to his repertoire of classics, show tunes, film scores and popular songs, all of which took his performances in a decidedly unclassical direction. His curly black hair, long eyelashes and bright smile made him a sex symbol for an odd collection of somewhat nerdy teenage girls, their middle-aged mothers and even their grandmothers — and for not a few gay men who understood what they were seeing. His flamboyance had long provoked questions about his sexuality (Oct 7), but those questions didn’t do much to dent the popularity of his hit television series and packed concert halls.
But in 1956, a Daily Mirror columnist who went by the pen name Cassandra (real name: William Connor) wrote a scathing article the day after Liberace’s arrival in London for a live BBC broadcast and a European tour. If everyone else was willing to go along with Liberace’s persona of being sweet, sensitive, sensational and straight, Connor had no intention of playing along:
He is the summit of sex – the pinnacle of masculine, feminine, and neuter. Everything that he, she and it can ever want. I spoke to sad but kindly men on this newspaper who have met every celebrity coming from America for the past 30 years. They say that this deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavored, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love has had the biggest reception and impact on London since Charlie Chaplin arrived at the same station, Waterloo, on September 12, 1921.
Liberace replied with at telegram: “What you said hurt me very much. I cried all the way to the bank.” But he also decided to sue for libel. The case finally reached a London courtroom in 1959. On June 6, Liberace took the stand and denied that he was gay. He also denied that he was even a sex symbol. “I consider sex appeal as something possessed by Marilyn Monroe and Brigitte Bardot. I certainly do not put myself in their class,” he said, prompting laughter in the court room. When Connor took the stand, he denied trying to imply that Liberace was gay, although he found it difficult to square that claim with his word choices for his column. The most damning phrase, according to news accounts of the day, was his use of “fruit-flavored.” Apparently that was not the phrase to be tossed around at just anyone.
With no proof of actual homosexual activity on Liberace’s part — there were no former lovers to testify, no police arrests to report — the jury returned a verdict of guilty against Connor and the Daily Mirror, and awarded damages of $22,400. Liberace’s pop idol status also probably helped. One upper-middle-aged lady on the jury gave Liberace what was described as “a broad wink” and mouthed “it’s all right” before the verdict was read. Spectators also picked up on the signal, and murmurs of “he won” spread through the courtroom. She later turned up at his hotel and told reporters that she thought he was wonderful — “a real smasher.” This was after she
But today of course we know what was true all along: that he was actually gay even though he never came out of the closet during his lifetime. His estate and many of his remaining fans continued to deny for many years the numerous reports that when he died in 1987, it was AIDS that killed him.
June 17th, 2016
The documentary The Queen makes its premiere in a theater in New York City. The film, shot almost entirely with hand-held cameras, is a primitive pre-Stonewall prequel to Paris is Burning, and follows the behind-the-scenes preparations for the Miss All-America Camp Beauty Pageant – a national drag queen competition in New York City. The conversations recorded in the dressing rooms about draft boards, sexual and gender identity, sex reassignment surgery, and being a drag queen captures a very specific time in LGBT history. If you are ever lucky enough to see it, keep a very sharp eye out whenever the camera pans to the audience. You might just get a quick glimpse of Andy Warhol in his trademark platinum wig.
June 17th, 2016
One fine Wednesday in June, two fishermen pulled a suitcase out of Rough River Lake, located about midway between Elizabethtown and Owensboro, Kentucky. When they pulled it up and unzipped it, they found the grizley remains of Guin “Richie” Phillips, a 36-year-old gay man from Rineyville, near Elizabethtown. He was identified by some personal items and a University of Kentucky Wildcat tattoo on his shoulder. Phillips had disappeared on June 17.
When his mother reported her son missing, she told police that she feared that he had been harmed because he was gay. Her fears proved correct. Police arrested Joshua Cottrell, 21, and charged him with Phillip’s murder. Cottrell had been seen having lunch with Phillips in Elizabethtown, and they were seen together in Phillip’s truck that same day. Several days later, the truck was found abandoned in Southern Indiana. Prosecutors announced that they would seek the death penalty.
When the trial finally got under way in 2005, a mutual friend testified that Cottrell had bought a set of luggage at J.C. Penney’s and told the friend that he planned to do some traveling. Cottrell also said that he would “cold-cock” Phillips if he ever made a pass at him. Cottrell’s aunt testified that Cottrell had confessed to the crime but his family didn’t believe him. According to the aunt, Cottrell invited Phillips to his motel room and asked Phillips if he liked him. Phillips said yes, and Cottrell chocked him to death.
But Cottrell testified that Phillips came to his motel room uninvited, tried to kiss him, and tried to force him to into oral sex. Cottrell’s attorney told the jury that the killing was fully justified. “This kid is not a killer,” Scott Drabenstadt said during closing arguments. “This kid is not a robber. Yes, he did some very inappropriate things with the body. … But what set it all in motion, he was privileged to do. What set it in motion were the actions of a 36-year-old man.”
That “gay panic defense,” despite the testimony from Cottrell’s own relatives, was all that was needed to convince the jury to reject the more serious charge of murder in favor of second degree manslaughter. They recommended 30 years, but Kentucky law limited the term to twenty. Phillips’s brother told a reporter, “I think they were looking at my brother being a homosexual when they made their decision to pick the lesser charge.” Cottrell was sentenced to the maximum twenty years. He is now more than half way through his term and has been eligible for parole since 2007.
June 17th, 2016
Carl Van Vechten, self-portrait, 1934.
(d. 1964) A writer and a photographer, Carl Van Vechten was fascinated with African-American culture and became a patron on the Harlem Renaissance. In 1926, he published his controversial 1926 novel Nigger Heaven, which portrayed the intellectuals, political activists, workers, and others who inhabited the “great black walled city” of Harlem. The book by a white author split Harlem down the middle: Langston Hughes was among the book’s fans and defenders (Hughes even wrote new poems to replace the songs used in the book’s first printing), while W. E. B. Du Bois and Alain Locke condemned it as an “affront to the hospitality of black folks.”
The question of whether a white man could truly know the Black experience lies at the very heart of the controversy surrounding Van Vechten’s life. Some of Van Vechten’s affinity for African-Americans can be traced to his wealthy family while growing up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. His father endowed a school for African-American children, and he instructed his sons to always address the family’s employees with “Mr.” and “Mrs.”, regardless of their race. After graduating from the University of Chicago, he moved to New York to become the music and dance critic for The New York Times. In 1913, he took a year-long trip to Europe where he met Gertrude Stein and helped to get her work published.
In the 1920s, he began publishing novels himself, many of which containing sly and witty references to homosexuality. His 1923 novel, The Blind Bow-Boy includes a character he called “the Duke of Middlebottom,” whose stationery sported the slogan, “A thing of beauty is a boy forever.” It was about this time that Van Vechten emerged as a notable advocate for Black culture, writing articles in Vanity Fair celebrating the music of the Harlem Renaissance — the blues, jazz and spirituals which he said were the only authentic American musical forms. He also promoted writers of “the New Negro movement”: Alain Locke, Langston Hughes, Wallace Thurman, among others. In the 1930, Van Vechten took up photography and became known for his portraits of some of the leading artists of the day, including Langston Hughes, Marian Anderson, Pearl Bailey, Josephine Baker, Marlon Brando, Truman Capote, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, Mahalia Jackson — the list is nearly endless.
Although Van Vechten had married the Russian-born actress Fania Marinoff in 1914, Van Vechten was gay. This was evident when his papers were unsealed twenty-five years after his death in 1964:
As the 25-year mark drew near, scholars assumed they were about to unveil Van Vechten’s diaries. “They said, ‘Of course, this is going to be exciting, and let’s open those journals and have a party,’ and the curator said, ‘Well, I don’t think so…’ It was a good instinct.” The few people who did attend the 1989 opening, including Willis, were shocked by what they found: 18 scrapbooks of graphic homoeroticism, full of mischief and devoid of explanation.
…Van Vechten collected newspaper clippings chronicling Harlem drag balls, early sex-change operations (“GI Who Turned Woman is a Happy Beauty”), court cases for “morals charges,” and abuse incidents. He assembled more restrained, if still theatrical, black and white photographs of male nudes, both Caucasian and African American, which most scholars think are mostly or entirely the work of Van Vechten. Nothing escaped him: Photos of ambiguously homoerotic Greek vases, labeled in childishly rounded handwriting, nestled against newspaper cutouts of male wrestlers locked in combat.
Emily Bernard’s 2012 biography, Carl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance: A Portrait in Black and White, explores the contentious racial and sexual intersections between the multiple worlds that Van Vechten inhabited and chronicled.
June 16th, 2016
We need a better soundtrack than the one we’ve been hearing since Sunday morning. Melissa Ehteridge provides it. From Rolling Stone:
After the horrific shooting at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub that left 49 dead and over 50 injured, people have tried to find a way to cope with the feelings that left them reeling from the senseless killing. Melissa Etheridge was equally heartbroken when she heard the news while on tour, and she told Rolling Stonethat she had to write a song in response.
…The song will be made available for purchase soon and Etheridge says all proceeds will be donated to an LGBT charity.
June 16th, 2016
June 16th, 2016
The independent Marine Corps Times reports that two west coast Marines who posted a threatening photo to a closed Facebook group are now under investigation by the California-based I Marine Expeditionary Force, which is based at Camp Pendleton north of San Diego. A marine posted a photo showing another corporal in uniform holding a rifle and captioned with the message, “Coming to a gay bar new you!”. The person who posted the photo added the message, “Too soon?”
First Lt. Thomas Gray, a spokesman for I MEF, told Marine Corps Times that the command has identified the Marine in the picture and the one who posted it on Facebook.
“We cannot discuss details of an ongoing investigation, but I can tell you the command is taking this incident seriously,” Gray said.
Marine officials have vowed to take “appropriate action” in response to the social media post, according to a statement released by I MEF.
“The Marine Corps does not tolerate discrimination based on sexual orientation, race, gender or religion,” the statement says. “…This type of behavior and mindset will not be allowed, and it is not consistent with the core values of honor, courage and commitment that are demonstrated by the vast majority of Marines on a daily basis.”
June 16th, 2016
Shortly after news broke about the attack on the Pulse gay night club in Orlando, JetBlue announced that they would offer free flights to Orlando to family members of those who were killed and wounded. One JetBlue flight attendant, Kelly Davis Karas, posted this moving account on Facebook of what happened on one of those flights:
Luis Omar Ocasio-Capo, , 20 years old.
Today my dear friend Melinda and I had the sad privilege of attending to his grandmother on our flight as she made her journey to Orlando to join her family during this unspeakable time.
Knowing she was making this hard journey alone, JetBlue employees made sure to be at her side every step of the way. Melinda stood quietly by her wheelchair while we waited until it was time to board. Kellie, the gate agent, boarded with her and helped get her settled. Melinda and I gave her a blanket, a pillow, a box of tissues and water so she could be as comfortable as possible. She was understandably distraught, but met us with kindness and gentleness. And gratitude.
But here’s where our flight got truly inspiring. I had the idea to pass around a piece of paper to everyone on board and invite them to sign it for this grieving grandmother. I talked it over with Melinda and she started the process from the back of the plane. As we took beverage orders, we whispered a heads up about the plan as we went.
Halfway through, Melinda called me, “Kel, I think you should start another paper from the front. Folks are writing PARAGRAPHS.” So I did. Then we started one in the middle. Lastly, running out of time on our hour and fifteen minute flight, we handed out pieces of paper to everyone still waiting.
When we gathered them together to present them to her, we didn’t have just a sheet of paper covered in names, which is what I had envisioned. Instead, we had page after page after page after page of long messages offering condolences, peace, love and support. There were even a couple of cash donations, and more than a few tears.
When we landed, I made an announcement that the company had emailed to us earlier in the morning to use as an optional addition to our normal landing announcement, which states “JetBlue stands with Orlando.” Then with her permission and at the request of a couple of passengers, we offered a moment of silence in Omar’s memory.
As we deplaned, EVERY SINGLE PERSON STOPPED TO OFFER HER THEIR CONDOLENCES. Some just said they were sorry, some touched her hand, some hugged her, some cried with her. But every single person stopped to speak to her, and not a single person was impatient at the slower deplaning process.
I am moved to tears yet again as I struggle to put our experience into words. In spite of a few hateful, broken human beings in this world who can all too easily legally get their hands on mass assault weapons – people ARE kind. People DO care. And through our customers’ humanity today, and through the generosity of this wonderful company I am so grateful to work for, I am hopeful that someday soon we can rally together to make the world a safer place for all.
I will never forget today. #Orlandoproud
June 16th, 2016
I can’t decide if the Washington Post was being sarcastic when it described Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) as an “elder Republican statesman.” But if that’s supposed to be some kind of honorific, it’s just one more indication of what statesmanship means in today’s GOP:
McCain made his remarks in a Senate hallway to a small group of reporters, responding to a question about the gun-control debate that has flared on Capitol Hill since the Sunday-morning shooting that left 49 clubgoers and the gunman dead.
He answered the question about the gun debate by citing Obama’s culpability for the attack through his foreign policy.
“Barack Obama is directly responsible for it, because when he pulled everybody out of Iraq, al-Qaeda went to Syria, became ISIS, and ISIS is what it is today thanks to Barack Obama’s failures,” McCain said.
He also adopted Trump’s “I called it” line when pressed by reporters:
“He pulled everybody out of Iraq, and I predicted at the time that ISIS would go unchecked, and there would be attacks on the United States of America,” he said. “It’s a matter of record, so he is directly responsible.”
Update: Moments ago, McCain tweeted this out:
To clarify, I was referring to Pres Obama’s national security decisions that have led to rise of #ISIL, not to the President himself
— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) June 16, 2016
That doesn’t match his direct statements to reporters: “Barack Obama is directly responsible for it.” His statements to reporters were pretty unambiguous. So I’m gonna call bullshit on this “clarification.”
Update: Buzfeed’s Tarini Parti has more:
“When he pulled everybody out of Iraq, then al-Qaeda went to Syria, became ISIS and ISIS were the ones responsible for these attacks. So it’s directly at the doorstep of President Obama, and I intend to tell every American I know about it.”
Update Again:
I misspoke. I did not mean to imply that the President was personally responsible – my full stmt: https://t.co/IhDSefwIzM
— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) June 16, 2016
The full statement:
U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) released the following statement today clarifying his earlier remarks regarding President Obama and the Orlando attack:
“I misspoke. I did not mean to imply that the President was personally responsible. I was referring to President Obama’s national security decisions, not the President himself. As I have said, President Obama’s decision to completely withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011 led to the rise of ISIL. I and others have long warned that the failure of the President’s policy to deny ISIL safe haven would allow the terrorist organization to inspire, plan, direct or conduct attacks on the United States and Europe as they have done in Paris, Brussels, San Bernardino and now Orlando.”
I don’t see “I apologize” to anyone — the President, victims’ families, survivors, the LGBT community, Orlando — anywhere in that statement.
June 16th, 2016
Barbara Poma, owner of Pulse, appeared on NBC’s The Today Show this morning to speak for the first time about what happened early Sunday morning. She described the club as “a safe, fun place to come be who you are.” And she described that phone call she got that morning:
It was the most surreal phone call I’ve ever received. When my manager called me and told me, and he was just yelling into the phone. He kept saying, “We have a shooter! We have a shooter!” I just kept screaming, “What?” And finally it sunk in and… you can’t wrap your brain around that. You can’t.
… I can’t stop imagining what that was like for them… I don’t think I’ll ever stop that.
She opened Pulse about thirteen years ago in honor of her brother, who had died of AIDS. She chose to name the club Pulse “because it has to do with your heartbeat. It has to do with your life, and we just wanted to keep the heartbeat alive.”
Lauer asked how her mission would change as she goes from honoring one person to now honoring 49:
We just welcome those families into our family. And we just have to move forward and find a way to keep their hearts beating and keep our spirit alive. And we’re not going to let someone take this away from us. …I have to go back to that club.
After the interview, Matt Lauer added that she told him, “It’s important never to let hate win.”
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