Box Turtle Bulletin

Steve Used To Be Ex-Gay, Now He’s Ex-Mormon

That’s the choice a lot of people of faith feel that they are forced to make when they finally confront the fact that they are never going to change from gay to straight. For thirty-eight years, Steve was Mormon and a member of Evergreen, the Mormon ex-gay organization. He also learned that there was a third choice other than being ex-gay or ex-Mormon: out of the fifteen members of his ex-gay group in Colorado, one third committed suicide. Steve says that the organization’s criteria for success was that he was still coming to meetings, still tithing to the church, and still taking on the trappings of being a stereotypical straight man. He shed the first two criteria, but in a few ways he retained at least some of the aspects of the third: he is a gay man who has learned how to change the oil in his car.

Gov. Johnson slams anti-gay pledge

Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson has a bit of an unusual position in the candidacy for Republican presidential nominee. Although as a two term governor he is probably the most qualified candidate, he is not as well known as some of his more colorful opponents.

At this point, I do not have high hopes for Johnson’s chances. Were the Tea Party people to actually base their support on fiscal matters, as they tell the media (and themselves), Johnson, known as Governor Veto for his fiscal efforts, would be a shoo-in. But as we’ve come to see, few Republicans and fewer Tea Partiers are actually willing to put their social agenda secondary and Johnson’s relatively supportive position on gay issues combined with his opposition to the costly and counterproductive War on Drugs makes him unacceptable to those who drive the primary season (oh how I hope I’m wrong).

Nevertheless, it is of immense value to have Gov. Johnson respond to the blatantly and unapologetically homophobic “marriage pledge” proposed by anti-gay activist group Family Leader. (Johnson’s campaign site)

“This ‘pledge’ is nothing short of a promise to discriminate against everyone who makes a personal choice that doesn’t fit into a particular definition of ‘virtue’.

While the Family Leader pledge covers just about every other so-called virtue they can think of, the one that is conspicuously missing is tolerance. In one concise document, they manage to condemn gays, single parents, single individuals, divorcees, Muslims, gays in the military, unmarried couples, women who choose to have abortions, and everyone else who doesn’t fit in a Norman Rockwell painting.

The Republican Party cannot afford to have a Presidential candidate who condones intolerance, bigotry and the denial of liberty to the citizens of this country. If we nominate such a candidate, we will never capture the White House in 2012. If candidates who sign this pledge somehow think they are scoring some points with some core constituency of the Republican Party, they are doing so at the peril of writing off the vast majority of Americans who want no part of this ‘pledge’ and its offensive language.

I’m impressed. This goes far beyond “i don’t sign pledges” or even “this might be offensive to some”. He even uses the b-word.

(hat tip to Kristie)

The Daily Agenda for Sunday, July 10

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Gay Presbyterians Can Now Be Ordained: Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). New rules go into effect today allowing openly gay men and women in same-sex relationships to be ordained as clergy. In May, the proposed rule changes crossed the crucial threshold for approval when a presbytery in Minnesota became the 87th out of 113 regional presbyteries to approve the change. The new rules, which also apply to elders and deacons, do not require churches to ordain gay candidates, but they remove barriers to their ordination that had added to the church’s constitution in 1997. There are no known ordinations planned for today however. Ordinations typically take place when seminarians are hired by a congregation. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) becomes the fourth mainline Protestant church to allow gay ordination, following the Episcopal and Evangelical Lutheran churches and the United Church of Christ.

Pride Celebrations Today: Cincinnati, OH; Colombo, Sri Lanka; Munich, Germany; Prince George, BC; San Luis Obispo, CA; Sitges, Catalonia (Spain); and Victoria, BC.

And Also: Bear Week, Provincetown, MA.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
A Discovery of a Very Extraordinary Nature: 1766. The following story was reported in the July 10, 1766 issue of London’s Gentleman’s Magazine:

A discovery of a very extraordinary nature was made at Poplar, where two women had lived together for six and thirty years, as man and wife, and kept a public house, without ever being suspected; but the wife happening to fall sick, and die, a few years before she expired, revealed the secret to her relations, made her will, and left legacies to the amount of half what she thought they were worth. On application to the pretended, she at first endeavoured to support her assumed character, but being closely pressed, she at length owed the fact, accommodated all matters amicably, put off the male, and put on the female character, in which she appeared to be a sensible well-bred woman, though in her male character she had always affected the plain plodding alehouse-keeper. It is said they had acquired in business money to the amount of £3000. Both had been crossed in love when young, and had chosen this method to avoid further importunities.

[From Ian McCormick’s Secret Sexualities: A Sourcebook of 17th and 18th Century Writings (p 234-235)]

Texas Editorial: “We’ll Take Gays Over the KKK”: 1985. It all began in 1984, when the Dallas/Ft. Worth suburb of Arlington was having a problem at Randol Mill Park. It seems that the popular park had become a well-known venue for men (often heterosexually married men) to solicit sex with other men among the bushes. After a year’s worth of stepped up patrolling and enforcement by Arlington police, the Mid-Cities Daily News reported, “We have not heard nearly as much about the problem as last year.” But for whatever reason, the Klan was still excited over queers in the park. The Klan’s “exalted cyclops” announced that his group would be holding a picnic at the part — sans white sheets — to send a message that gays weren’t welcome. The Daily News responded, “Given the choice between sharing a park with homosexuals or a bunch of white-sheeted, racist, hate-peddling losers, we thing we would prefer the homosexuals.”

Well sure, given the choice.

When the Klan held their picnic three days later, Scott Patrick, the exalted cyclops of the Garland klavern, sounded disappointed with what he found. ” I expected the situation to be a little more blatant. I’m sure all the publicity kept it out.” That left him with no choice but to complain about other groups. “Would you believe I actually had a Jew ask if a Jew could come to one of our meetings,” he told a reporter. “I said ‘no.’ A Jew would have about as much chance of attending as a nigger. You’ve got to admit they aren’t as intelligent as we are.” The Daily News made a wise choice.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Jerry Herman: 1931. The American composer and lyricists is best known for his scores for the Broadway hits Hello Dolly! (1964), Mame (1966) and La Cage aux Folles (1983). The latter earned Herman a Tony for best musical. His most famous song, “Hello Dolly!”, knocked the Beatles from #1 in 1964 when Louis Armstrong recorded it. “When they passed out talent,” Carol Channing said, “Jerry stood in line twice.”A 2008 PBS documentary about him reported that Herman was diagnosed HIV-positive in 1985 when that diagnosis was an automatic death sentence. He was lucky, and is among of the fortunate few to live to see the lifesaving “cocktail” become available in 1995. The AIDS epidemic wiped out half the original La Cage aux Folles chorus before the show’s final run, but the show’s signature anthem “I Am What I Am” can still bring audiences to their feet with its call for dignity and integrity in the face of bigotry and fear.

Neil Tennant: 1954. With bandmate Chris Lowe, he was one half of the electronic dance duo Pet Shop Boys. Their first single, “West End Girls,” was actually recorded twice. The first version was released in 1984 and became a club hit in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Go figure. After the duo signed with EMI, they re-recorded the song, and it became a 1986 number one hit in the U.S. and the U.K. Tennant was coy about rumors over his sexuality throughout the 1980s, but he finally came out in a 1994 interview with a UK gay magazine. Pet Shop Boys are still going strong. On March 14, 2011, they released a double CD of the complete three-act ballet score for The Most Incredible Thing with the WrocÅ‚aw Score Orchestra. At this moment, they are touring Europe with Take That.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. PLEASE, don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

Six Atlanta Officers Fired over Eagle Raid

Six Atlanta police officers were fired yesterday for lying about what happened during the 2009 raid on the Atlanta Eagle. Nine other officers were also disciplined, with three more hearings scheduled for next week. From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

The actions come almost 10 days after the release of 343-page report detailing how 16 officers lied or destroyed evidence when asked about the raid at the Atlanta Eagle bar. The report said 10 of them lied, which usually leads to a termination because those officers can not longer testify.

“Honesty goes to the very heart of a police officer’s credibility,” Chief George Turner said. “The public must be able to trust its police officers and expects them to tell the truth at all times. Failure to be truthful has serious consequences at the Atlanta Police Department. I hope my actions today serve as a reminder to those men and women on the force that dishonesty simply will not be tolerated.”

On September 10, 2009, more than a dozen police officers descended en masse on the Atlanta Eagle. Patrons were forced to lie face down on the floor – many handcuffed – and were frisked by officers looking for drugs. According to one patron, police searched everyone the crowd individually while lying face-down without asking permission, and took everyone’s ID. Once a patron’s ID was cleared, he was asked to leave the building.Some officers were heard laughing and commenting that the raid was “more fun than raiding niggers with crack.” Police gave differing reasons for the raid. First, it was a drug search, but no drugs were found. Then the problem cited was sex taking place at the club, but no one was arrested for engaging in any sexual acts. Six were arrested for various charges, but all charges were either dropped or acquitted in court.

These latest disciplinary actions come after an independent review in late June found widespread abuses during the raid:

According to the Greenberg Traurig report, 10 members of the vice unit and the RED DOG team, including three supervisors, violated APD’s policy regarding truthfulness. Most law enforcement agencies consider lying a firing offense, partly because that officer’s credibility can be challenged in court.

The report also found 24 officers illegally searched patrons, illegally detained them and illegally took their belongings, including cellphones and wallets.

…The internal APD investigation sustained complaints violating police policies against 23 officers, including a major. Their offenses ranged from lack of supervision to lying, to showing bias, to using unnecessary force.

The entire report is available here (PDF: 7.8MB/). The report confirmed that patrons, even those not under suspicion for criminal activity, were unnecessarily forced on the ground while background checks were run. One officer, unit supervisor Sgt. John Brock, defended those actions this way (page 142): “There’s a risk factor involved when you’re dealing with people you don’t know anything about. S&M, that has a stigma of some sort of violence.” He added that gays generally “are very violent.” The report quotes Officer Jeremy Edwards as saying, “Seeing another man have sex with another man in the ass, I would classify that as very violent.”  Brock and Edwards were among the six fired Friday for multiple violations of police department policy.

The city of Atlanta has paid $1,025,000 to 28 people to settle a federal lawsuit. During the lawsuit, it was found that police had destroyed evidence, erased cell phone conversations, and recorded over electronic backups of emails. Some of those actions took place after a judge ordered the evidence preserved. Additional terms for settling the lawsuit included the completion and release of last month’s independent review, and several changes to Atlanta Police Department’s policies. The settlement now prohibits Atlanta officers from “interfering in any way with a citizen’s right to make video, audio, or photographic recordings of police activity, as long as such recording does not physically interfere with the performance of an officer’s duty.” They are also required to wear “a conspicuously visible name tag.”

Santorum Signs Iowa Anti-Gay Pledge

Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum has become the second GOP presidential candidate to sign Iowa’s Family Leader ant-gay pledge, after Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmanm. Which  means you can now officially call Santorum a number two.

More Confirmation: Bachmann’s Clinic Offered Ex-Gay Therapy in 2004

The Nation has the details:

In the summer of 2004, Andrew Ramirez, who was just about to enter his senior year of high school, worked up the nerve to tell his family he was gay. His mother took the news in stride, but his stepfather, a conservative Christian, was outraged. … A few weeks later, his parents marched him into the office of Bachmann & Associates, a Christian counseling center in Lake Elmo, Minnesota, which is owned by Michele Bachmann’s husband, Marcus. From the outset, Ramirez says, his therapist—one of roughly twenty employed at the Lake Elmo clinic—made it clear that renouncing his sexual orientation was the only moral choice. “He basically said being gay was not an acceptable lifestyle in God’s eyes,” Ramirez recalls. According to Ramirez, his therapist then set about trying to “cure” him. Among other things, he urged Ramirez to pray and read the Bible, particularly verses that cast homosexuality as an abomination, and referred him to a local church for people who had given up the “gay lifestyle.” He even offered to set Ramirez up with an ex-lesbian mentor.

This comes on the heels of yesterday’s Truth Wins Out’s exposé in which TWO’s Director of Communications and Development John Becker went undercover and received several sessions of ex-gay counseling.

The Daily Agenda for Saturday, July 9

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Cincinnati, OH; Colombo, Sri Lanka; Green Bay, WI; Munich, Germany; Porto, Portugal; Prince George, BC; San Luis Obispo, CA; Santa Barbara, CA; Sitges, Catalonia (Spain); Tacoma, WA; Vancouver, WA; and Victoria, BC.

And Also: Bear Week, Provincetown, MA.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
David Hockney: 1937.The British artist was born with synesthesia — he brain “sees” colors whenever he hears music. The colors that he sees guides him when he designs stage sets for operatic and ballet productions. In addition to set design, he is a renowned painter, print maker and photographer. While still a student at the Royal College of Art, Hockney’s exhibition Young Contemporariesin 1961, signalled the arrival of British Pop Art. Later that year, he sold two of his prints to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. That same year, he also read the poems of Walt Whitman, which inspired Hockney to paint several paintings on the themes of love and homosexuality, including “We Two Boys Together Clinging,” where the title and some of the text in the painting are lines from the Whitman’s poem of the same name. By the mid 1960s, Hockney moved to Los Angeles, where he made an entire series of paintings of swimming pools rendered in vibrant colors.

In more recent years, Hockney has been exploring the limits of scale. His “A Bigger Grand Canyon” (1998) is actually a series of 60 paintings which, when combined together, produce one enormous painting of 6 3/4 feet by 24 feet.  That painting was bought by the National Gallery of Australia for $4.6 million.In 2007, he produced “Bigger Trees Near Warter,” a series of fifty separate canvases which combine to form a 15 feet by forty feet painting. He donated those canvases to the Tate Gallery in London. “I thought if I’m going to give something to the Tate I want to give them something really good. It’s going to be here for a while.” He described it as a “duty” of successful artists to donate some of their work.

Kelly McGillis: 1957. When the other star of Top Gun came out of the closet in 2009, she said that coming to terms with her sexual orientation had been a long, ongoing process since she was twelve, when she was convinced that God was punishing her for being gay. She now says that it’s much easier to become spiritual now that she knows that “God is okay with you being gay.” She graduated from Julliard’s Drama School in 1983 and began landing acting roles right away. Her breakout role was as an Amish mother in 1985’s Witness with Harrison Ford, for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe award. In 1986, she was the flight instructor, Charlie, in Top Gunwith Tom Cruse and Val Kilmer. She continued acting in films and television throughout the 1990s before taking a break in 2001. She resumed acting in 2004, and in 2008 she guest starred on Showtime’s “The L Word,” where she played a closeted Army colonel. In 2010, McGilllis entered into a civl union with her partner, and they make their home in Collingswood, New Jersey where McGillis works full-time at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center. “I think one of the gifts that comes with age, if we survive ourselves, is what we created,” she explained.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. PLEASE, don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

Uncle Sam Wants YOU

The Pentagon is moving swiftly in accordance with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal’s lifting of its stay, rendering “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” immediately unenforceable. The Defense Department announced today that it will start accepting applications from gay military recruits:

In a memo to the secretaries of the military branches, Clifford L. Stanley, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, directed them to comply with the court injunction immediately.

“It remains the policy of the Department of Defense not to ask service members or applicants about their sexual orientation, to treat all members with dignity and respect, and to ensure maintenance of good order and discipline,” the memorandum read in part. “Further, because the injunction is once again in effect, the department will process applications for enlistment or appointment without regard to sexual orientation.”

The Army Times reports that the Pentagon has also ordered a halt to all discharge proceedings against gay servicemembers.

It’s Confirmed: Marcus Bachmann’s Clinic Practices Ex-Gay Therapy

Michele and Marcus Bachmann on the campaign trail.

Rep. Michele Bachmann’s political adviser and “Godly husband,” Dr. Marcus Bachman, denied in 2006 that his Minnesota clinic, Bachmann and Associates, practices ex-gay therapy — even though he promoted the ex-gay movement at a pastoral conference the year before, and in 2010 he spoke of gay children as “barbarians” that “need to be disciplined.” That last bit of advice — disciplining gay children — is eerily familiar after BTB’s original investigation last month revealing that ex-gay therapist George Rekers’s most famous patient, four-year-old “Kraig”, was actually Kirk Andrew Murphy, who remained gay and committed suicide in 2003. Kirk was also “disciplined” as a very young boy while under Rekers’s direction.

Now we have confirmation that Bachmann and Associates does, in fact, offer ex-gay therapy. John Becker, Truth Wins Out’s Director of Communications and Development, attended five private sessions with Bachmann & Associates counselor Timothy Wiertzema:

During the sessions, Wiertzema claimed that it was possible to change from gay to straight through prayer and therapy. During the third session Wiertzema  said, “…it’s possible to be totally free of [same-sex attraction]. For sure.” and that “It’s happened! It really has happened to people.” In the fifth session, Wiertzema says, “…obviously your goal is not to have any feelings of attraction for men…And I really am going to recommend that we start working on how you can develop your attractions towards women.”

…During session 5, Wiertzema advised Becker to “further develop your own sense of masculinity.” Reparative therapy reinforces strict gender roles and works to erase outward appearances of femininity in men and masculinity in women. Because these programs do not genuinely change sexual orientation, much focus is placed on changing behavior so an individual can “pass” as heterosexual, even if the gay person has not changed on the inside.

“Passing” is all that a substantial number ex-gay programs really care about, simply because it is the best-case scenario anyone can truly hope for. Exodus International president Alan Chambers often says that he struggles daily to keep from doing “what comes naturally to me.” But constantly struggling to pass can carry with it enormous consequences. Again, Kirk Murphy’s case is illustrative. As a very young boy, he was taught that revealing who he really was would have dangerous physical consequences for him, and so as he got older he continued to suppress his emerging sexuality, fully aware that “I can’t act that way or people will know that I’m different.” He suppressed it so successfully that his doctors at UCLA did not notice that Kirk not only wasn’t straight, but also was under tremendous emotional duress.

Today, all major medical, mental health, and counseling organizations oppose ex-gay therapy. In an exhaustive review of the professional peer-reviewed literature, the American Psychological Association concluded (PDF: 816KB/138 pages) that “enduring change to an individual’s sexual orientation is uncommon” and that “there was some evidence to indicate that individuals experienced harm” from such therapies. But of course, patients going into clinics like Bachmann’s will never know it. There is no such thing as informed consent in those kinds of settings:

[Becker] was never informed about possible alternative treatment options such as gay-affirmative therapy. Nobody ever told Becker about the potential for harmful side effects like depression and suicidal thoughts. And although he was asked to sign a treatment plan outlining his problem, desired outcome, and treatment strategy, he was never given nor asked to sign any kind of informed consent document that disclosed the above information about “ex-gay” therapy. As such, we believe Bachmann & Associates to be practicing unethically, even by the standards of the American Association of Christian Counselors. This is particularly disconcerting given the fact that Marcus Bachmann’s clinic has received significant funding from the State of Minnesota and the federal government.

You can read Becker’s first hand account here.

Yeah, Bishop, be an asshole. That’ll show ’em

The Catholic Church is an institution with a reputation that few would wish for. Currently perceived by many as an international pedophile ring and headed up by a man who looks like he was cast for the role of Evil Sorcerer in a cheap Hollywood thriller, the Church’s public image problem has seldom been worse. And in response to this image catastrophe, the Church seems to have collectively agreed upon one course of action: whenever possible be an asshole.

Now this doesn’t seem to me to be the most effective way of regaining the trust and goodwill of the people, but it certainly seems to be what they’ve decided.

You can’t help but wonder who came up with this gem of a strategy: Rather than be known as a caretaker of sacred art, an ancient tradition of spiritual learning, a voice for personal integrity, and an advocate for the downtrodden, make your church’s highest visibility all about denying rights to gays and encouraging the poor to disregard economic realities in deciding family growth.

Oh, and to really prove your point, find those few areas in which you still have public goodwill and be a great big puckered oozing asshole.

If people respect your adoption programs, shut them down and blame gay people. If people see nuns as being selfless and devoted, close the nunnery to pay settlements for pedophile priests. And be sure that your spiritual leaders take actions that make them look like corrupt back-room finagling politicians; Because who doesn’t love a politician?

And at all times be an asshole in the most obnoxious, hostile, arrogant and truly hateful way. If you need a presence on television, why who could be better than Bill Donohue? And if social trends show that society is coming to see same-sex couples in a positive light, then make sure that the public sees you as the primary party seeking to uphold discrimination (and be certain to talk a lot about destroying society and perversion, that will be remembered well).

Ah yes, it’s a brilliant plan.

And right in line with this strategy is the response of the Bishop of Brooklyn to the New York marriage vote: If you voted for marriage equality, then you can’t give to needy children.

I kid you not. (Christian Post)

Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio

Joseph Lentol, an assemblyman representing Brooklyn’s 50th district, saw firsthand just how serious the Brooklyn Diocese was. The Catholic legislative assembly member who openly voted for same-sex marriage made a donation to Our Lady of Mt Carmel Parish School. The donation was declined.

Along with the return of his $50 donation, Lentol received a letter from Monsignor Joseph Calise, the church pastor. The letter stated: “Bishop DiMarzio has requested that all gifts received from politicians supporting same-sex marriage legislation be refused.”

Marketing genius, I tell ya. Sheer marketing genius.

Bachmann Is First To Sign Iowa Anti-Gay Pledge

Michele and Marcus Bachmann

GOP presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) was the very first out of the gate to sign a new Anti-Gay pledge drafted by Bob Vander Plaats and Iowa’s Family Leader. Titled, “The Marriage Vow – A Declaration of Dependence upon Marriage and Family” (PDF: 1.02MB/8 pages), its points include (page 3):

Social protections, especially for women and children, have been evaporating as we have collectively “debased the currency” of marriage. This debasement continues as a function of adultery; “quickie divorce;” physical and verbal spousal abuse; non-committal co-habitation; exemplary infidelity and “unwed cheating” among celebrities, sports figures and politicians; anti-scientific bias which holds, in complete absence of empirical proof, that non-heterosexual inclinations are genetically determined, irresistible and akin to innate traits like race, gender and eye color; as well as anti-scientific bias which holds, against all empirical evidence, that homosexual behavior in particular, and sexual promiscuity in general, optimizes individual or public health.

Under “The Candidate Vows,” candidates are required to affirm that they will perform “Vigorous opposition to any redefinition of the Institution of Marriage — faithful monogamy between one man and one woman — through statutory-, bureaucratic-, or court-imposed recognition of intimate unions which are bigamous, polygamous, polyandrous, same-sex, etc.” The vow also requires the “Steadfast embrace of a federal Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which protects the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman in all of the United States.”

Michele Bachman at the New Hampshire debate

During last month’s GOP debate in New Hampshire, Bachmann reaffirmed her support for the federal marriage amendment.

Footnote 8 of the document includes an explicitly pro- ex-gay plank, indicating the political utility that social conservatives find in the movement: “No peer-reviewed empirical science or rational demonstration has ever definitively proven, nor even has shown an overwhelming probability, that homosexual preference or behavior is irresistible as a function of genetic determinism or other forms of fatalism.”

The footnote also claims that LGBT people have an average life expectancy of about 40 years, and cites a 1997 report by Robert S. Hogg et al., from the International Journal of Epidemiology. That study, which has become a favorite study for anti-gay extremists to distort, was based on research performed in Vancouver from 1987 through 1992, at the very height of the AIDS crissis The question that they were trying to answer was not about the mortality of gay men overall, but rather the impact that HIV might have on the Vancouver’s gay population. Vancouver was one of the epicenters of the epidemic in the early 1990s. When anti-gay extremists misrepresented that study to claim that the average lifespan was forty years, Hogg and his colleagues responded in a 2001 letter to that same journal, saying:

The aim of our research was never to spread more homophobia… [I]f we were to repeat this analysis today the life expectancy of gay and bisexual men would be greatly improved. Deaths from HIV infection have declined dramatically in this population since 1996. As we have previously reported there has been a threefold decrease in mortality in Vancouver as well as in other parts of British Columbia .

In fact, several recent studies have shown that people with HIV have near-normal life expectancies, and there is no peer-reviewed data showing that gay people overall have a life expectancy that is any different from anyone else’s.

The same vow also requires candidates’ “rejection of Sharia Islam and all other anti-woman, anti-human rights forms of totalitarian control.” Because, you know, the imminent imposition of sharia law is the pressing issue right now in the U.S.

Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman has declined to sign the pledge, saying that he has a policy of not signing any pledges. Rep. Rom Paul (R-TX) has said he has reservations. Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty said last night he was reviewing the pledge. The agreement to “personal fidelity” to his or her wife could be a thorn to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Gingrich, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, and retired Georgia businessman Herman Cain have not yet responded to the pledge. Vander Plaats has set a deadline of August 1.

Active Duty Military Marches In San Diego Pride

Now that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” has been half-lifted by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, LGBT members of the U.S. military in the San Diego area marched in the city’s Gay Pride parade this weekend as out and proud LGBT Americans.

San Diego is home port for the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet, and the area is dotted with ports, naval air stations, national guard facilities — and the Marine’s Camp Pendelton is just up the cost in north county. This appears to be the first organized march by active duty military personnel in a U.S. Gay Pride parade.

The Daily Agenda for Friday, July 8

TODAY’S AGENDA:
It’s Friday on a holiday week, and not much is going on. I’ve searched my databases for historical events and birthdays, and while it may not be the largest database ever assembled, it does appear that not much has ever happened on this date, nor is there much scheduled to happen today.

So, what do you have going on today?

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Cincinnati, OH; Colombo, Sri Lanka; Green Bay, WI; Munich, Germany; Porto, Portugal; Prince George, BC; San Luis Obispo, CA; Santa Barbara, CA; Sitges, Catalonia (Spain); Tacoma, WA; Vancouver, WA; and Victoria, BC.

And Also: Bear Week, Provincetown, MA.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. PLEASE, don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

UPDATE: Thanks to an Austrian reader, we have a very important item for TODAY IN HISTORY:

To fill up your database for July 8: On July 8, 1971 an amendment to the Austrian criminal code was signed, which abolished the criminalisation of consensual homosexual contacts (“crime against nature”; both male and female same-sex contacts were forbidden). The Amendment was published on August 2, 1971 and entered into force 15 days later.

After that time only male homosexual contacts with a young man under 18, male (same-sex) prostitution, and “advertizing” or “encouraging” homosexuality were still criminal after that date. The latter provisions were abolished during the early 1980s to make HIV-prevention easier. The age of consent remained 18 until 2002, when it was held unconstitutional by the Austrian Constitutional Court. (The age of consent is now the same for girls and boys, 14, but 16 under certain conditions.)

Thank you Jutta!

DOJ’s defense of DOMA Section 3: “you’re right, my bad”

When the Justice Department announced that it would no longer be defending Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act against constitutional challenge, I assumed that meant that they would take the same approach that Gov. Schwarzenegger and AG Brown did towards Proposition 8: present no evidence and take no position.

However, in the case of Karen Golinski v. the United States Office of Personnel Management, the Administration did file in the case. Being the defendants, they filed a defense that begin this way:

Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, 1 U.S.C, § 7 (“DOMA”), unconstitutionally discriminates. It treats same-sex couples who are legally married under their states’ laws differently than similarly situated opposite-sex couples, denying them the status, recognition, and significant federal benefits otherwise available to married persons. Under well-established factors set forth by the Supreme Court, discrimination based on sexual orientation is subject to heightened scrutiny. Under that standard of review, Section 3 of DOMA is unconstitutional.

Appeal lifted on Bankruptcy Court’s marriage ruling

After the judges in Los Angeles branch of the Federal Bankruptcy Court nearly unanimously signed on to a ruling finding that DOMA Section 3 was unconstitutional, the US Trustee appealed. The Trustee’s Office seemed to be under the impression that the President’s direction to federal departments to abide by the law until it was overturned required them to appeal the decision.

Now the confusion seems to have lifted. The Department of Justice declined interest in defending the DOMA in this case and passed the Trustee along to John Boehner’s House defense. (MetroWeekly)

Following consultation with the House Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG), the U.S. Trustee asked to withdraw its appeal in its challenge to the attempted joint bankruptcy petition filed by Gene Douglas Balas and Carlos Morales, a married gay couple who live in California — a move a Department of Justice spokeswoman says represents the DOJ’s new policy on all such bankruptcy filings.

So as no one intends to take up the case and the US Trustee has better things to do with his time and budget, same-sex married couples in California (and, based on the DOJ statement, presumably other states in which marriage is recognized) are henceforth recognized by the Federal Government as married. Broke, but married.

It’s an odd milestone, but an important one nonetheless. For the first time, albeit in a very limited situation, the United States Federal Government has officially recognized a same-sex marriage.