Box Turtle Bulletin

LDS Members to Phone and Walk For California’s Prop 8

The following letter will be read to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS, a.k.a Mormons) in San Francisco this morning. We don’t know if it will be read in wards and stakes elsewhere in California.

DO NOT READ, COMMENT ON IN SACRAMENT MEETINGS, OR PRINT IN WEEKLY PROGRAMS:

PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING POINTS IN RELIEF SOCIETY AND PRIESTHOOD OPENING EXERCISES THIS SUNDAY, AUGUST 10, ONLY.

1. The First Presidency’s letter dated June 20, 2008, to all Church members in California states, “we ask that you do all you can to support the proposed constitutional amendment by donating of your means and time…”

2. In connection with the Proposition 8 campaign’s grassroots efforts, the supporting coalition, of which the Church is a member, will hold three walk/phone days to help generate voter support on August 16, 23 and September 6. We invite everyone who can do so to please participate either by “walking” that is, visiting homes door to door in assigned neighborhoods, or by phoning neighbors in specific assigned neighborhoods, for three hours each of these three days.

3. Church members who have been asked to help with the campaign will be calling you at your homes to officially ask you to help and give you further information about where and what time to meet this Saturday

4. They will also ask you to bring a friend from another faith to assist.

We, as a Bishopric, ask you to please participate in this important endeavor. The First Presidency also stated that “our best efforts are required to preserve the sacred institution of marriage.”

Family: It’s about time!

LA Times Editorial: Oppose Proposition 8

The LA Times has issued its first recommendation of the upcoming election:

It’s the same sentence as in 2000: “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” Yet the issue that will be put before voters Nov. 4 is radically different. This time, the wording would be used to rescind an existing constitutional right to marry. We fervently hope that voters, whatever their personal or religious convictions, will shudder at such a step and vote no on Proposition 8.
…
To be sure, the court overturned Proposition 22, a vote of the people. That is the court’s duty when a law is unconstitutional, even if it is exceedingly popular. Civil rights are commonly hard-won, and not the result of widespread consensus. Whites in the South vehemently rejected the 1954 Supreme Court decision to desegregate schools. For that matter, Californians have accused the state Supreme Court of obstructing the people’s will on marriage before — in 1948, when it struck down a ban on interracial marriages.

Fundamental rights are exactly that. They should neither wait for popular acceptance, nor be revoked because it is lacking.

Prop 8 Description Upheld in Court

When the proponents of Proposition 8 distributed petitions to change the California Constitution to ban same-sex marriage, the title and summary prepared by the Secretary of State rightly noted that such an initiative would impose a limit on marriage to exclude same-sex couples from being added to the classes recognized.

Limit on Marriage. Constitutional Amendment.

Amends the California Constitution to provide that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local government: The measure would have no fiscal effect on state or local governments. This is because there would be no change to the manner in which marriages are currently recognized by the state.

However, in May the California Supreme Court ruled that the state cannot restrict its recognition of marriage to opposite-sex couples and offer a separate and lesser recognition to same-sex couples. By doing so, they changed the fact pattern.

It is no longer true that “there would be no change to the manner in which marriages are currently recognized by the state.” It is no longer true that this proposed amendment would place a limit on which classes can have their marriage added to recognition status but rather it removes recognition from a class already recognized.

So the Attorney General rewrote the description to reflect the current situation:

ELIMINATES RIGHT OF SAME-SEX COUPLES TO MARRY. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT.

Changes California Constitution to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry. Provides that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California. Fiscal Impact: Over the next few years, potential revenue loss, mainly sales taxes, totaling in the several tens of millions of dollars, to state and local governments. In the long run, likely little fiscal impact on state and local governments.

Gays and anti-gays both recognized that this change of description worked in the favor of those who oppose the initiative. The public is much less likely to remove a right from a class of citizens than it is to deny extending such a right in the first place.

Proponents of the amendment sued to have the language changed. They argue that “eliminates” is a “negative verb” and thus should not be used. They wanted language that did not discuss married same-sex couples at all or make any reference to the change in circumstances that would occur to such couples.

They did not succeed. Today Judge Timothy Frawley ruled that the language can stay (SF Chronicle):

“The attorney general did not abuse his discretion in concluding that the chief purpose and effect of the initiative is to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry,” Fralwey right. “The attorney general’s title is an accurate statement.”

The judge also restricted the language of arguments that Prop 8 supporters wish to place in the election pamphlets, though not as far as opponents sought. Supporters wished to state

“In health education classes, state law requires teachers to instruct children as young as kindergarteners about marriage … If the gay marriage ruling is not overturned, teachers will be required to teach young children there is no difference between gay marriage and traditional marriage.

“We should not accept a court decision that results in public schools teaching our kids that gay marriage is okay,”

According to the Bay Area Reporter

In his ruling, Frawley said, “As petitioners have established, current state law does not require school districts to teach anything about marriage or same-sex marriage at any grade level. Moreover, for those school districts that choose to include instruction about marriage as part of a health education curriculum, Education Code [section] 51240 requires that they allow parents to excuse their children from any such instruction conflicting with the parents’ religious or moral convictions.”

But the judge allowed the Proposition 8 supporters to claim that such conditions “could” or “may” occur. He also required other minor language changes.

Anti-gays have indicated that they will appeal the judge’s decisions.

UPDATE: (SF Chron)

The state’s official description of Proposition 8 on the November ballot will remain as is, a statement that the measure would eliminate same-sex couples’ right to marry in California.

Sponsors of the measure argued that the title and summary drafted by Attorney General Jerry Brown were argumentative and designed to encourage voters to oppose Prop. 8. But after two defeats in court last week, the Yes on 8 campaign said today it would not appeal to the state Supreme Court.

An 8 Reminder

Today, on 8/8/8, take a moment to consider what you can do to defeat Amendment 8.

Anti-Gay School Board Endorses Proposition 8

James Hartline, an anti-gay activist in San Diego, is a peculiar individual. He is an ex-gay who is convinced that God spoke to him out of a television set and that he will be divinely healed of HIV which will result in a world wide spiritual revival based on Hartline’s prophesies.

He also believes that God instructed him to run for city counsel. Hartline came in last on the ballot (behind a man arrested for masturbating in public while campaigning) which he believes indicates that the Christians of San Diego have failed the test God set before them.

James has become increasingly bitter over the response of San Diegans to him. He now regularly denounces the Mayor and City Counsel members, the local Republican party, and other elected officials whom he believes have betrayed him and his exacting homophobic dogma. There are very few people who live up to James’ anti-gay expectations.

But one elected official has escaped Hartline’s wrath, Grossmont Union High School District boardmember Priscilla Schreiber. In fact, Hartline and Schreiber are such allies that Schreiber blogged as a representative for Hartline during his election.

Schreiber was elected to the board in a battle over whether the district would have a non-discrimination policy that included sexual orientation. Schreiber opposed any programs that discouraged anti-gay bigotry, a position that sat well with the local constituency.

Schreiber has since used her position as a cudgel against any safe space or sense of worth for gay students and other gay persons. She has described GLSEN as “a radical homosexual advocacy group that seeks to promote homosexual acceptance to young students in public schools” and declared, “Parents send their students to school to receive the best education from the best teachers, not so they can be indoctrinated into homosexuality, lesbianism or transsexualism.”

In 2002, the school board edited a film on tolerance to exclude a message of inclusion. The mother of a boy assualted for his orientation objected.

School trustee Priscilla Schreiber “said the portrayal of a gay authority figure,” (a police officer Chuck Limbert of the San Francisco Police Department, whom I have met) “sends a message that homosexuality is normal and acceptable, which she said does not belong in the classroom.”

In fact, Schreiber and her co-boardmembers so favor anti-gay activism that they sued to overturn state law prohibiting public schools from discriminating because of sexual orientation or identity. And last year she attacked the San Diego City Counsel for their declaration of support for Gay Pride Month.

Priscilla Schreiber, President of Grossmont Unified High School District, told the council, “How can you betray this city’s Christian heritage by voting every year for an event that destroys our youth?”

So it should be no surprise that the San Diego Union-Tribune is reporting the following:

The Grossmont Union High School District went on record yesterday supporting a November initiative that would ban same-sex marriage in California.

AdvertisementThe board voted 4-0 to pass a resolution endorsing Proposition 8, which would amend the state Constitution to recognize marriage only between a man and a woman.

Schreiber and her fellow anti-gay activists are living up to their expectations. I’m sure Hartline approves.

Sci-Fi Writer Advocates Overthrow of Government If Prop 8 Fails

Do you think shootings in Knoxville are a one-time thing? Science fiction author Orson Scott Card wants to take it up several notches if California’s Proposition 8 fails.

In an astonishingly paranoid and incoherent op-ed appearing in the July 24 Mormon Times, Card zig-zags from one point to the next, somehow drawing in property rights, the color of grey and the properties of asphalt before he’s finally is able to get around to his point, which apparently is this:

How long before married people answer the dictators thus: Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn.

Card is a very well-regarded science fiction writer. His novel Ender’s Game and its sequel Speaker for the Dead both won the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award, making Card the first author to win both of science fiction’s top prizes in two consecutive years. This makes this rambling screed all the more remarkable. It’s not only abysmally constructed logic, but it’s horribly written.

But at least he’s consistent. His manifesto from 2004 was much longer and even more rambling. And that one is a mere reflection of what he wrote in 1990:

Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books, not to be indiscriminately enforced against anyone who happens to be caught violating them, but to be used when necessary to send a clear message that those who flagrantly violate society’s regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society.

Since I’m not much of a science fiction fan, I’ve never read his books. I don’t know what kind of world he conjures in his works of fiction. All I know is that what he’s trying to conjure in the real world is far darker than anything I’ve seen in quite a while.

[Hat tips: Nick Literski and Jody Wheeler]

CBN News A Year Late

The Christian Broadcasting Networ is reporting a story today about how firefighters were forced to man a vehicle in the San Diego Gay Pride Parade. The only problem, the story is about 2007 Gay Pride.

But there is a 2008 fireman story, and it was reported by the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Tonai, a 17-year fire department veteran, signed up to ride in the 2008 gay pride parade under the city’s all-volunteer parade policy, which San Diego Fire-Rescue Chief Tracy Jarman instituted in response to the 2007 controversy.

“A whole bunch of people wanted to do this,” Tonai told me.

But on parade day many of them were off battling wildfires up north, and the job went to Tonai and three female colleagues.
…
I asked him what he thought of his parade duty.

“The crowd response was just awesome,” Tonai said. “To me, it justifies what I do. There’s definitely nothing negative about this event.”

And as for the lawsuit filed last year by firemen who were offended by “celebration of lewdness and obscenity in support of the homosexual agenda”, well its certainly no without its own entertainment.

Aguirre, having learned that one of the firefighters subscribes to Playboy and brought copies to the station house, wants to question them about the magazine’s racy photos and cartoons.

He contends the firefighters can’t plausibly claim they were subjected to workplace harassment from sexually explicit behavior at the parade when they voluntarily view sexually explicit materials on the job.
…
The firefighters’ lawsuit contained 26 pages of photographs purportedly portraying “explicit and offensive sexual remarks and gestures” from the 2007 parade.

The city trumped that in a brief that contains 36 pages of “sexually explicit” images from six recent issues of Playboy.

Frothing Lunacy, Part 2

Perhaps Jim Garlow, pastor of Skyline Wesleyan Church in San Diego, found Bam Bam Barber to be an inspiration. Because Garlow has come up with some projections about Proposition 8 that rival Barber’s carnival of nutjobbery.

Garlow has organized a teleconference with pastors and lay leaders to explain to them just how important it is for Prop. 8 to pass. “[If] we lose, we go to jail. How soon I don’t know. But the fact is this is the kind of case where political correctness is bearing down,” the pastor contends. “If a pastor refuses to perform a homosexual wedding, if we lose on this, he will be or she will be so incredibly vulnerable at that time.”

He is organizing training for California pastors and lay leaders to get out the Christian vote in November — and he has a message to pastors who are reluctant. “If you don’t care about this campaign, don’t want to get involved, you can go to jail and start a wonderful prison ministry,” Garlow adds. “But if you want religious freedom, we’re going to have to win this thing.”

The sad thing is that Garlow is not just some anti-gay whacktivist ranting whatever he thinks will get him attention.

Garlow is the pastor of an influential church with regular attendance of several thousand. And he’s making these bizzare claims as though he believes them to be true.

Public Utility Opposes Prop 8

Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), the largest public utility company in Northern California, has announced that they oppose Proposition 8, the anti-gay marriage amendment. (LA Times)

Giving a financial and public relations boost to gay marriage proponents, PG&E announced today that it is giving $250,000 to the No on Proposition 8 campaign. *

The utility also said it will spearhead the formation of a business advisory council that will seek to get other businesses around California to to defeat the ballot initiative that would amend the state constitution to define marriage as only between a man and a woman.

AT&T and Wells Fargo have also contributed to efforts to opposite this discriminatory amendment.

I wonder if those Northern California anti-gays who are boycotting McDonalds are willing to stand on principle. Will they be willing to go without water and power, or does their passion only extend to changing burger brands?

UPDATE

* Wells Fargo and AT&T have given to Equality California. Their contributions have not been earmarked for opposition to Proposition 8.

Bastian Gives $1,000,000 to Fight Proposition 8

At Saturday’s controversial Human Rights Campaign dinner in San Francisco, WordPerfect founder and HRC Board Member Bruce Bastian wrote a check for a million dollars to fight against the anti-gay marriage amendment in California. (San Francisco Chronicle)

Bastian grew up in a conservative, Mormon family in Twin Falls, Idaho. He went on a mission for the church and received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Mormon-sponsored Brigham Young University. But he has been at odds with the church’s view on homosexuality since coming out as a gay man.

The Mormon church has spoken strongly in favor of Prop. 8. In a June 20 letter, the church’s top leaders called on California Mormons to “do all you can to support the proposed constitutional amendment by donating of your means and time.”

Bastian heard this call and felt that he needed to do what he could to counter the effort.

It is not yet certain as to what organization is the recipient of the Bastian’s contribution or who will make decisions of how best to utilize the money raised by HRC on Saturday night. However, we hope that HRC will work with Californians who are most familiar with the local culture and that turf wars will not result in a divided front in our efforts to retain our rights.

We also hope that HRC will join with local efforts in Arizona and Florida in their battles to keep discrimination from becoming enshrined in their state constitutions. If HRC takes steps that appear to be cooperative and contributory to the citizens of the states impacted, it would go far to begin rebuilding trust from those in the community who have felt betrayed or ignored by the national organization.

Newsweek Justifies Rumor and Innuendo as Source

Earlier this week I criticized Ramin Setoodeh’s Newsweek article about the “flamboyance” of 15 year old murder victim Larry King. Now Newsweek’s Kurt Soller has written a follow up that is, frankly, disgusting.

Soller spends a few paragraphs quoting from some of the 4,000 responses. If you are easily angered, I’d advise against reading Soller’s piece.

While some of the comments he quotes share my ire that Newsweek was quick to point out every foible of King while refusing to mention reports that McInerney and his friends had picked on him, some seemed to put words to Setoodeh’s innuendo that King was really to blame for his own murder and that McInerney was the true victim.

Soller presents these justifications for premeditated, execution style murder as though they are just another opinion. It makes me nauseous that a credible news magazine can act as though “you blamed the victim” is the moral equivalent of “he had it coming” and that both are worth reporting without comment.

And what further annoyed me was the closing paragraph. Maeve Fox, the prosecutor in this case, told the magazine that they had inaccurate information and should not have relied on whispered anonymous rumors. Too bad.

While Fox thought the anonymous sourcing was unnecessary, Setoodeh says his story would have been impossible to tell without it.

Setoodeh had a story to tell. And he wasn’t about to let journalistic integrity stand in his way. And Newsweek applauds him for it.

The Scapegoating of Brandon McInerney

Ventura County Superior Court Judge Douglas Daily ruled yesterday that Brandon McInerney, the 14-year-old who shot and killed Lawrence King at school in February and was charged with first-degree murder and a hate crime, can be tried as an adult.

McInerney’s lawyer, William Quest, along with a large coalition of gay groups, had urged the court to try McInerney as a juvenile. That coalition includes the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, Equality California, Gay Straight Alliance Network, Lambda Legal, the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and the Transgender Law Center.

I know this is a controversial, but I see no purpose this ruling serves. There has already been one tragedy — Larry’s life is over — and there will soon be another. What this court and district attorney is doing setting the stage for a 14-year-old with no prior record to spend the next 50 years in prison. If this path reaches its logical conclusion, two lives will be over.

Do we really think that solves anything?

California only recently passed a comprehensive anti-bullying measure to specifically protect LGBT students in the schools. The ink on that law was barely dry when King was shot, and it’s unclear how much, if any, the curriculum had been revised or programs put into place to comply with that law. And I have yet to have heard any specific steps that the schools in Ventura County may have taken to instruct their students about bullying sexual minority children specifically.

Just a few weeks ago, we saw an anti-bullying law killed in North Carolina because it listed sexual orientation as a reason schoolchildren might be targets of bullying. Notice the clause that started the controversy: sexual orientation. It wasn’t race, religion, or abilities that sparked the controversy. It was because sexual orientation was specified that the bill was killed, and opponents to that bill were vocally proud of having killed it for that very reason.

And that specificity is important. You can tell kids that it’s not okay to beat up Black kids, or kids who speak a different language, or kids who are disabled, or who kids who follow a different religion, and they can understand that. And they can certainly hear it loud and clear when measures to protect LGBT kids are shot down because we don’t want to “approve” of some people. We’ve even seen so-called “experts” extolled the value of teasing and tormenting LGBT kids.

So just saying “don’t bully” isn’t enough. As any parent will tell you, teens and pre-teens are preeminent experts at exploiting loopholes. A huge, gaping loophole of being a sissy — that is all the “permission” some kids need. Especially one whose home environment, like Brandon’s, may have taught him that violence is a way to solve problems. Brandon’s own father had been convicted of shooting his mother in the arm just before he was born.

There’s no information to suggest that Brandon and Larry’s teachers or school administrators did anything to calm this particular situation. And there’s certainly no indication that Brandon received any appropriate guidance from his parents. And all we have to do is look in the newspapers to see plenty of other examples where other “responsible” adults, by their silence as well as their rhetoric, give a signal that kids like Brandon can take as a green light.

We asked last February where the voice of the Church was concerning Lawrence King’s death, but we’ve heard nothing but silence. We’ve searched for Lawrence King’s name on Focus On the Family’s web site and CitizenLink. Guess what? There’s nothing but silence. Look at the Family Research Council’s web site. More silence. Same with American Family Association’s OneNewsNow, the Christian Post, Christianity Today, the Christian Newswire and the Baptist Press. Nobody has raised their voice. Instead, we’ve had months of silence.

We know how easy it is for kids to pick up the idea that if something isn’t prohibited, then it is implicitly permitted. How many other kids are being influenced by the roaring silence coming from the so-called “values” bunch in the wake of Larry’s murder?

In the times of the Temple in Jerusalem, a goat was driven off into the wilderness as part of the ceremonies of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. The goat was meant to carry the sins of the people out of the city. And being sent off alone into the desert full of wolves and other wild animals without the protection of the herd, the goat’s fate was sealed. That goat was later translated as the “(e)scape goat,” or scapegoat.

We are about to send 14-year-old Brandon McInerney into the wilderness of the California penal system. McInerney committed a horrific crime, one that cannot go unpunished. But that young teen also cannot be expected to carry the sins of those who, by their silence and their rhetoric, have given the tacit green light over and over. He cannot atone for their sins.

Gay kids aren’t the only victims when the adults around them fail to do the right thing. Larry King’s live was already snuffed out far too early. Destroying another one won’t solve the problem, nor will it absolve the guilt of those who allow the bullying to continue.

Thanks, Ducky

Life has a way of circling back on you.

In the late 80’s, I rented, with roommates, a very cool flat-roofed glass-walled house in the Nihonmachi (Japantown) section of San Jose. This was definitely the House of Love as everyone I knew who lived there met someone, fell in love, moved out, and was replaced with another single person.

Rich, one of the original three, fell in love with Chris. And though for all practical purposes he moved in with Chris (including for the time his very unique mother stayed with me for three weeks), Rich was my roommate for over a year.

Rich was the one who brought in Ducky as a roommate. Ducky was a small, funny, quirky girl with a mullet (though she wasn’t a lesbian). And, in addition to adding to the flavor of the house, she put up with me (not an easy task at the time).

I always thought of Ducky as “Ducky”, so when reading an article in 2004 about some woman named Kate it took me a while to recognize the name. But when I read that Kate looked to her best friends, a gay couple named Chris and Rich, as a model for how a marriage should work, memories came rushing back.

This week I receive a mass-email plea from “Jim & Kate DeLaHunt for Equality California” asking for contributions to help the fight to keep marriage legal. It started:

Ten years ago, we decided to take the plunge.
We got married.

Standing at our side were our friends, Rich and Chris. I don’t think we would have gotten married without their good example.

Jim and Kate promised to match the contributions brought in by the plea.

To my old friend and roommate Ducky, I say thank you for your support for the rights of my community. Thank you for lending your voice, your time, your efforts and your money to a cause that many straight people believe doesn’t really benefit their own lives.

And to Rich and Chris, thanks for modeling what love, commitment and marriage are all about.

Now to our readers: If you want to make a difference in an election battle that is likely to directly impact the lives of all gay Americans, please contribute to Equality California.

California Changes Prop 8 Ballot Language

The original title was “Limit on Marriage. Constitutional Amendment”. Now it’s been changed for the better (PDF: 2 pages):

ELIMINATES RIGHT OF SAME-SEX COUPLES TO MARRY.
INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT

Changes California Constitution to eliminate right of same-sex couples to marry. Provides that only a marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.

Fiscal Impact: Over the next few years, potential revenue loss, mainly sales taxes, totaling in the several tens of millions of dollars, to state and local governments. In the long run, likely little fiscal impact to state and local governments.

Now when Californians go to the polls, they have to think about how their vote may actually take away something that already exists.

Laguna Beach Opposes Prop 8

Per the LA Times

The majority Republican City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to oppose Proposition 8, intended to define marriage in California as between a man and a woman.

“Laguna has a live-and-let-live attitude,” said Councilwoman Toni Iseman, who recommended the action with Mayor Jane Egly. “We don’t tolerate diversity, we embrace diversity.”

Laguna Beach was – until recently – home of the oldest continuously operating gay bar in the west. But rising housing and living costs coupled with better commuting ability with greater Orange County has severely diminished the gay population of the beachside resort town – or at least those of lesser means. So the Boom Boom Room, like other gay mainstays, is no more.

It is encouraging to hear that the city maintains its commitment to gay equality despite the change in demographics.