Box Turtle Bulletin

Today In History, 1961: “Morals Raids” In Tampa

Deputies staged a series of raids in what Hillsborough County Sheriff Ed Blackburn called “the biggest morals crackdown, to my knowledge, in the history of the state of Florida.” Thirty-six were arrested in a series of early morning raids by a team of city, county, and state agents, with another 100 more expected to be taken into custody by the time the operation was finished. A few days later, Tampa police chief Neil Brown also spoke on the “ever growing problem” of homosexuality in Tampa. “We’re going to clean them up and get them out of town,” he declared. “I don’t know where they will go, but we’re going to get them out of town.” City police then rounded up 48 people from “known homosexual hangouts.”

The crackdown was the result of a year-long investigation in which city and county officers compiled “mug books” containing names, addresses, and other identifying information on gay people either living in Tampa or visiting on weekends. The data was compiled from court records beginning in the year 1955. Tampa vice squad detective Bill Whitmer said that he still had about three more years’ worth of dockets to go through. Brown said that homosexual “is definitely on the increase,” adding that ten years ago, “we had very little homosexuality here.”

Among those arrested was a thirty-five-year old-principal of Citrus Park Elementary School, who was being held on a $1,000 bond. Others arrested included a doctor, a former Air Force Major, and a sixty-seven year old retired psychology professor who had operated a school for mentally-retarded boys at Brooksville, Florida, about 45 miles north of Tampa. The names of both educators were emblazoned on Associated Press reports nationwide. Local papers printed the names and addresses of everyone arrested.

Later that month, State Attorney Paul B. Johnson told reporters, “Investigations have shown this problem to be even more widespread than we first anticipated. We have arrested at least 130 persons for crimes against nature, and lewd and lascivious acts in the past 90 days. Most have admitted their guilt.”

ONE magazine received a letter from a reader in Tampa filling in more details. It read:

On June 16th I received a letter from my best friends. The two have been living together for 11 years. One is a teacher the other a doctor. They have a lovely home outside Tampa on.. .. ” A part of the letter reads, ” I don’t know what you have read in the papers or whether radio or TV has carried the news in your city or not. At any event our worst fears have been realized, the reign of terror struck Tampa and made front pages here.

On June 2nd, B was arrested without warning at … and charged with a ‘crime against nature.’ He is awaiting trial and is out of jail on $2,000 bond. [$2,000 is equivalent to about $15,500 in today’s dollars] Being a school teacher he enjoyed adequate publicity. Needless to say, just about everything has collapsed for us.

“Fortunately, I am not involved legally, but of course otherwise, especially financially, we’ve had it. I don’t know how we’ll get through the next few months . . ..”

[Sources: “Del McIntire” (pseudonym for Don Slater, Aug 21) “Tangents — Tampa Tempest” ONE, 9, no. 8 (August 1961): 24-25.

Associated Press. “Morals raid held in Tampa.” (June 4, 1961).

Associated Press. “Morals crackdown staged in Florida.” (June 5, 1961).]

Today In History, 1967: “Aversion Therapy in Management of 43 Homosexuals”

An article under that title by Malclom J. MacCulloch and Maurice Philip Feldman appeared in the June 3, 1967 edition of the British Medical Journal. While electric shock aversion therapy was an expensive form of therapy, it was also surprisingly common. The authors reported the results of 41 men and two lesbians who they treated at Crumpsall Hospital in Manchester, U.K. The treatment consisted of administering painful electric shocks while projecting photos of attractive men (or women, in the case of the two lesbians). Of the 43 subjected to this torturous treatment, five were between the ages of 15 to 20. Eighteen were being treated under court order. Seven dropped out without completing the treatment, and 11 were “unimproved.” That left 25 who claimed that they were “improved” after twelve months. The “failures,” they said, tended to have a higher Kinsey rating — in other words, they didn’t have a basis in bisexuality to work with.

The authors concluded that “In our opinion the approximately 60% rate of improvement achieved in our series (over other reported studies) is mainly due to the use of an aversion therapy technique which has been carefully designed to make the most effective use of the findings of the experimental psychology of learning.” With an advertised success rate like that, this paper for the British Medical Journal proved highly influential, inspiring hundreds of therapists to try electric shock aversion therapy on perhaps thousands of subjects (see, for example, May 8). As far as therapists were concerned, this paper confirmed the value of electric shock aversion therapy as a relatively highly effective means for “curing” homosexuality.

That confirmation however fell apart ten years later, when Dr. Sheelah James and colleagues from Hollymoor Hospital in England published the results of their own study which failed to replicate MacCulloch and Feldman’s findings. Among the second group’s problems was a very high dropout rate, one which was much higher than what MacCulloch and Feldman reported. “It appears that the Feldman and MacCulloch group had undergone some clinical preselection before referral,” they wrote, a process which would have inflated Feldman and MacCulloch’s so-called “success” rate. (In a subsequent paper, James advocated an alternative therapy for “curing” gay people involving hypnosis.) Ten years later still, aversion therapy would finally be largely abandoned — not just for ethical reasons, but also because of the growing realization that it simply didn’t work.

[Sources: M.J. MacCulloch and M.P. Feldman. “Aversion therapy in management of 43 homosexuals.” British Medical Journal 2, no. 5552 (June 3, 1967): 594-597. Available as a free downloaded from the National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health.

Sheelah James, A. Orwin, R.K. Turner. “Treatment of homosexuality, I. Analysis of failure following a trial of anticipatory avoidance conditioning and the development of an alternative treatment system.” Behavior Therapy 8, no. 5 (November 1977): 840-848.

Sheelah James. “Treatment of homosexuality, II. Superiority of desensitization/arousal as compared to anticipatory avoidance conditioning: Results of a controlled trial.” Behavior Therapy 9, no. 1 (January 1978): 28-36.]

Born On This Day, 1879: Alla Nazimova

(d. 1945) The larger-than-life Russian-born Hollywood silent film star was as exotic and flamboyant off the screen as on. Her screen debut in 1916 led to eleven more films in two years. Her specialty was outrageously exotic yet tragic characters. Her most famous role was that of the title character in Camile, a 1921 film starring Rudolf Valentino (May 6). It was at about that time that she became a producer, specializing in experimental artistic masterpieces which, unfortunately, were commercial flops. 1923’s Salome was particularly scandalous, as was her thinly concealed bisexuality off screen. Her “marriage” with gay actor Charles Bryant didn’t fool anyone. Her home, which she named “Garden of Allah,” was the scene for many glamorous private parties, and her name was connected with several Hollywood starlets and women of the arts. She’s credited with coining the phrase “sewing circles” to refer to lesbian or bisexual actresses who concealed their true sexuality. Her career ended in 1925 with the advent of the Hayes Code, although she had some minor film appearances in the 1940s (she was Doña Maria in The Bridge of San Luis Rey). She died in 1945.

Born On This Day, 1902: George Quaintance

(d. 1957) “My ancestors were all farmers,” he later wrote of his family in Shenandoah Valley hamlet of Luray, Virginia. “There were no artists or talented people among them, yet I drew, painted and modeled in clay as early as I can remember, and I did it with the assurance and the ability of experience, while the mysteries of running a farm… are still very great mysteries to me, after all these years.” Quaintance — he later became one of those artists known only by his last name — left Luray for New York City to become a dancer in 1920, but not before leaving behind a mural for his mother’s church, that of a spectacularly broad-shouldered (though fully clothed) Christ being baptized in the River Jordan by a similarly handsome John the Baptist. While in New York, he became a vaudeville dancer, women’s hair designer, and commercial illustrator.

In the early 1940s, Quaintance became increasingly focused on male figurative art in the style of the emerging “physique” magazines. His lover (and later business partner) Victor Garcia and his friendship with photographer Lon Hanagan (a.k.a. Lon of New York) supplied him with a steady stream of models, and Canadian bodybuilding publisher Joe Weider signed him to illustrate the covers of several of his physique magazines. In 1946, Weider appointed Quiantance art director of Your Physique, Wieder’s best-selling magazine, where Quaintance’s paintings became regular fixtures on the magazine’s covers. In 1947, Quaintance left Weider, and he and Victor moved out west, first to Los Angeles and then Phoenix. There, Quantance branched out into physique photography — he had always photographed his models as portrait studies, so selling those photographs wasn’t that much of a stretch for him. But he remained focused on his paintings.

His paintings took on a distinctly western flair. Quaintance’s exaggerated form of the ideal male dressed in denim and boots would define an esthetic for an entirely new subculture of Levi aficionados. He would also influence other artists like Tom of Finland, who would become something of a Quaintance of Leather. After Quaintance died in 1957, Victor kept the business going, but the business fell off in the late 1960s after full male nudity and porn became legal. After that, he simply disappeared.

In 1988, Durk Dehner of the Tom of Finland Foundation tried to track him down, but the trail ran cold at Victor’s last known address near West Hollywood, where he found several of Quaintance’s scrapbooks and paintings abandoned in an otherwise empty carport. Fifty-five canvases are believed to have been created, but eighteen of them are lost. A diptych turned up at an antique store in Dallas in the early 1990s, but now its whereabouts are unknown. In 2010, Taschen published Quaintance, a lavish monograph of all his known work, including dozens of examples of his early commercial art for Procter and Gamble and several New York dance companies.

Born On This Day, 1906: Josephine Baker

(d. 1975) The Jazz Age icon and Art Deco chanteuse was born in St. Louis, but after a brief stint in New York during the Harlem Renaissance, she quickly moved to Paris where her career as actress, dancer and singer achieved instance success. Everything about her was made for Paris, and Paris for her. Her erotic dancing and nearly-nude performances were appreciated by her French audiences, and her exotic beauty as an African-American posed far fewer challenges in France than in the U.S. She become a French citizen in 1937 when she married a Frenchman, Jean Lion, who was Jewish. During World War II, she left Paris and went to her home in the south of France and, later, Morocco, where she provided assistance to the French Resistance. As an entertainer, she was able to continue touring Europe, particularly non-combatant nations like Switzerland and Purtugal. In her travels, she smuggled secrets for the French Resistance by writing them in her sheet music with invisible ink.

After the war, she supported the American civil rights movement, and whenever she toured the U.S., she refused to perform before segregated audiences. But through the rest of her life, her home remained in France. She married four times, and had twelve children — all of them adopted. She also had a string of female lovers, including the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. Her son, Jean-Claude Baker, interviewed over 2000 people for Josephine: The Hungry Heart, his biography of his mother. He described her in one interview:

“She was what today you would call bisexual, and I will tell you why. Forget that I am her son, I am also a historian. You have to put her back into the context of the time in which she lived. In those days, Chorus Girls were abused by the white or black producers and by the leading men if he liked girls. But they could not sleep together because there were not enough hotels to accommodate black people. So they would all stay together, and the girls would develop lady lover friendships, do you understand my English? But wait wait…If one of the girls by preference was gay, she’d be called a bull dyke by the whole cast. So you see, discrimination is everywhere.”

Born On This Day, 1926: Allen Ginsberg

(d. 1997) “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by / madness, starving hysterical naked, / dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn / looking for an angry fix…” Those were the opening lines of what is arguably the most infuential American poem of the twentieth century. Most Americans however have never read past those lines, but Allen Ginsberg’s Howl unleashed several forces which have had a lasting impact in American culture.

Howl was birthed not in print but at a celebrated 1955 public reading at Six Gallery in San Francisco, where Ginsberg’s disenchantment of American materialism, his identification with the outcasts of American society, and especially his frank discussion of sex — and most especially of  homosexuality (one line described those “who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy”) caught the attention of Customs officials when City Lights Press published Howl and Other Poems in 1956. Publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti and City Lights Bookstore manager Shigeyoshi Murao were arrested and charged with disseminating obscene literature. At the trial, nine literary experts testified on the poem’s behalf. California State Superior Court Judge Clayton Horn decided that the poem was of “redeeming social importance.” As to the poem’s explicit language, Horn asked, “Would there be any freedom of press or speech if one must reduce his vocabulary to vapid innocuous euphemisms?”

Ginsberg was one of the defining figures of the Beat Generation. He also became an integral part of the the next generation’s hippie movement. He was sympathetic for the ideals of communism, but disdained its repression of free speech. He was invited to visit China, Cuba and Czechoslovakia when authorities believed his anti-capitalist statements would be propaganda coups, only to discover that this was the least of his concerns. He was unceremoniously deported from Cuba and Czechoslovakia after wearing out his welcome there, but the ideas he left behind in Czechoslovakia inspired another generation of artists, including playwright Václav Havel, to strive for freedom of expression. In 1974, his collection The Fall of America: Poems of These States 1965-1971 shared the annual U.S. National Book Award for Poetry, and he was awarded the National Arts Club gold medal  in 1979, the same year he was inducted into the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1995 his book Cosmopolitan Greetings: Poems 1986-1992 was named a Pulitzer prize finalist. Ginsberg died of liver cancer and complications from hepatitis in 1997.

The 2010 film Howl, starring James Franco as Ginsberg, portrayed the poem’s debut at Six Gallery and the subsequent obscenity trial. John Krokidas’s film Kill Your Darlings (2013) depicted a 1944 murder which brought together the three figures who would be known as the greatest poets of the beat generation: Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs (Feb 5), with Daniel Radcliffe playing Ginsberg.

Born On This Day, 1967: Anderson Cooper

Kathy Griffin’s favorite New Year’s foil is the son of writer Wyatt Cooper and heiress Gloria Vanderbilt. The younger Cooper’s media exposure began early: he was photographed as an infant by Diane Arbus for Harper’s Bazaar, and his mother brought him along for a guest appearance on The Tonight Show when he was three. But it was his older brother’s death by suicide in 1988 that sparked Anderson’s interest in journalism. “Loss is a theme that I think a lot about, and it’s something in my work that I dwell on. I think when you experience any kind of loss, especially the kind I did, you have questions about survival: Why do some people thrive in situations that others can’t tolerate? Would I be able to survive and get on in the world on my own?”

After graduating from college, Cooper forged a press pass and went to Myanmar, where he filmed a series of reports about students fighting against the military dictatorship. He was able to sell those news segments to Channel One, a youth-oriented news program broadcast to junior and senior high scools in the U.S. He then moved to Vietnam for a year, where he filed more reports for Channel One about Vietnamese life and culture. He also filed reports from war-torn countries like Somalia, Bosnia and Rwanda. In 1995, he became a correspondent for ABC News, but he took a detour in 2000 to host the reality show The Mole “to clear my hed and get out of news a little bit.” After two seasons and 9/11, he decided it was time to get back into the news, this time with CNN. In 2002, he became CNN’s weekend prime-time anchor, and in 2003 he got his own show, Anderson Cooper 360°.

In 2012, he became what The New York Times called “the most prominent openly gay journalist on television” when he came out in an email published by Andrew Sullivan:

Andrew, as you know, the issue you raise is one that I’ve thought about for years. Even though my job puts me in the public eye, I have tried to maintain some level of privacy in my life. Part of that has been for purely personal reasons. I think most people want some privacy for themselves and the people they are close to.

But I’ve also wanted to retain some privacy for professional reasons. Since I started as a reporter in war zones 20 years ago, I’ve often found myself in some very dangerous places. For my safety and the safety of those I work with, I try to blend in as much as possible, and prefer to stick to my job of telling other people’s stories, and not my own. I have found that sometimes the less an interview subject knows about me, the better I can safely and effectively do my job as a journalist.

…Recently, however, I’ve begun to consider whether the unintended outcomes of maintaining my privacy outweigh personal and professional principle. It’s become clear to me that by remaining silent on certain aspects of my personal life for so long, I have given some the mistaken impression that I am trying to hide something – something that makes me uncomfortable, ashamed or even afraid. This is distressing because it is simply not true. …The fact is, I’m gay, always have been, always will be, and I couldn’t be any more happy, comfortable with myself, and proud.

Earlier this year, HBO debuted a moving video memior/documentary, Nothing Left Unsaid, featuring a series of conversations between Cooper and his mother

Mormons Enter Mexico’s Marriage Battle

LDS presence in Mexico goes back to the 1875, when a number of Mormon families fled anti-polygamy violence in the United States. (Former Michigan Gov. George W. Romney, Mitt Romney’s father, was born in Colonia Dublán, Chihuahua.) Mormon presence in Mexico has never been large. The church claims 1.4 million members out of a total population of 122 million, which is barely over a single percentage point. But Californians can attest, based on their Prop 8 experience, what an outsized influence the well-organized church can have on local politics. And so this bears watching:

On Sunday, three members of the LDS Church’s governing Area Authority in Mexico read a letter at services of individual Mormon stakes (which are like dioceses), urging members to oppose a presidential proposal to enshrine gay marriage in the country’s constitution.

… Signed by the Area Authority president, Benjamin De Hoyos, and his two counselors, Paul B. Pieper and Arnulfo Valenzuela, the statement exhorted Mexico’s Mormons to push government leaders to “promote those measures designed to strengthen the family and to maintain it as the fundamental unit of society.” …The LDS Church’s official Mexican newsroom website said the authorities’ statement also will be read by bishops of the more than 2,000 Mormon congregations in that nation.

Marriage equality used to be available in Sonora (cross-hatched), but is on hold for now. (Click to enlarge)

Last month, President Enrique Peña Nieto proposed changing Mexico’s constitution and civil laws to provide marriage equality across the nation. The Congress is expected to take up those proposals when it reconvenes in September. While same-sex marriage is technically legal throughout Mexico, it is only available in nine states and in Mexico City without first having to go through the cumbersome and expensive process of obtaining a court order. The proposals have already run into a buzzsaw of opposition from the Catholic Church. While Catholics make up 80% of Mexico’s population, the Pew Research Center found that only 42% of Mexico’s Catholics say they oppose marriage equality.

Massachusetts To Add Gender Identity to Public Accommodations Law

As other parts of the country wring their hands over which (if any) bathroom transgender people should use, the Massachusetts House has approved a bill to add gender identity to its public accommodations anti-discirmination law. After seven hours of acrimonious debate, the House passed the measure with a bipartisan 116-36 vote after rejecting 22 amendments. There is a slight difference between the House version and the Senate version passed last month:

The House version tasks the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination and the attorney general with determining how to determine gender identity and how to enforce laws against anyone “who asserts gender identity for an improper purpose.

The bill now goes to the Senate for its re-approval or, barring that, reconciliation in conference. Republican Gov. Charlie Baker has said he would sign the House version.

Click to enlarge.

Eighteen states and the District of Columbia offer some form of anti-discrimination protection based on gender identity. Massachusetts law currently includes gender identity as part of its housing, education and employment anti-discrimination laws. This measure adds gender identity protections for public accommodations, including hotels, restaurants, theaters, and other public facilities, including the right to use the changing room and bathroom corresponding to one’s gender identity rather than anatomical sex.

Another Christian Rock Star Comes Out

I don’t have much Christian Rock on my Pandora, so I can’t say how big a deal this is. But judging by the size and number of headlines flying across the internets, this seems kinda big:

Since 1997, [Trey Pearson] been the core of Everyday Sunday, a highly successful alternative outfit who’s sold hundreds of thousands of records, scored multiple #1 singles on the national radio charts, toured all 50 states and 20 countries, and signed to a reputable label in Nashville. A Christian label.

… [From Trey’s letter]: “Most of us reach at least one pivotal moment in our lives that better defines who we are. These last several months have been the hardest—but also have ended up being the most freeing months—of my life. To make an extremely long story short, I have come to be able to admit to myself, and to my family, that I am gay.”

TP: There is a weight that has been lifted, and I have never felt so free. I cannot even believe the joy and lightness I feel from being able to accept myself, and love myself, for who I truly am … but I have also lost some of the closest people in my life. I have felt betrayal by people I loved a lot, and cared so much about. I have had some church people act like the worst people I have ever experienced in my life. I have some people in my life who I have felt a shift in the way they love me, and the way they see me. I want to be loved for who I am, not in spite of who I am. I’m starting over in so many ways. It is freeing, but it’s also starting out lonely.

The story that broke the news is here, which includes lengthy excerpts from his letter to his fans and an interview. You can find his full letter here.

Pearson is just another in a growing line of Christian musicians coming out, beginning with Ray Boltz, whose songs were once ubiquitous in evangelical churches throughout the 1990s. He came out in 2008.

Ex-Gay Activist: Gay Marriage “A Sign Of the Last Days”

Janet Boynes, an ex-gay activist who has long been a favorite among the most extreme anti-gay activists, was been appearing on a radio program this week hosted by Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver. When Staver was dean of Liberty University’s law school, he taught his law students that they should counsel their clients to break the law in favor of “God’s Law.” And according to a RICO lawsuit connecting his law school to the Miller-Jenkins kidnapping case, his law school practices what he teaches.

So, you know, birds of a feather and all that. On Staver’s radio program, Boynes said parents should absolutely not allow their gay kids to bring their significant others home for Christmas or Thanksgiving:

“That is not a marriage,” she said, “and so we have to not allow ourself to get so confused and realize that the Bible talks about these things are going to happen in the Last Days. We have to have a better understanding that the Bible talks about in the Last Days, these things are going to happen and trust God that he has an answer for everything in his word.”

…Straight siblings, on the other hand, should be more than welcome to come home as a couple “because they are heterosexual [and] they’re doing things right,” but gay relationships are “unacceptable … in the world of God.”

But My City Was Gone

The demise of gayborhoods across the country elicits a range of mixed emotions. Some of them, I suspect, cut across generational lines. But when I read about an outpost disappearing, I can’t help but be sad about it, even though I enjoy living in my outer quasi-suburban neighborhood myself. Washington DC’s City Paper looks at what’s been happening in Dupont Circle:

Today, Lambda Rising’s final storefront, at 1625 Connecticut Ave. NW, is a Comfort One Shoes. Other LGBTQ spaces have vanished from Dupont, too, including Mr. P’s, the Fraternity House (later, Omega), Phase 1’s Northwest outpost, and the Last Hurrah (next called Badlands, and most recently, Apex)—watering holes that catered to gay men. D.C.’s queer quarter has diminished with the fading of such institutional anchors, places where LGBTQ individuals could play out their identities and lower their guard among birds of a feather.

…(Rainbow History Project’s Prof. Bonnie) Morris recounts when Dupont was affectionately called the “Fruit Loop”; these days, people give her blank stares when she uses that term. Bookstores and bars have closed. “Young people gained more rights, more people were accepted in their own families, they didn’t have to go to a ‘gayborhood’ to get that feeling,” she explains. “I miss the sense of a subculture.”

The article isn’t entirely doom-and-gloom. Where old LGBT businesses have closed in Dupont, others have opened elsewhere in the city. And I think everyone reaches a point in their lives when they feel that aspects of the “good old days” were better than they really were. I’m sure I’m guilty of this. So it’s natural for different people to have different reactions to different parts of this article. With that in mind, this… this jumped out at me:

Ross says big-name LGBTQ spaces like Nellie’s and Town have started attracting a fair share of straight customers, not all of whom are educated about or sensitive to the community’s culture. “It’s disconcerting,” she says. “I’m in my safe space—why am I being hit on by a guy? I don’t know if there’s some type of straight entitlement where straight people feel they can come into our spaces.”

In the kind of “crossover” now apparent along the U Street corridor, Ross says she would like to see more respect for the norms of the queer community (no homophobic comments or staring, please) as well as a greater understanding of D.C.’s LGBTQ history. “It’s like they’re sightseeing in gay bars.”

The very first gay bar I ever went to was in San Diego, when I was still struggling to come to terms with my sexuality. I circled the block dozens of times for about three hours before I finally found the courage to show my I.D. at the door and go inside. That was the scariest three hours of my life. I was inside that dance bar for all of an hour when I was felt up by a drunk straight chick — the very last thing I wanted or needed at that point.

The first time I visited Town in D.C., in 2008 and many years later, a bachelorette party was in full swing. And that angered me on two fronts. First, gay marriage was illegal in all but a small handful of states. Having a bachelorette party seemed the the most insensitive and insulting thing those girls — and Town — could have done. And that anger was only compounded by this fabulous drag show, among the best I’ve ever seen, being treated as a kind of a minstrel for those tourists’ amusement. Which is why I’m still not comfortable with bachelorette parties in our spaces. That’s just my thing. I can’t defend it on any logical level. But it feels wrong. It’s a kind of slumming, and I’m just not keen to play the colorful native.

Pride In the Navy

The caption accompanying the above photo says: “Sailors and Marines attend a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender pride month celebration on the mess decks of the Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS Essex (LHD 2)” This would have been unimaginable just a few short years ago:

This June, the Navy recognizes LGBT service members and civilians for their dedicated service to our country.

“Diversity is a source of strength for the Navy, and is [a] key component to maintaining our highest state of readiness,” said a Navy spokesperson. “Diversity encompasses more than race and gender — we seek to include diversity of thought, background, language, culture and skills as well. Our force comes from a diverse populous, and we are simply better at what we do when we are more diverse. We want individuals to serve who are right for the job regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, and creed. Our goal is to ensure that the mission is carried out by the best-qualified and the most capable service members.”

The Defense Department first recognized Pride month in 2012. The first full military-wide Pride observance was just two years ago, although that military-wide observance wasn’t quite military-wide.

On Tuesday, President Obama issued his administration’s last Pride Month proclamation. Whether there’s another one next year depends in large part on what happens in November.

Today’s Agenda Is Brought To You By…

Born On This Day, 1966: Candace Gingrich-Jones

The lesbian advocate and kid sister to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Candice publicly called her brother to task during his 2012 campaign for the GOP nomination for President over his support for California’s Prop 8. “What really worries me is that you are always willing to use LGBT Americans as political weapons to further your ambitions,” she wrote. “That’s really so ’90s, Newt. In this day and age, it’s embarrassing to watch you talk like that.” Things didn’t change much for Newt, certainly not while he was courting votes from the party’s Tea Party base. He spent much of that year running like it was still 1994. (It was only after the campaign was over that Gingrich conceded that the Republican party should begin to think about coming to grips with a distinction between a “marriage in a church from a legal document issued by the state.”)

Candice has long been an outspoken advocate for gay rights, going as far back as 1995 when she became the Human Rights Campaign’s spokesperson for the National Coming Out Project. In 1996, she published her autobiography, The Accidental Activist: A Personal and Political Memoir, where she talked about growing up in a supportive family with a politically-active half-brother who treated her and her girlfriend with the utmost respect. It wasn’t until 1994, when the Republicans took control of the House and propelled Newt Gingrich to the Speakership that she noticed that his politics included close alliances with the likes of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. When an enterprising reporter wrote about the lesbian half-sister of an anti-gay Speaker, she decided it was time to challenge her brother on his discriminatory politics. That propelled her on the road to political activism. In addition to her work at HRC, Candice made numerous appearances in print and on television, including in an episode of Friends where she officiated over a commitment ceremony. Today, Candace is married to her wife, Rebecca, and works as the HRC’s Associate Director for Youth and Campus Engagement.