Box Turtle Bulletin

Council On American-Islamic Relations React

We condemn this monstrous attack and offer our heartfelt condolences to the families and loved ones of all those killed or injured. The Muslim community joins our fellow Americans in repudiating anyone or any gropu that would claim to justify or excuse such an appalling act of violence.

— Rasha Mubarak, the Orlando regional coordinator for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Blood Donors Needed In Orlando, But Many Gay Men Can’t Donate

If this doesn’t beat all:

The need for blood after a shooting at a gay nightclub resurfaced complaints on social media about limits on gay men’s ability to donate blood. In December, the Food and Drug Administration lifted a lifetime ban for gay men, but continued to prohibit men from donating if they had had sex with men in the past year.

Equality Florida Reacts

This is a press release sent out by Equality Florida:

We are reeling from the tragic news that a gunman opened fire on the 2am capacity crowd at Pulse leaving 50 people dead and over 50 injured according to preliminary reports.

We are heartbroken and angry that senseless violence has once again destroyed lives in our state and in our country.

Gay clubs hold a significant place in LGBTQ history. They were often the only safe gathering place and this horrific act strikes directly at our sense of safety. June commemorates our community standing up to anti-LGBTQ violence at the Stonewall Inn, the nightclub that has become the first LGBTQ site recognized as a national monument.

We have received a steady stream of emails and messages from those seeking to help or to make sense of the senseless. We make no assumptions on motive. We will await the details in tears of sadness and anger. We stand in solidarity and keep our thoughts on all whose lives have been lost or altered forever in this tragedy.

Plans are underway for the following. More details to come.

* The GLBT Community Center of Central Florida is now open and offering grief counseling to those affected by the Pulse Orlando massacre. They are encouraging anyone who needs help and support to please come to the center.
Address: 946 N Mills Ave Orlando, Florida 32803
Phone Number: (407) 228-8272
Website: http://www.thecenterorlando.org/

*For anyone needing support today, you may call the Zebra Coalition hotline at (407) 228-1446 to speak to a counselor.

* OneBlood, the local blood bank in Orlando, has posted an EMERGENCY need for O-, O+, and AB Plasma in the light of last night’s tragedy. If any of you have a chance today to go donate blood or plasma PLEASE DO. You could very well save someone’s life. To find a donation center or Big Red Bus near you visit www.oneblood.org or call 1.888.9Donate.

First Unitarian Church
1901 East Robinson Street
Orlando, FL 32803
now through 1 PM

Weingarten Realty
2566 E Colonial Drive
>12 pm-6 pm

Orlando Donor Center
8669 Commodity Circle
now til 1 o’clock

West Orlando Donor Center
345 W Michigan St Suite 106
now til 2 o’clock

* A vigil tomorrow pending clearance from police. To receive updates on the vigil with details as we receive them, sign up here: http://www.eqfl.org/pulse_vigil

* A GoFundMe account has been set up to help raise funds for the victims and families of the horrific Orlando Pulse Nighclub Shooting: https://www.gofundme.com/PulseVictimsFund

Early Reactions

From CNN:

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and loved ones of the victims,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said in a statement. “The President asked to receive regular updates as the FBI, and other federal officials, work with the Orlando Police to gather more information, and directed that the federal government provide any assistance necessary to pursue the investigation and support the community.”

Lisa Monaco, Obama’s homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, briefed the President, Earnest said. He said Obama asked for regular updates as federal and state officials investigate the shooting, which killed 50 people and wounded at least 53 others.

Vice President Joe Biden has also been briefed on the shooting and canceled a planned trip to Miami, Florida, to attend a fundraiser for Democratic National Committee chairwoman, Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.

Biden “offered his prayers for all those killed and injured in the shooting and sends his condolences to all the families and loved ones of the victims,” according to a statement from his spokesman.

Other reactions came in via Twitter

Woke up to hear the devastating news from FL. As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act. -H

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 12, 2016

Really bad shooting in Orlando. Police investigating possible terrorism. Many people dead and wounded.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

My prayers are with the victims’ families & all those affected by the shooting in Orlando. We will devote every resource available to assist

— Rick Scott (@FLGovScott) June 12, 2016

By the way, Rick Scott has spent the about five minutes talking about this on TV without mentioning the word “gay” once. Good job Rick!

Our prayers are with those injured and killed early this morning in horrifying act of terror in Orlando.

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) June 12, 2016

That last one is from Texas Lt. Gov Dan Patrick, whose account tweeted that out hours after the shooting started. The time stamp at precisely 5:00 a.m. suggests it was a previously scheduled tweet. It has since been deleted in the past half hour (sometime after 10:20 a.m. Central Time)

“Mommy I Love You”

From the LA Times:

Witnesses said they heard at least 40 shots fired, and one witness said the shooting lasted the length of an entire song. As bullets tore through the crowd, men and women took cover by dropping to the floor and crawling for cover. Some apparently hid in the restrooms, including one man whose texts to his mother were broadcast over WFTV-TV:

“Mommy I love you”

“In club they shooting”

“He’s coming”

“I’m gonna die”

“He’s in the bathroom with us”

The fate of the young man, who was not identified by the station, was not immediately known. Just after the shooting, Pulse Orlando posted a note to its Web page that said, “Everyone get out of Pulse and keep running.”

DEVELOPING: At Least 50 Dead, 53 Injured In Orlando Gay Night Club Massacre

It is being called the worst mass shooting in U.S. history since the 1921 Greenwood Massacre in Tulsa. These are the basic facts. Shooting broke out shortly after 2:00 a.m. in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.  A police officer was working in the club and exchanged fire with the gunman, identified as Omar Mateen, 29, from Ft. Pierce. Mateen then took about thirty hostages until about 5.00 a.m. when a SWAT team came in to free the hostages. Mateen was killed in the massive barrage of gunfire during the shootout.

The club was packed with about 320 people. As the shooting started, some mistook the gunfire as part of the music, similar to what happened during the first few seconds of the Bataclan theater massacre in Paris. As the tragedy unfolded, the city of Orlando ran out of ambulances to take the injured to hospitals. Some were transported by pickup trucks. Around 2 a.m., Pulse Orlando posted an urgent message on Facebook: “Everyone get out of pulse and keep running.”

Reports about Mateen himself and his possible motives are conflicting right now. His parents are from Afghanistan, but he may have been born in the U.S. He was a U.S. citizen, and worked as a security guard in Ft. Pierce. His father told NBC News that the motive was not religious, but that Mateen became angry two weeks ago when he saw two men kissing in Miami. One report says that Mateen had a license to carry guns. It’s not known whether the guns used in this massacre, which included an AR-15, were legal. Reports also say that police are including a possible terror motive as part of their investigation. Police say that Mateen was “previously known” to law enforcement, but say that he was not under active investigation as of last night. NBC reports that Mateen was in a database as a person of interest, not necessarily as part of a direct investigation but for the potential of  what NBC described as “peripheral associations.”

The L.A. Times put this in context:

Now no other American mass shooting comes close to the lives lost in Orlando on Sunday morning. Not at Columbine High School in Colorado, where 13 people died in 1999; nor in Newtown, Conn., where 26 people were killed in 2012; nor at Virginia Tech, where 32 people were killed in 2007.

As God Is My Witness, Donald Trump Is Tweeting About Barney Frank’s Nipples

I couldn’t possible make this up.

Today’s Agenda Is Brought To You By…

Today In History, 1967: Supreme Court Strikes Down Bans On Racially-Mixed Marriages

Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving were an unusual couple. They had long crossed the racial barrier as friends in rural Central Point, Virginia: she was Black and Native American, he was white. But friendship turned to dating, and when Mildred became pregnant at the age of 18 in 1958, they decided to go to Washington, D.C. to elope. When they returned home, a group of police officers invaded their house late at night hoping to catch them in the act of having sex (which would have been a crime because of their racial differences). Mildred pointed to the marriage license that they had hung on the wall, hoping that it would protect them. Little did she know, but that license was proof that they had committed another crime. Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924 prohibited any “colored” person with so much as one drop of African American or Indian blood from marrying a white person. Miscegenation was a felony, punishable by a prison sentence of between one and five years. The couple pleaded guilty on January 6, 1959, and they were sentenced to one year, with the sentence suspended for 25 years on the condition that they left Virginia.

The Lovings moved to D.C., and in 1963 the ACLU began a series of motions and lawsuits alleging that Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Those lawsuits eventually made their way all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. On June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court struck down Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law, along with similar laws in fifteen other states. In the unanimous ruling, the Court held that “Marriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man,’ fundamental to our very existence and survival.” Despite this ruling, anti-miscegenation laws remained on the books for several years to come, despite their being unenforceable. In 2000, Alabama voters approved a ballot initiative to repeal its anti-miscegenation law, although even then more than half a million — 40% — voted to keep it.

Mildred and Richard were never political people. After the Supreme Court victory, the couple returned to Virginia and raised three children. Richard died in 1975 at the age of 41 when their car was struck by a drunk driver. Mildred lost her right eye in the accident. She passed away in 2008 of pneumonia at the age of 68. But a year before she died, she issued a statement on the 40th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, in which she saw the fight for the freedom to marry as unfinished business:

My generation was bitterly divided over something that should have been so clear and right. The majority believed that what the judge said, that it was God’s plan to keep people apart, and that government should discriminate against people in love. But I have lived long enough now to see big changes. The older generation’s fears and prejudices have given way, and today’s young people realize that if someone loves someone, they have a right to marry.

Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the ‘wrong kind of person’ for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people’s civil rights.

I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard’s and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight, seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.

Born On This Day, 1858: Henry Scott Tuke

(d. 1929) His Quaker family moved from York, where Henry was born, to Falmouth in Corwall, where the weather was warmer and, perhaps, more hospitable to his father’s tuberculosis. The warmer weather, and the nude sea bathing that was so commonly practiced there, would become the prime inspiration for Tuke’s paintings.

Tuke studied painting at the Slade School of Art in London from 1874 to 1880. After graduating, he traveled to Italy, then Paris, where he met the American painter John Singer Sargent (Jan 12). Back in London, he also rubbed shoulders with Oscar Wilde (Oct 16), John Addington Symonds (Oct 5) and several other poets and artists. In 1883, he joined an artist colony in Cornwall, where he completed his first planting of boys in boats, a subject which would inspire Tuke for the rest of his life.

Henry Scott Tuke, Ruby, Gold, and Malachite (1902)

In 1995, he returned to Falmouth, bought a fishing boat for £40, and refurbished it into his living quarters and studio. He also purchased a modest cottage in the town. His early models were boys from London, but soon some of the local fishermen and swimmers around Falmouth became both close friends and models. One of those models was Charlie Mitchell (1885-1957) — he’s the boy sitting on the rock in the lower left corner of Ruby, Gold and Malachite –was Tuke’s boatman for thirty years. When Tuke died in 1929, he left Mitchell £1,000 in his will (about £48,600 or US$69,300 in today’s valuations). All of his Falmouth models wound up getting called up during the First World War, and some of them didn’t return home.

Whatever conclusions one may draw from the nudity in Tuke’s paintings, they are never explicitly sexual. No genitals are shown, nor is there typically any physical contact, certainly none of an overtly sexual nature. But because the impressionistic influences of his work broke so completely with the frigid and formal conventions the public was used to seeing, the comparable freshness of Tuke’s works ruffled feathers among late Victorian critics. One patron, Martin Colnaghy, withdrew his support in 1886 when he caught sight of one of Tuke’s paintings.

Henry Scott Tuke, Off Falmouth (1896)

But as the Victorian era gave way to the Edwardian period and English impressionism became more popular, Tuke’s popularity grew. His nudes, augmented with landscapes, still lifes, maritime scenes and commissioned portraits, sold well enough to give him the wherewithal to travel abroad. Tuke was honored at the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society in 1900, and elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in 1914.

Tuke died in Falmouth in 1929, and was buried in a small cemetery near his home. He kept detailed diaries all his life, but only two survive. The other ten disappeared after Tuke’s sister wrote a very protective biography of him in 1933. After his death, his reputation faded. But in the 1970, a new generation of gay collectors rediscovered his work. More recently, he’s been the subject of numerous shows, a lavish monograph and biographies, and his paintings have been doing very well at auctions.

Born On This Day, 1930: Jim Nabors

Jim Nabors as Gomer Pyle (left), with Frank Sutton as Sgt. Carter.

The Sylacauga, Alabama, native learned to sing at his high school and church, but he didn’t get into acting until he attended the University of Alabama. After graduating, he eventually landed his first job in television: cutting film for a television station in Chattanooga. He eventually decided to move to Los Angeles because of his asthma. While singing and acting in a local Santa Monica cabaret, he developed an unusual comedic character — a naive, golly-gee southern bumpkin with a high-pitched voice and thick accent would would suddenly launch into a nearly operatic baritone when singing. That’s where Andy Griffith discovered him, and signed Nabors to turn his character into a not very bright gas station attendant named Gomer Pyle on The Andy Griffith Show in 1962. It was only supposed to be a one-off appearance, but Gomer proved so popular that Nabors became a regular for the 1963-64 season. The following year, Nabors headlined his own spinoff, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., which ran from 1964 to 1969.

Nabors was among a handful of actors who were openly gay among friends and co-workers, but who were never out publicly. “I haven’t ever made a public spectacle of it. Well, I’ve known since I was a child, so, come on. It’s not that kind of a thing. I’ve never made a huge secret of it at all,” Nabors said recently. What made Nabors so unusual is that he never bothered to play the game of “dating” women for publicity’s sake.

But things did get very uncomfortable for Nabors in 1971, when a rumor went around that Nabors had “married” Rock Hudson. The rumor traced to a joke invitation to a party in Huntington Beach, thrown by several gay friends. The invitations, engraved and everything, went out to about 500 people who attended the annual party, reading, “You are cordially invited to the wedding reception of Rock Hudson and Jim Nabors.” The joke continued with the line saying that Hudson would take the last name of Nabors’s character and become “Rock Pyle.” That line should have tipped everyone off to the joke, but a fan magazine conveniently decided to ignore that. It published the rumor, but without naming names but dropping a few hints. Everyone in the business knew who it involved. A Chicago disk jockey described the couple as “sort of the rock of Hollywood” and “a plain guy … just neighbors.”

Both Nabors and Hudson, who had been friends but nothing more, feared that the rumors could ruin their careers. Nabors considered suing the magazine for libel, but his lawyer talked him out of it. But it does bring up the only time I know of when Nabors gave the standard 1960s response to why he wasn’t married. “I love kids,” he said. “But I’ve been so busy with my career that I really haven’t given marriage much thought.” The rumor also ruined Nabors’ friendship with Hudson. “I’ll tell you one thing that makes me sad about this,” said Hudson. “And that’s that Jim Nabors and I are no longer friends. We can’t be seen together.”

Jim Nabors and Stan Cadwallader

By 1969, CBS had gained the nickname of “Country Broadcasting Service” thanks to its lineup of rural-themed shows: The Andy Griffith Show, The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, Petticoat Junction, Hee Haw, Maberry, R.F.D.,  and Gomer Pyle. Tired of that rut and being typecast as a hick, Nabors decided to quit his show in 1969 in favor of his own variety show. Despite decent ratings, The Jim Nabors Hour fell victim to CBS’s “rural purge” when the network replaced all of its cornpone offerings in favor of programs designed to appeal to the more urban and younger audiences that advertisers favored. Nabors continued to make guest appearances on other programs, including a few children’s programs, and he also returned to theater, concert halls, and night club venues. By the mid-1970s, he was mostly done with TV, although he would show up from time to time through the first half of the 1980s. He moved to Hawaii in 1976, where he and his then-longtime partner and now husband, Stan Cadwallader, have made their home.

Trump Calls for Defense of “Christian Americans”

Presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump spoke before the Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition Conference in Washington, D.C. yesterday, where he spoke of his admiration for Reed and Liberty University’s Jerry Falwell, Jr., Trump also spoke about the need to “restore respect for people of faith.”

Trump, who was never known to be much of a religious man, was there to talk about the values he says he shares with Evangelical Christians. Among “our shared values,” according to his teleprompter, were “marriage and family as the building block of happiness and success. So important.” Also: “Religious freedom. The right of people of faith to freely practice their faiths. So important.” Also, “We need to bring out nation together. We’re going to bring our nation together.” So important.

And how will he do that? “We will restore faith to its proper mantle in society. That’s what we have to do. We have to do that soon. We will respect and defend Christian Americans. Christian Americans.” I guess all other American citizens are on their own.

Other Christian values included keeping people fleeing death and violence from seeking safety and refuge, turning our foreign policy over to Israel, and appointing judges to the U.S. Supreme Court who have the full backing of the Heritage Foundation.

Here is the full speech:

Today’s Agenda Is Brought To You By…

Today In History, 1965: Life Magazine Opposes Decriminalization of Homosexuality

One year earlier, Life magazine published a groundbreaking essay on “Homosexuality in America,” (Jun 26), which was notable for being one of the earliest relatively balanced portrayals of gay life in California. Gay rights advocates had hoped that the article might portend more positive press for gay issues, at least in the pages of Life, but that hope proved short-lived. In 1965, there was a proposal before the New York legislature to repeal that state’s sodomy law, which banned “deviant sexual intercourse” between unmarried persons. If passed, New York would have become only the second state, after Illinois, to decriminalize consensual sexual behavior between gay adults (Jul 28). Life, in an unsigned, self-contradictory and illogical editorial in its June 11, 1965 edition, opposed the move:

As readers of LIFE’s survey of homosexuality in America will remember, the “gay world” (actually a sad world) is coming increasingly above ground in many big cities and is lobbying for more sympathetic treatment. Homosexuality is frequently curable, but jail is the last place to expect a cure, and the laws restricting it are notoriously ineffective. Enforcement is either nonexistent or unjust and repugnant because of its peep-hole and entrapment methods. …

But the legislative debates have produced some robustious arguments on the other side. In Albany one legislator, who favored lifting the sanctions against adultery but not against homosexuality, explained that “after all, there are more of us than there are of them.”

There are more cogent arguments for retaining the laws against homosexuality. Its practice can and does break up families; and protection of the family is a legitimate area for legislation. Repeal would imply an indifference that society cannot afford. Until it finds a better way of discouraging the practice, a statute at least expresses society’s disapproval.

The proposal failed to make it into law, and New York’s sodomy law would remain on the books until 1980 when the New York Court of Appeals struck it down as unconstitutional.

[Source: “The law and the homosexual problem.” Life 58, no. 23. (June 11, 1965): 4.]

Today In History, 1977: Gay Mormon Group Affirmation Founded

Gay and lesbian Mormons had been meeting, very unofficially and very secretly, off and on the Brigham Young University campus for a mix of discussions, social activities and mutual support through much of the 1960s and ’70s. In 1977, Matthew Price began promoting the idea of a national organization of gay Mormons, and on June 11, 1977, the first official meeting of Affirmations: Gay Mormons United was held in Salt Lake City during the city’s Conference on Human Rights. Rev. James E Sandmire, a prominent pastor of the Metropolitan Community Church in San Francesco and a former Mormon himself, was there to give the closing prayer.

Affirmation/GMU quickly grew establish chapters in Denver, Dallas and Philadelphia, but by autumn the organization’s flame was just about to flicker out. Denver and Philadelphia disappeared off of Affirmation’s map, and meetings in Dallas and Salt Lake were sporadic. Then Paul Mortensen read an article about Affirmation in The Advocate and contacted Price about establishing a chapter in Los Angeles. That chapter quickly grew and became organizations lead chapter. Other chapters across the country soon followed.

Until Affirmation came along, there were really only two options were available to LGBT Mormons: remain closeted and stay with one’s local ward, or come out and leave one’s identity as a Mormon behind. Those who came out publicly, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, risked excommunication and its loss of social networks and cultural ties. As L.A. chapter leader Jacki Riedeman explained, “When you’re Mormon, it’s not so much just a religion. It really is a cultural identity. …We have our own vocabulary, basically. We have our own way of looking at things. And so you can’t just give up all that along with the religion.” Affirmation gave LGBT Mormons a third way, creating a sense of authentic LDS community among gay mormons who would otherwise experience their coming-out in isolation.

In the summer of 1979, Affirmation decided it was time to make itself over in a more public way by participating in the Gay Pride parade in Los Angeles, and a contingent participated in the March on Washington that autumn (Oct 14). Then in Decemberrepresentatives from Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, San Francisco and Washington D.C. met to formally for the first time to give the new organization shape, a new governing charter, a new publication (Affinity) and an updated name — Affirmation: Gay & Lesbian Mormons. (Today, it is Affirmation: LGBT Mormons, Families and Friends)

Because the LDS Church has a history of counseling gay men to marry and start families as a way of dealing with their sexuality, Affirmation spun off a group in 1992 called Gamofites (an approximate portmanteau of Gay Mormon Fathers, in a style that echoes the names of tribes in the Book of Mormon.) Since then Affirmation has created a whole host of affinity groups for women, friends and families, mixed orientation families, teens, Millennial, people of color, and transgender people. Today there are Affirmation chapters across the U.S., and Canada, as well as in nine other countries around the world.

[Additional sources: “News Briefs” Arizona Gay News (Oct 7, 1977): 3.

Melissa M. Wilcox. Queer Women and Religious Individualism (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press: 2009): 53.

John-Charles Duffy. “Affirmation: Gay and Lesbian Mormons.” from JEffrey S. Siker (ed.), Homosexuality and Religion: An Encyclopedia (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007): 47-48.]