Box Turtle Bulletin

Born On This Day, 1942: Mike McConnell

Growing up gay in Oklahoma wasn’t easy, but the experience quickly made Mike realize that people like him were, at best, second-class citizens. While attending the University of Oklahoma, his friend, Joe Clem, was also gay and rather cautiously open about it, even among his frat brothers. During one bout of drinking, those so-called “brothers” became enraged with Clem being a “faggot,” beat the crap out of him, and drove him out to a deserted road outside Norman and dumped him there. Clem eventually made his was back to Norman, but he didn’t dare call the police.

Mike McConnell, with Jack Baker, ca 1970. Photo by Kay Lahusen (Jan 5).

McConnell met Jack Baker (Mar 10) at a barn party in 1966 outside of Norman. McConnell was completing his Masters degree in Library Science, and Baker was working as a field engineer in Oklahoma City. Both were 24, and they hit it off right away. Six months later, Baker proposed to McConnell, and McConnell accepted, on one condition: that they would find a way to marry legally.

In 1969, Baker moved to Minneapolis to study law at the University of Minnesota. Six months later, McConnell was offered a job at the University’s library. Three weeks after McConnell moved to Minneapolis, the pair went to the Hennepin County Courthouse in downtown Minneapolis to apply for a marriage license (May 18). Their application was denied. Not only that, but after the news about what they had done had hit the papers, the university’s Board of Regents voted to withdraw its job offer to McConnell.

Those events launched two separate lawsuits: Baker v. Nelson challenged Hennepin County’s denial of their marriage license, and McConnell v. Anderson challenged the University’s withdrawal of McConnell’s job offer. Baker v. Nelson worked its way up the Minnesota state courts, with courts ruling against Baker and McConnell every step of the way. The case eventually made it to the Minnesota Supreme Court in October 1981, which also ruled against them. The U.S. Supreme Court then dismissed an appeal “for want of a substantial federal question,” and Baker v. Nelson was treated as though it were an established precedent for the next several decades.

McConnell’s lawsuit against the University went little better. He got an early victory when the Federal District Judge issued an injunction against the University. He called the couple’s attempt at getting married “rather bizarre,” but found that even a “homosexual is after all a human being and a citizen… He is as much entitled to the protection and benefits of the laws… as others.” But McConnell never did get his job at the University. The judge stayed his injunction pending appeal, the Eight Circuit overturned the lower court’s ruling, and the Supreme Court refused to consider the case.

While the cases were winding their way thought the courts, McConnell and Baker continued to pursue legal recognition of their relationship through other means. McConnell legally adopted Baker in August 1971, which allowed them at least some of the benefits of marriage (inheritance, medical decision-making, even reduced tuition for Baker). A month later, they managed to obtain a marriage license from a clerk in Blue Earth County, Minnesota and were married by a Methodist minister (Sep 3). That license was never officially revoked, although questions remained about its legal force. The IRS, for example, refused to recognize their marital status.

McConnell later found work in the Hennepin County Library system, and continued working there for the next thirty-seven years before retiring in 2010 as a Coordinating Librarian. In 2012, University of Minnesota president Erik Kaler formally apologized to McConnell for his treatment forty-two years earlier. When marriage equality finally arrived in Minnesota in 2013, it was natural to ask whether Baker and McConnell would formally tie the knot. Maybe even as the honorary first same-sex couple to marry. No need for that, they answered. As far as they were concerned, they had been legally married since 1971. They are still living together as a married couple in the suburbs of south Minneapolis, quietly and well out of the spotlight.

Marriage Equality Arrives In Michoacan

It looks like Mexico is far more interested in tearing down walls rather than building them. The Congress of the Mexican state of Michoacan today voted 27-0 to legalize same-sex marriage. All seven members of the right-leaning PAN (National Action Party) abstained from the vote. Michoacan becomes the ninth state, in addition to the Federal District, to provide marriage equality for same-sex couples.

Michoacan is located on the Pacific Coast between Guerrero to the south and Jalisco to the north, both of which have also legalized marriage equality. It’s capital, Morelia, was declared a U.N. World Heritage Site for its preservation of colonial-era buildings.

Meanwhile, the state of Morelos (shown in blue on the map) has taken its first step toward marriage equality when it approved a state constitutional reform package to provide marriage equality. The vote 20-6, with the PAN lined up in opposition followed a particularly noisy debate. The reforms now go to the state’s 33 Ayuntamientos (regional governments) for ratification.

Morelos is located just south of Mexico City, with Cuerenavaca as its capital. It has always been a popular getaway for Mexico City residents, and is slowly becoming something of a bedroom community for the congested capital. It boasts a long list of impressive museums, botanical gardens, a famous hacienda that once belonged to Hernán Cortés, impressive Tlahuican ruins (complete with a preserved Aztec-influenced handball court) and a dizzying array of magnificent churches. I can’t say I’ve traveled all that extensively in Mexico, but I can say that of all the places I visited, Cuernevaca is by far my favorite. I’m thinking it would make a pretty awesome wedding venue and honeymoon destination.

Seychelles Repeals Colonial-Era Anti-Gay Law

There’s some rare good news coming out of Africa:

Section 151 of the country’s Penal Code states that a man who has sex with a man “against the order of nature” can be jailed for up to fourteen years.  The law is a hang-over from British colonial rule, and convictions are already very rare – but the Seychelles had pushed to scrap the law entirely.

Seychelles President James Michel highlighted the need to abolish the law based on its United Nations human rights obligations, when it agreed to undergo a Universal Periodic Review with an eye toward decriminalizing same-sex relationships. Seychelles popularity as a European vacation destination undoubtedly added an economic incentive to the decision.

Changing Mexico’s Constitution for Marriage Equality: What’s At Stake

Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto

Yesterday, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto announced four initiatives aimed at bringing marriage equality across the entire nation and promoting LGBT rights around the world. One of those measures would also allow changes to birth certificates to accurately reflect trans people’s gender identity. The first initiative, which bears close watching as it is the one most likely to engender a dangerous backlash, would amend Mexico’s constitution.

According to yesterday’s announcement:

An initiative to reform Article 4 of the Constitution was signed to clearly incorporate the judgment of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation which recognized as a human right that people can marry without discrimination.

That is, that marriages are made without discrimination based on ethnic or national origin, disability, social status, health conditions, religion, gender or sexual preference. Thus, equal marriage would be explicit in the Constitution.

Article 4 is, a rather wide-ranging set of clauses whch can be summed up as a kind of an equal rights article. This is the full text of Article 4, in a translation provided by UNAM (The National Autonomous University of Mexico, the country’s most prestigious universities) (PDF):

Article 4

Men and women are equal under the law. The law shall protect family organization and development.

Every person has a right to decide in a free, mature and informed way, the number and spacing of their children.

Every person has a right to receive medical treatment when deemed as necessary. The law shall not only define the guiding criterial regulating access to health services but also establish concurrent activities to be carried out by the federation and the states in organizing public health services under article 73, paragraph XVI of this constitution.

Every person has a right to live in an adequate environment for her development and welfare.

Every family has a right to a dignified and decent household. The law shall establish all regulations and incentives deemed to be necessary to achieve such a goal.

Children’s needs to nourishment, health, education, recreation and integral development shall be fulfilled.

Ascendants, tutors and guardians shall be obligated to enforce the aforementioned rights. The States shall provide whatever deemed as necessary to uphold both children’s dignity and the enforcement of children’s rights.

The State shall help out private individuals in enforcing children’s rights.

Anti-gay groups in Mexico have claimed that the sentence about “protect family organization and development” precluded allowing same-sex marriage, but so far the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, Mexico’s highest court, hasn’t seen it that way. One can also imagine that several other clauses dealing with “a dignified and decent household” and children’s “integral development” could be spun by anti-gay groups as well. So in that sense, Peña Nieto’s proposal to clarify Article 4 would certainly do the trick.

But it seems like it could be a daunting task. Not because it’s so rarely done — Mexico’s constitution has undergone numerous substantial changes in its 99-year history, the most recent in 2011 when the right to food was inserted into Articles 4 and 27. (By the way, while the process of changing the Constitution is referred to as an amendment, Mexico’s Constitution is actually changed by the process. It does not carry a series of amendments like the U.S. Constitution.) The process for amending the Constitution is found in Article 135:

This Constitution can be amended or reformed by two thirds out of the attending members of Congress at the respective session. Such amendments and reforms shall be valid when ratified by the majority out of the State Legislatures. Either the Congress or the Permanent Commission during congressional recesses shall compute the State Legislatures votes and declare the approval of the respective amendments and reforms.

So, two-thirds of Congress and half of the Sates need to approve. When one looks at the partisan composition of Congress, at least that part looks doable:

Pena Nieto’s party and allies control about half the seats in both houses, and the measure could also pick up support from the leftist opposition Democratic Revolution Party.

As for the states, eight of the 31 states, and the Federal District, already have marriage equality. (The Federal District, which was the first jurisdiction to approve marriage equality in 2009, doesn’t get a say when amending the Constitution.)  Seven of those eight states completed the process under their own initiative. Only one was forced to do so by the Supreme Court. Peña Nieto’s ruling PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) holds 19 of 31 governorships and 20 state legislatures, which means that at least from the standpoint of party control, that also looks doable.

But the entire process still bears watching. I don’t know how fast all of this can happen, but Peña Nieto’s term ends in 2018, when Mexico will elect a new President and Congress. And it’s not clear to me how much input Peña Nieto will have in the actual wording of Article 4, although I suspect it could be substantial. That will bear watching. And I don’t know to what extent this move could open the doors to anti-marriage mischief.  We can be assured the Catholic Church in Mexico will play a big role. And there’s no doubt that several American anti-gay groups will see an opening to expand their influence south of the border. Mexico’s politics have always been complicated, its legal system more so, and transparency has never been its strong suit. Fun times ahead…

House Republicans Refuse to Remove Anti-LGBT Provisions From Defense Bill

The House Rules Committee yesterday refused to take up a bipartisan proposal bipartisan amendment introduced by Rep. Charlie Dent (R-PA) which would remove anti-LGBT language from the 2017 Defense Authorization Bill. If that language remains in the bill, it would overturn President Barack Obama’s executive order requiring that federal contractors maintain anti-discrimination policies that include sexual orientation and gender identity. The committee voted down the amendment 9-3 on strict party lines.

The original amendment overturning Obama’s executive order was inserted into the Defense Authorization Bill by Rep. Steve Russell (R-OK) when the House Armed Services Committee was marking up the legislation.

Rep. Steve Russel (R-OK)

The amendment, introduced by freshman Rep. Steve Russell (R-Okla.), would require the federal government when contracting with religious organizations to afford them exemptions consistent with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the American with Disabilities Act. Since neither of those laws prohibit anti-LGBT bias, the amendment would enable religious organizations doing business with the U.S. government to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Because the measure would have the force of law, it would overrule the executive order signed by President Obama in 2014 prohibiting contractors doing more than $10,000 a year in business with the U.S. government from engaging in anti-LGBT discrimination against employees. The president included no religious exemption in his order, although he left in place a Bush-era exemption allowing religious organizations contracting with the U.S. government to favor co-religionists in hiring practices.

The amendment provides an exemption for “any religious corporation, religious association, religious educational institution or religious society” contracting with the U.S. government. All of those terms are undefined in the amendment, but the lack of definition for “religious corporation” could allow courts to construe the term broadly to any federal contractor — not just religious organizations — in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in the Hobby Lobby case.

The White House has said that it strongly objects to the anti-LGBT provision. It has previously threatened to veto the bill over objections to several other provisions in the legislation.

The Senate version of the bill does not contain the anti-LGBT provision. The next opportunity to remove it from the house committee would be during conference committee after both houses approve their respective versions of the bill.

African, Asian, Caribbean LGBT Groups Banned From U.N. AIDS Conference

More than fifty Muslim countries, led by Egypt, banded together to ban several LGBT groups from attending a high level U.N.’s 2016 High-Level Meeting on Ending AIDS set for June 8 through 10. NGOs from across Africa, as well as Guyana, Jamaica, Peru, Estonia and Ukraine were among eleven groups that were banned:

On behalf of 51 members of the 57-nation Organisation for Islamic Cooperation (OIC), Egypt requested that the UN bar 11 groups from attending the conference, news agencies reported. Egypt reportedly provided no reason for excluding the groups in its letter.

The NGOs include Eurasian Coalition on Male Health, an Estonia-based group that fights for LGBTI equality in Russia and other former Soviet republics, and Global Action for Trans Equality, which has its headquarters in the United States. Aside from the Estonian and US gay activist groups, Egypt reportedly objected to the participation of Ishtar Men Who Have Sex With Men group from Kenya and the Asia Pacific Transgender Network from Thailand.

Ambassadors from the E.U., U.S., and Canada were quick to denounce the ban:

The United States has already protested the decision, with the US ambassador Samantha Power noting that the disallowed groups “appear to have been chosen for their involvement in LGBTI, transgender or youth advocacy.” …

“We are deeply concerned that at every negotiation on a new General Assembly gathering, the matter of NGO (non-governmental organization) participation is questioned and scrutinized,” Ms Power wrote.

“The movement to block the participation of NGOs on spurious or hidden grounds is becoming epidemic and severely damages the credibility of the U.N.”

“Given that transgender people are 49 times more likely to be living with HIV than the general population, their exclusion from the high-level meeting will only impede global progress in combating the HIV/Aids pandemic,” she added.

The 2016 High-Level Meeting was called to share lessons learned in responding to HIV with the stated goal of of ending AIDS by 2030:

The lessons learned in responding to HIV will play an instrumental role in the success in achieving many of the Sustainable Development Goals, notably Sustainable Development Goal 3, good health and well-being, and the goals on gender equality and women’s empowerment, reduced inequalities, global partnerships and just, peaceful and inclusive societies.

Openly Gay Mayor To Challenge Sen. Rand Paul

Lexington, Kentucky Mayor Jim Gray defeated six challengers in yesterday’s Democratic primary, clearing the way for him to challenge Sen. Rand Paul in November. He faces significant headwinds going into November:

Gray may not get much monetary help from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Democrats need only five seats to gain a majority of the Senate, and four for control of the chamber. Several senate races including races in Illinois, Florida and Wisconsin look more favorable for Democrats. …

Don Dugi, a professor of political science at Transylvania University, said money may not be Gray’s biggest problem heading into the November general election.

Among the other factors: Gray is the first openly gay candidate to run for U.S. Senate. The Republicans won all but two statewide offices in 2015. The state is becoming more conservative. Lexington leans liberal.

“The rest of the state does not look like Lexington,” Dugi said. Social conservatives in Eastern and Western Kentucky may not be as open-minded as Lexington voters, he said.

Today’s Agenda Is Brought To You By…

From Michael’s Thing (New York, NY), September 27, 1976, page 12. (Personal collection)

This is one of those bars that I can find very little about. The punny name of Mother Truckers was also a reference to an area near the docks on the West Side Highway. During the day the trucks were loaded and unloaded with freight from arriving ships. At night, they were parked, empty, with the rear of the truck left open so people wouldn’t break into them to steal merchandise that wasn’t there. The area was dark and all of that made them an ideal setting for public sex after the bars started emptying out. The area became known in in gay circles simply as The Trucks, and had been a long-established cruising grounds since at least the 1950s.

Today In History, 1970: Minnesota Couple Seek Marriage License

Mike McConnell and Jack Baker applying for a marriage license in Minneapolis.

Mike McConnell (May 19) met Jack Baker (see Mar 10) in 1966 on a blind date at a Halloween party in Oklahoma where they were both 24-year-old grad students. On Baker’s 25th birthday, they became betrothed, as they put it, in a private ceremony, and moved in together. After moving to Kansas City, Missouri, they met activists Barbara Gittings (Jul 31)and Frank Kameny (May 21). “That’s what lit our fires of pride,” recalled McConnell. “These fine people were willing to say, ‘Look, I’m as good as anybody else.’ That’s all I needed to hear.”

In April, 1970. McConnell accepted a job at the University of Minnesota’s library and Baker enrolled as a first year law student. Three weeks later, on the day before McConnell’s birthday, the couple went to the city clerk’s office in Minneapolis and asked for a marriage license. Baker told the nervous workers, “If there’s any legal hassle, we’re prepared to take it all the way to the Supreme Court. This is not a gimmick.” There were legal hassles. Not only were the denied a license, but the university fired McConnell when news of their application hit the papers. A federal judge blocked McConnell’s firing. He called the episode “rather bizarre, but concluded that “An [sic] homosexual is after all a human being and a citizen…. He is as much entitled to the protection and benefits of the laws… as others.” But that decision was reversed on appeal, and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up the case.

Meanwhile a state judge, ruling on the marriage case itself, sided with county officials and ordered them not to issue a license. While McConnell and Baker appealed that decision, McConnell legally adopted Baker in August 1971, which allowed them at least some of the benefits of marriage (inheritance, medical decision-making, even reduced tuition for Baker). Later that same year, they managed to obtain a marriage license from a clerk in Blue Earth County, Minnesota and were married by a Methodist minister (Sep 3). But in October, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled in Baker v. Nelson that state law prohibits same-sex marriage, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed an appeal “for want of a substantial federal question,” Baker v. Nelson became an established precedent.

In 2012, Minnesotans defeated a proposed constitutional amendment, placed on the ballot by a Republican-controlled legislature that would have permanently barred same-sex marriages in the state. Voters also elected a Democratic-Farm-Labor (DFL, the state Democratic party’s name in Minnesota) majority in both houses of the legislature. Elections have consequences, and the new legislature passed a marriage equality bill in 2013, which Gov. Mark Dayton (DFL) quickly signed into law. That law went into effect on August 1. Baker and McConnell weren’t among those to line up for marriage licenses that day. As far as they were concerned, the license they obtained in Blue Earth County was still valid and they saw no need for another one. They still live a quiet life together, well out of the spotlight, in Minneapolis.

[Source: Joyce Murdoch and Deb Price. Courting Justice: Gay Men And Lesbians V. The Supreme Court (New York: Basic Books, 2001): 163-171.]

Today in History, 1970: Nationally-Renowned Therapist Warns of Homosexual Epidemic

New York psychiatrist Charles Socarides warned the nation’s physicians in the May 18, 1970 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association, that “Homosexuality is a medical disorder which has reached epidemiologic [sic]proportions; its frequency of incidence surpasses that of the recognized major illnesses in the nation.”

Epidemiologic. What he was trying to say that it was of epidemic proportions. But Socarides, being Socarides, made up his Very Impressive Seven-Syllable Word, which he used quite often.  He appeared three years earlier on the infamous CBS documentary “The Homosexuals” (Mar 7), were, again, he used that Very Impressive Word. By then he had established himself as a nationally-recognized authority on homosexuality and its cure. And so his article in the AMA’s prestigious journal carried considerable weight. Socarides chided his fellow physicians for not taking this new — err, epidedemy? — seriously:

Attempts to obfuscate the fact that homosexuality is a medical problem have not been met head on by those most qualified to clarify the situation.  Only in the consultation room does the homosexual reveal himself and his world. No other data, statistics, or statements can be accepted as setting forth the true nature of homosexuality. All other sources may be heavily weighted by face-saving devices or rationalizations or, if they issue from lay bodies, lack the scientific and medical background to support their views. The best that can be said for the well-intentioned but unqualified observer is that he is misguided because he does not have and can not apply those techniques which would make it possible to discern the deep underlying clinical disorder or to evaluate the emotional patterns and interpersonal events in the life of a homosexual.

Socarides distinguished between two types of homosexuals: the “obligatory” and the “episodic.” Only the former were true homosexuals as he put it. “The latter is characterized by isolated homosexual acts without the stereotypy, the compulsivity, of the former.” As for the former:

There is a high incidence of paranoia or paranoid-like symptomatology in overt homosexuals. This is related to the medical fact that overt obligatory homosexuality is either a fixation or regression to the earliest stages of ego development. As a result, archaic and primitive mental mechanisms belonging to the earliest stages of life characterize the homosexual’s behavior. Also, homosexuality, obligatory or not, can be seen in the schizophrenic in his frantic attempt to establish some vestige of object relations as an expression of the fragmented and disorganized psychic apparatus with which he has to struggle.

Socarides argued that because homosexuals were suffering from a mental illness, they should not be penalized legally for consensual activities “so long as it is not accompanied by antisocial or criminal behavior.” Despite increasing calls to decriminalize homosexuality, homosexual behavior was still criminalized in every state except Illinois (Jul 28). Socarides cautioned that “any change in the legal code should be accompanied by a clearcut statement as to the nature of obligatory homosexuality, its diagnosis as a form of mental illness, and a universal declaration of support for its treatment by qualified medical practitioners.” And only those “qualified medical practitioners,” he concluded, were qualified to pass judgment whether gay people were sick:

It is vitally important to realize this fundamental point: the diagnosis of homosexuality can not be self-made, imposed by jurists, articulated by clergy, or speculated about by social scientists. … If the homosexual is to be granted his human right as a medical patient, issues which becloud his status should be clarified. Above all, the homosexual must be recognized as an individual who presents a medical problem.

The whole issue of homosexuality must be transformed into one more scientific challenge to medicine which has time and again been able to alleviate the plaguing illnesses of man. With this respected leadership on the part of the physician, we will see a surge of support for the study and treatment of the disorder by all the techniques and knowledge available through the great resources and medical talent of the United States.

There’s an interesting post-script to all of this. Dr. Socarides’s oldest son, Richard, was very close to his father, so much so that after his parents divorced when Richard was six, he moved in with his father upon turning 13. That would have been at around 1967. When the elder Socarides wrote this article, Richard was sixteen. Richard went on to become a gay rights activist, attorney, and an advisor to President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1999.

[Source: Charles W. Socarides. “Homosexuality and medicine.” Journal of the American Medical Association 212, no. 7 (May 18, 1970): 1199-1202.]

Today in History, 1981: First Published Report Of New “Exotic” Disease Among New York Gay Men

Here’s one reason why a vigorous and healthy gay press is so important. June 5, 1981 is typically cited as the date of the first published report on a new disease which would become known as AIDS, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a notice concerning five previously healthy gay men in Los Angeles who died from rare infections which were normally easily curable (Jun 5). But the first published report actually appeared in a New York gay newspaper a month earlier, tucked inside an issue of the New York Native on page seven. Dr. Lawrence Mass, who wrote a regular health column for the small weekly, had heard rumors of several new exotic diseases striking down gay men in Gotham. Some were coming down with a rare kind of a skin cancer that had previously only affected older Jewish or Mediterranean men. Others were stricken with a rare form of pneumonia which typically only appeared in people with severely suppressed immune systems such as cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy and transplant recipients. There were also a host of other odd diseases that gay men were coming down with, but so far nobody had figured out that there might be a single cause to link them all together.

After Mass was assured by the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta that there was no evidence of an emerging “gay cancer,” Mass wrote an article titled, “Disease Rumors Largely Unfounded,” which began:

Last week there were rumors that an exotic new disease had hit the gay community in New York. Here are the facts. From the New York City Department of Health, Dr. Steve Phillips explained that the rumors are for the most part unfounded. Each year, approximately 12 to 24 cases of infection with a protozoa-like organism, pneumocystis carinii, are reported in the New York City area. The organism is not exotic; in fact, it’s ubiquitous. But most of us have a natural or easily acquired immunity.

“What’s unusual about the cases reported this year,” Mass explained, “is that eleven of them were not obviously compromised hosts. The possibility there exists that a new, more virulent strain of the organism may have been ‘community acquired.'” But Mass reported that there was not enough evidence (yet) to make a clear connection between the new disease and the gay community.

It wouldn’t be long before that link was made. Chroniclers of the AIDS crisis now recognize Dr. Mass as being the first to write about the emerging epidemic in print. Dr. Mass went on the help found the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, and was the principle author of the organization’s Medical Answers About AIDS through four revisions spanning ten years.

Today in History, 1984: CA Supreme Court Upholds Anti-Discrimination Decision for Lesbians Denied Restaurant Seating

Papa Choux’s defiant ad stating they “will never allow this charade.” (Click to enlarge.)

On January 13, 1983, Zandra Rolon and Deborah Johnson made dinner reservations at Papa Choux, a very elegant Los Angeles restaurant. They specifically reserved a “Romantic Booth” in the restaurant’s Intimate Room, which featured sheer curtains around the booths, strolling violinists, and a measure of privacy. When they arrived for dinner, they were seated at the reserved booth, at first, but then they were told that they had to move. The manager told them, falsely, that a city ordinance prohibited such seating.

The couple filed suit, and were represented by civil rights attorney Gloria Allred, who told reporters, “We intend to end this dinner discrimination and give Papa Choux’s their just desserts.” Papa Chou’s owner, Seymour Jacoby, countered with a newspaper ad declaring that “Papa Choux’s will never allow this charade. It would certainly make a mockery of true romantic dining.” But Rolon and Johnson won, and the case was upheld on appeal.

On May 18, 1984, the California denied the restaurant’s request for a hearing, and Jacoby took out another ad saying that “true romantic dining died on this date.” Allred countered, “This is not the death of romance. It is the death of discrimination.” A few days later, about 100 or so bar customers gathered for a “wake” as the restaurant closed its six curtained booths.

Born On This Day, 1921: Patrick Dennis

(d. 1976) The name given him at birth was Edward Everett Tanner II, but his father had already begun calling him Pat before he was born, and so Pat he remained throughout childhood. When he published his 1955 novel, Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escapade, based on growing up with his real life Aunt Mame Dennis, it became one of the best-selling books of the 20th century and gave him the name the public would know him by. The book remained  on the New York Times bestseller list for 112 weeks, and became the basis for the movie Auntie Mamein 1958 starring Rosalind Russell. But that wasn’t fabulous enough. It went on to become a Broadway musical in 1966 starring Angela Lansbury and Bea Arthur. From there it became another Hollywood film, this time based on the musical starring Lucille Ball, Robert Preston and Bea Arthur. Mame’s outrageous main character defined camp. Her commitment to imagination and style can best be summed up in her most famous line: “Life is a banquet, and most poor sons of bitches are starving to death. Live!”

Dennis married in 1948 and had two children. He struggled with his bisexuality and was said to have been a fixture in Greenwich Village. He tried to commit suicide at one point, and after years of leading a double life, he decided to leave his family after he had fallen in love with another man. By the 1970s, his novels fell out of favor and out of print. His caviar tastes and extravagant nature, not unlike those of his quasi-fictional Mame, soon had him flat broke. He began a second career as a butler, and a rather anonymous one at that, having reverted back to using his real surname. He worked at the estate of Ray Kroc, founder of McDonalds, where it is said that his employers had no idea who he really was. He died in at age 55 of pancreatic cancer.

Born On This Day, 1934: Don Bachardy

He met the famous writer, Christopher Isherwood (Aug 26), on Valentine’s day when he was eighteen and Isherwood was 48, and they remained together as partners until Isherwood’s death in 1986. Bachardy still lives in the house they shared together in Santa Monica. It’s a shame that virtually every biography about Bachardy starts with his association with the acclaimed author because Bachardy is a very successful painter in his own right. He studied at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles and the Slade School of Art in London. His first one-man exhibition was held in 1961 at London’s Redfern Gallery. Most of his work is portraiture, and several of his sketches appeared in Isherwood’s novels.

If Bachardy was sometimes overshadowed by his relationship with Isherwood, he seems to have come to terms with it. But it did pose problems between them earlier in their relationship. During a particularly difficult period when Bachardy was studying in London, they almost broke up. Isherwood imagined what it would be like to live without Bachardy, and wrote A Single Man in which Bachardy’s character was already dead before the novel began. If you know the novel’s story, the result is not a happy one.

But they did remain together, and were life-long collaborators as artists and as a couple, sharing in each other’s successes. As Bacardy explained in the 2007 documentary Chris & Don. A Love Story:

I don’t take any credit for what’s happened to me in my life. It all seems fate — my destiny and Chris’s destiny. We were actually exactly what the other wanted and needed, whether we knew it or not. Well, Chris knew it. I didn’t for a long time …. I know that Chris would agree that the last ten years or so were our best — not the early years when we were younger and beautiful, but the later years when we really just enjoyed each other’s company and worked together in a variety of ways. It all just enhanced our basic unity — unity with each other, our harmony.

Bachardy with a portrait of Isherwood

They continued collaborating, even as Isherwood was dying of cancer, when Bachardy would sketch him every single day, sometimes nine or ten times. “Chris was in a lot of pain towards the end,” he told The Sunday Times. “But he had sat for me so often over the years, and I knew this was something we could still do together. Each day, I could be with him intensely for hours on end.” On the day he died, Bachardy kept working on a sketch, a sketch of the man’s body with whom he had spent his entire adult life. “Chris would have been proud of me,” he said in the documentary. “He’d have said ‘that’s what an artist would do.’ And that’s what an artist did.”

And it’s what Bachardy did. He even drew eleven more sketches of Isherwood after he died, and was spared from drawing a twelfth when the doctor arrived. He later said, “Sometimes I see those drawings now and I can hardly bear them. I think, ‘How did I manage to do that without breaking up?'” The Animals: Love Letters Between Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy was published in 2013.

[Additional source: Chris Freeman. “Lives in Art: Isherwood and Bachardy.” The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide 15, n0. 5 (September-October 2008) 30-33.]

Eric Fanning Confirmed as Army Secretary

Here’s another historic first for LGBT Americans. This evening, the U.S. Senate confirmed the nomination of Eric Fanning as Army Secretary. This makes Fanning the first openly gay leader of any branch of the U.S. armed services, and it comes just four and a half years after “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was officially dismantled.

The voice vote came after Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan. dropped his opposition in a dispute over Obama administration efforts to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and transfer detainees to the U.S.

Roberts said he received assurances from the administration in private discussions that the clock has run out on moving detainees to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

Fanning served as the Army secretary’s principal adviser on management and operation of the service. He was undersecretary of the Air Force from April 2013 to February 2015, and for half a year was the acting secretary of the Air Force.

Fanning was nominated to the post last September. Roberts came under immense pressure to when it was learned that he had placed a hold on Fanning’s nomination. John McCain (R-AZ), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, took to the floor last month to implore that Roberts lift the hold. Roberts answered that he supported Fanning for the post, but he wanted assurances from the White House that Guantanamo detainees would not be transferred to Ft. Leavenworth.