Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyPosts Tagged As: Daily Agenda
June 5th, 2012
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Expected to Rule on Prop 8 En Banc Hearing: Sacramento, CA. Last February, a three judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s ruling that Prop 8 was unconstitutional. The Alliance Defense Fund, which is defending Prop 8 in federal court, then petitioned for an en banc re-hearing of the appeal before an eleven judge panel of the Ninth Circuit. Yesterday, the Ninth Circuit announced that it will issue an order today in the case of the federal lawsuit against Prop 8. That order is expected to address the request for an en banc hearing. In case you missed it, Timothy Kincaid yesterday laid out the various paths the appeals process might take here, depending on today’s order.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
Pneumocystis Pneumonia — Los Angeles: 1981. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published this notice in the June 5, 1981 edition of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. This report would be the first clinical description of a new disease which we would later know as AIDS.
Pneumocystis Pneumonia — Los Angeles
In the period October 1980-May 1981, 5 young men, all active homosexuals, were treated for biopsy-confirmed Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia at 3 different hospitals in Los Angeles, California. Two of the patients died. All 5 patients had laboratory-confirmed previous or current cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection and candidal mucosal infection. Case reports of these patients follow.Patient 1: A previously healthy 33-year-old man developed P. carinii pneumonia and oral mucosal candidiasis in March 1981 after a 2-month history of fever associated with elevated liver enzymes, leukopenia, and CMV viruria. The serum complement-fixation CMV titer in October 1980 was 256; in may 1981 it was 32.* The patient’s condition deteriorated despite courses of treatment with trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (TMP/SMX), pentamidine, and acyclovir. He died May 3, and postmortem examination showed residual P. carinii and CMV pneumonia, but no evidence of neoplasia.
Patient 2: A previously healthy 30-year-old man developed p. carinii pneumonia in April 1981 after a 5-month history of fever each day and of elevated liver-function tests, CMV viruria, and documented seroconversion to CMV, i.e., an acute-phase titer of 16 and a convalescent-phase titer of 28* in anticomplement immunofluorescence tests. Other features of his illness included leukopenia and mucosal candidiasis. His pneumonia responded to a course of intravenous TMP/.SMX, but, as of the latest reports, he continues to have a fever each day.
Patient 3: A 30-year-old man was well until January 1981 when he developed esophageal and oral candidiasis that responded to Amphotericin B treatment. He was hospitalized in February 1981 for P. carinii pneumonia that responded to TMP/SMX. His esophageal candidiasis recurred after the pneumonia was diagnosed, and he was again given Amphotericin B. The CMV complement-fixation titer in March 1981 was 8. Material from an esophageal biopsy was positive for CMV.
Patient 4: A 29-year-old man developed P. carinii pneumonia in February 1981. He had had Hodgkins disease 3 years earlier, but had been successfully treated with radiation therapy alone. He did not improve after being given intravenous TMP/SMX and corticosteroids and died in March. Postmortem examination showed no evidence of Hodgkins disease, but P. carinii and CMV were found in lung tissue.
Patient 5: A previously healthy 36-year-old man with clinically diagnosed CMV infection in September 1980 was seen in April 1981 because of a 4-month history of fever, dyspnea, and cough. On admission he was found to have P. carinii pneumonia, oral candidiasis, and CMV retinitis. A complement-fixation CMV titer in April 1981 was 128. The patient has been treated with 2 short courses of TMP/SMX that have been limited because of a sulfa-induced neutropenia. He is being treated for candidiasis with topical nystatin.
The diagnosis of Pneumocystis pneumonia was confirmed for all 5 patients antemortem by closed or open lung biopsy. The patients did not know each other and had no known common contacts or knowledge of sexual partners who had had similar illnesses. Two of the 5 reported having frequent homosexual contacts with various partners. All 5 reported using inhalant drugs, and 1 reported parenteral drug abuse. Three patients had profoundly depressed in vitro proliferative responses to mitogens and antigens. Lymphocyte studies were not performed on the other 2 patients.
Reported by MS Gottlieb, MD, HM Schanker, MD, PT Fan, MD, A Saxon, MD, JD Weisman, DO, Div of Clinical Immunology-Allergy; Dept of Medicine, UCLA School of Medicine; I Pozalski, MD, Cedars-Mt. Siani Hospital, Los Angeles; Field services Div, Epidemiology Program Office, CDC.
Editorial Note: Pneumocystis pneumonia in the United States is almost exclusively limited to severely immunosuppressed patients (1). The occurrence of pneumocystosis in these 5 previously healthy individuals without a clinically apparent underlying immunodeficiency is unusual. The fact that these patients were all homosexuals suggests an association between some aspect of a homosexual lifestyle or disease acquired through sexual contact and Pneumocystis pneumonia in this population. All 5 patients described in this report had laboratory-confirmed CMV disease or virus shedding within 5 months of the diagnosis of Pneumocystis pneumonia. CMV infection has been shown to induce transient abnormalities of in vitro cellular-immune function in otherwise healthy human hosts (2,3). Although all 3 patients tested had abnormal cellular-immune function, no definitive conclusion regarding the role of CMV infection in these 5 cases can be reached because of the lack of published data on cellular-immune function in healthy homosexual males with and without CMV antibody. In 1 report, 7 (3.6%) of 194 patients with pneumocystosis also had CMV infection’ 40 (21%) of the same group had at least 1 other major concurrent infection (1). A high prevalence of CMV infections among homosexual males was recently reported: 179 (94%) had CMV viruria; rates for 101 controls of similar age who were reported to be exclusively heterosexual were 54% for seropositivity and zero fro viruria (4). In another study of 64 males, 4 (6.3%) had positive tests for CMV in semen, but none had CMV recovered from urine. Two of the 4 reported recent homosexual contacts. These findings suggest not only that virus shedding may be more readily detected in seminal fluid than urine, but also that seminal fluid may be an important vehicle of CMV transmission (5).
All the above observations suggest the possibility of a cellular-immune dysfunction related to a common exposure that predisposes individuals to opportunistic infections such as pneumocystosis and candidiasis. Although the role of CMV infection in the pathogenesis of pneumocystosis remains unknown, the possibility of P. carinii infection must be carefully considered in a differential diagnosis for previously healthy homosexual males with dyspnea and pneumonia.
References
- Walzer PD, Perl DP, Krogstad DJ, Rawson G, Schultz MG. Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia in the United States. Epidemiologic, diagnostic, and clinical features. Ann Intern Med 1974;80:83-93.
- Rinaldo CR, Jr, Black PH, Hirsh MS. Interaction of cytomegalovirus with leukocytes from patients with mononucleosis due to cytomegalovirus. J Infect Dis 1977;136:667-78.
- Rinaldo CR, Jr, Carney WP, Richter BS, Black PH, Hirsh MS. Mechanisms of immunosuppression in cytomegaloviral mononucleosis. J Infect Dis 1980;141:488-95.
- Drew WL, Mintz L, Miner RC, Sands M, Ketterer B. Prevalence of cytomegalovirus infection in homosexual men. J Infect Dis 1981;143:188-92.
- Lang DJ, Kummer JF. Cytomegalovirus in semen: observations in selected populations,. J Infect Dis 1975; 132:472-3.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
John Maynard Keynes: 1883. The British economist has had a profound infliuence on macroeconomics and government economic policy. His ideas now carry his name — Keynesian economics — which argued that free markets didn’t always provide the best solutions in times of economic turmoil. He argued that counter cyclic spending during economic downturns could provide vital demand to keep businesses and industries afloat in times of lower employment levels. He advocated economic stimulus policies to keep people employed. “With men and plants unemployed, it is ridiculous to say that we cannot afford these new developments,” he wrote in 1928 of the need for spending on public works. “It is precisely with these plants and these men that we shall afford them.”
Keynes’s economic policies weren’t the only thing revolutionary about him in the early twentieth century. He was also very open about his sexuality. Between 1901 and 1915, he kept separate diaries where he tabulated his sexual encounters in a kind of a code that has baffled historians and biographers since then. He was a member of the Bloomsbury Group, a group of English writers, artists and philosophers which included E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Lytton Stratchy, and the artist Duncan Grant, who is said to have been Keynes’s great love. Stratchy was also a lover, but he must have gotten a glimpse at Keynes’s diary: Stratchy was put off by Keynes’s manner of “treat[ing] his love affairs statistically.” Keynes eventually married the Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova, and their marriage did appear to have been a satisfactory one.
Suze Orman: 1951. She started out with a B.A. in social work and worked as a waitress in Berkeley before becoming a financial adviser for Merril Lynch. In 1983, she moved to Prudential Bacahe Securities, where she became vice-president of investments. Four years later, she quit to found her own financial firm. Not bad for someone without an MBA. In 2007, she began appearing on television. After she gave away a million copies of her e-book, Women and Money,following an appearance on Oprah, she began hosting her own financial advice program, The Suze Orman Show, which airs on weekends on CNBC. She is also a regular columnist for Oprah Winfrey’s O magazine, and she continues to appear occasionally on Oprah’s OWN network. In 2010, Orman married Kathy Travis, a co-producer of on The Suze Orman Show.
Chad Allen: 1974. I didn’t know this: one of Chad’s early major roles was on the television series St. Elsewhere, where he played the autistic son of Dr. Westphall from 1983, to 1988. He also appeared in Our House and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. In 1996, he was outed by the supermarket tabloid The Globe, which published photos of him kissing another man in a hot tub. When he was cast to play the role of real-life Christian missionary Nate Saint in the 2006 docudrama End of the Spear, conservative Christians were outraged over an openly gay man in the role. The real Steve Saint, Nate’s son, however put aside his own reservations. After seeing the film, he felt that God was pleased with Chad playing his father. End of the Spear became one of the few independently released Christian movies to draw more than a million dollars in its first three weekends of release. In 2007, he took on Christian themes again when he starred in Save Me, about a drug-addicted man who entered an ex-gay program. In 2011, he co-produced and appeared in Hollywood to Dolllywood, a documentary about twin brothers who travel across country in an RV named “Joline” to meet their idol, Dolly Parton.
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June 4th, 2012
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Dr. Drew To Discuss Ex-Gay Therapy: HLN (Formerly CNN Headline News). Educator, sexologist, ex-gay survivor, and author of Ex-Gay No Way: Survival and Recovery from Religious Abuse
Lambda Literary Awards: New York, NY. Special honorees at tonight’s Lambda Literary Award ceremony are Tales of the City author Armistead Maupin, amd feminist writer and activist Kate Millett. Awards will be given out for twenty-four categories including drama, children’s/young adult, memoirs, general fiction, mystery, poetry, romance, erotica, nonfiction and LGBT studies. You can see the full list if finalists here.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
“Contribution to the Study of Intermediacy”: 1918. Since the late 1880s, American medical and mental health professionals had been struggling with the question of what to do with those who fell outside of conventional gender roles and sexual expressions. For centuries, such people were considered criminals and were severely punished, often with their lives. In the nineteenth century, a new science of sexology had emerged which characterized the experience that today we would consider gay or transgender as “constitutional” rather than transgressive. The truly liberal-minded reformers of the era called for scrapping criminal codes against these “intermediate” types, but what to do next was a matter of debate. But as Dr. E.S. Shepherd, writing for the June 1918 issue of the American Journal of Urology and Sexology, that debate wasn’t always a high-minded one:
THIS paper had its origin in a remark by the editor that perverts should be given a dose of HCN (Hydrochloric Cyanide). One is frequently tempted to agree with that prescription, but it might be well to first make sure that such wholesale elimination would not remove a number of valuable citizens. When this was suggested to the editor he advised that I sketch for the Journal a few intermediates who were of social value. Such a sketch presents insuperable difficulties. Out of the prevailing ignorance there arises a serious prejudice which maintains that intermediacy and perversity are synonymous. To call a man an intermediate is, in the popular conception of the word, equivalent to calling him a fellatrist and the mere accusation of such iniquity will ruin any man, even though he can prove his innocence, and show that the accusation was made with intent to kill him. We are never really able to b!lieve that the accused was innocent, partly I fear, because we hope he was guilty. …
One is therefore compelled to cling to quite general statements. As is well known, our unsatisfied sexuality motivates that particularly cruel and malignant persecution which we mete out to those suspected of sexual trespasses and this persecution is intensified manyfold where the trespass involves what we have designated as perversity. Possibly our own repressed perversities find relief in such outbursts, just as vice-crusading serves similarly for the normal sex: hunger. At any rate one can not tell the truth as frankly as one might desire without involving many innocent people in a most unjust persecution. Physicians, for the most part, see only the lower classes of intermediates — those neurotics who are both perverse and mentally inferior or the spiritually feebleminded who call for treatment of one disease or another. Hence arises a distorted perspective which ignores those buoyantly healthy intermediates who frequently do not know that they are different trom other men and who often are not so, judged by the physician’s standards. The doctor thus falls into the vulgar error of supposing that a mixed psyche (the fundamental criterion of intermediacy) is synonymous with fellatio, sodomy, and the various sadistic-masochistic methods of detumescence. This supposition is true in about the same degree as the assumption that all normal men have sexual relations, or desire them, with all of their female acquaintances — some do, some don’t, more or less, according to the individual and the circumstances.
What’s fascinating about this paper is that Shepherd named the very problem that stood in the way of studying LGBT people for the next half decade: that almost all studies would be of LGBT people who sought (or were compelled to seek) psychological treatment. Since doctors only saw LGBT people who were disturbed, the medical and mental health professions concluded that all LGBT people were disturbed. “The problem,” he wrote,” is greatly obscured by the fact that most intermediates pass unrecognized even by their most intimate friends, since any hint of intermediacy involves under the prevailing ignorance the accusation of perversity which means ruin.”
Shephard’s paper was light years ahead of its time in the way he not only laid bare the question of what was “normal,” but questioned why “intermediates” didn’t pass muster under that definition.
It can not be too soon realized that intermediates are, in common with others, human beings and subject to the same environmental forces either elevating or degrading. Furthermore, there are all degrees of intermediacy both psychic and physical. There are, for example, fellatrists who, in intellectual acumen, spiritual elevation, or altruism and artistic creativeness, are wonderfully endowed. That they are not recognized as such is merely a question of our social conventions and the correlated defensive measures. On the other hand we have the male prostitute of the streets and beaches whose grossness is in no way better or worse than that of the pimp or rogue. In between lie all degrees of physical ‘normality’ combined with an intermediate psyche and the reverse. The point to keep in mind is that we have all degrees from the spiritually-gifted intermediates or pseudo-normals, grading down to the grossest natures. Nor should it be forgotten that many a libidinous male who boasts his ‘normality’ is spiritually mere sewage.
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June 3rd, 2012
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend:Birmingham, UK; Boston, MA; Davenport, IA; Detroit, MI; Dresden, Germany; Gothenburg, Sweden; Kansas City, MO; Los Ranchos, NM; Pittsburgh, PA; Queens, NY; Salt Lake City, UT; Santa Cruz, CA; Sonoma Co, CA; Springfield, MA; Tulsa, OK and Winnipeg, MB.
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Beaver Lake, NY; Boston, MA; Clinton, NY and Syracuse, NY.
Other Events This Weekend: AIDS Lifecycle, San Francisco to Los Angeles; Connecticut Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Hartford, CT; Gay Days at Walt Disney World, Orlando, FL.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
“Morals Raids” Staged in Tampa: 1961. 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 Floria.” Thirty-six gay people were arrested in the dragnet, with another 100 to 300 more expected to be taken into custody once the raids were finished. The crackdown was the result of a year long investigation. Among those arrested was a thirty-five year old principal of Citrus Park Elementary School, who was being held on a $1,000 bond. Another person taken into custody was 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.
Aversion Therapy in Management of 43 Homosexuals: 1967. An article under that title by M.J. MacCulloch and M.P. 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 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.” As far as other 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, whenDr. 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. Ten years later still, aversion therapy would finally be largely abandoned — not just for ethical reasons, but also as the result of the growing realization that it simply didn’t work.
MacCullough and Feldman’s 1967 paper can be downloaded for free from the National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Alla Nazimova: 1879. 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 Camile, a 1921 film which featured Rudolf Valentino. 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 is the 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.
George Quaintance: 1902. “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.
It was during this time that 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 list. 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
Josephine Baker: 1906. 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
“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.”
Allen Ginsberg: 1926. “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 birth not in print but at a celebrated 1955 public reading at Six Gallery in San Francisco, where Ginsberg’s dissenchantment 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 when City Lights Press published Howl and Other Poems
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 unceremoneoulsy 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
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June 2nd, 2012
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Albany, NY (Black & Latino Pride); Birmingham, UK; Boston, MA; Buffalo, NY; Cambridge/Kitchener/Waterloo ON; Davenport, IA; Dayton, OH; Detroit, MI; Dresden, Germany; Gothenburg, Sweden; Honolulu, HI; Kansas City, MO; Karlsruge, Germany; Kiel, Germany; Lille, France; Ljubljana, Slovenia; Los Ranchos, NM; Mexico City, DF; Nantes, France; Pittsburgh, PA; Queens, NY; Riga, Latvia; Sacramento, CA; Salt Lake City, UT; Santa Cruz, CA; Sheffield UK; Sonoma Co, CA; Spencer, IN; Springfield, MA; Staten Island, NY; Tulsa, OK; Warsaw, Poland and Winnipeg, MB.
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Beaver Lake, NY; Boston, MA; Clinton, NY; Long Beach, CA and Syracuse, NY.
Other Events This Weekend: AIDS Lifecycle, San Francisco to Los Angeles; Connecticut Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Hartford, CT; Gay Days at Walt Disney World, Orlando, FL.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
“Mama’s Boys” Deemed Unfit For Military Service: 1942. At a meeting in Boston of the American Psychiatric Association, Dr. Alexander Simon of St. Elizabeth Hospital in Washington, D.C., described the kinds of people who were more likely to end up in the psych wards after induction in the military: ”
…the chronic A.W.O.L’er; the lad who can’t stand the social gap between a private and Private First Class, the man or officer who can’t stand promotion, and the one who cant stand not to be promoted, the ‘Mama Boys’ who in peacetime (when there is no selective service) chose invariable the Navy and find that though the sea may be ‘Mama’ the Navy is definitely ‘Papa,’ and blow up promptly in the training station with the shock of the discovery; the lonely, the homesick, the timid, the despondent, the one who never took an order in his life; the one who can’t stand teasing, cussing, and dirty jokes, the alcoholic, the bad actor, the unexpectant father who gets a letter from the girl who met the fleet, the boy who didn’t know he was adopted unti lhe went to get his birth certificate and who must find his own mother instead of fighting a war, the boy who wanted to study Diesels, but who was made a sergeant and had to keep drilling others, the Reserve Officer who thought the sergeant knew more than he did, the man with psychotic episodes prior to service and the man whose best friend went down on his sister ship.”
Dr. Simon commended the Boston draft board for being particularly adept at turning down those who he believed would later become troublesome in the military. According to the press report from Science Service, “This board not only turned down obvious mental disorders but also psychopathic personalities, asocial and criminal types, chronic alcoholics and homosexuals. In other words, Boston selectees were turned down if they seemed more likely than the average (1) to break down under strain or (2) to be trouble makers.”
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Candace Gingrich-Jones: 1966. The lesbian advocate and kid sister to recent GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, Candice has publicly called her brother to task 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 haven’t changed much for Newt. He spent much of the past year running like it’s 1994. But Candace is married to her wife, Rebecca, and works as the HRC’s Associate Director for the Youth and Campus Outreach Program.
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June 1st, 2012
TODAY’S AGENDA:
“8” Available on CD and for Download: Amazon & iTunes. On March 3, L.A. Theatre Works (LATW) presented the West Coast premiere of Dustin Lance Black’s “8”, a dramatization of the lawsuit in Federal Court against California’s Proposition 8. The play, which was based on court transcripts, was directed by Rob Riener and featured Kevin Bacon, George Clooney, Jamie Lee Curtis, Christine Lahti, Jane Lynch, Brad Pitt, Martin Sheen and John C. Reilly. A recording of that reading is now available for download at iTunes and Amazon.com. It is also available on CD.
“Call Me Kuchu” Reception Announced: San Francisco. American Jewish World Service, in association with San Francisco’s Frameline LGBT FIlm Festival, will hold a cocktail reception for documentary filmmakers Malika Zouhali-Worrall and Katherine Fairfax Write, whose film Call Me Kuchu follows the efforts of slain Ugandan LGBT-advocate David Kato to promote tolerance for the country’s gay community. The reception will take place on June 19 from 5:00 to 6:15 p.m. at the Bisou French Bistro, 2367 Market St. Advance tickets are not needed for the reception, but organizers request that you RSVP Sprinza Kats at skatz@ajws.org or call 415.593.3297.
Call Me Kuchu will be shown at the nearby Castro Theater that same evening beginning at 7:00 p.m. Tickets for that showing can be purchased at Frameline’s web site.
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Albany, NY (Black & Latino Pride); Birmingham, UK; Boston, MA; Buffalo, NY; Cambridge/Kitchener/Waterloo ON; Davenport, IA; Dayton, OH; Detroit, MI; Dresden, Germany; Gothenburg, Sweden; Honolulu, HI; Kansas City, MO; Karlsruge, Germany; Kiel, Germany; Lille, France; Ljubljana, Slovenia; Los Ranchos, NM; Mexico City, DF; Nantes, France; Pittsburgh, PA; Queens, NY; Riga, Latvia; Sacramento, CA; Salt Lake City, UT; Santa Cruz, CA; Sheffield UK; Sonoma Co, CA; Spencer, IN; Springfield, MA; Staten Island, NY; Tulsa, OK; Warsaw, Poland and Winnipeg, MB.
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Beaver Lake, NY; Boston, MA; Clinton, NY; Long Beach, CA and Syracuse, NY.
Other Events This Weekend: AIDS Lifecycle, San Francisco to Los Angeles; Connecticut Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Hartford, CT; Gay Days at Walt Disney World, Orlando, FL.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
New York State’s Mazet Committee Investigation: 1899. In 1899 and 1900, a New York state special legislative committee was formed to investigate the corruption of Tammany Hall. The city’s Democratic bosses’ corruption notwithstanding, the Republican-led state investigation took on a decidedly partisan tone, with committee members taking every opportunity to portray New York City as a den of filth and degeneracy. Among those called to testify was Joel S. Harris, a police investigator, who told of the goings-on at Paresis Hall, a popular hangout for “sexual degenerates”:
I was with Mr. (John R. Wood, another investigator) last night at Paresis Hall, No 392 Bowery. I observed the actions of the persons congregated there. I saw and heard immoral actions and propositions by degenerates there. Captain Chapman came in about five minute to 1, as we stepped out. … We had been in the place about an hour or so; plenty of time for information to get from Paresis Hall to the stationhouse. Captain Chapman didn’t say anything to us, but I overheard him say to the proprietor … that he would not tand for any dancing on souvenir night, and he wanted it shut up. I have been in that place before, recently, three or four times, and I have on each occasion noticed the same conduct as I have just testified to. That is a well-known resort for male prostitutes; a place having a reputation far and wide, to the best of my knowledge. I have heard of it constantly. I have never had any trouble in going in. You go in off the street with perfect ease. These men that conduct themselves there — well, they act effeminately; most of them are painted and powdered; they are called Princess this and Lady So and So and the Duchess of Marlboro, and get up and sing as women, and dance; ape the female character; call each other sisters and take people out for immoral purposes. I have had these propositions made to me, and made repeatedly. There is not difficulty in getting into that place.
George P. Hammond, Jr., also testified:
I know this place called Paresis Hall, and under your directions I have visited it a number fo times. I have been in the place since April 1st to the present time fully half a dozen times. I knew of it before, as an officer of the City Vigilance League. I am in the produce business. When this committee began its sessions I took a vacation on the produce business and came in to help you. The character of the place is such that what we call male degenerates frequent the place, and it is a nightly occurrence that they solicit men for immoral purposes. They have one woman who goes there they call a hermaphrodite. These male degenerates solicit men at the tables, and I believe they get a commission on all drinks that are purchased there; they get checks. I have observed five or six of these degenerates frequent that place, possibly more; the last we were there we saw a greater number than we did previously. Those five or six are always to be found there; almost invariably you will find them there .hey go from there across the street to a place called Little Bucks, opposite, and from there to Coney Island. I have never had any difficulty in getting in; not the least; I have been received with open arms. There are two ways of going in, one way up through the barroom, the other through a side entrance; any way at all that suits you can walk in … They have a piano there, and these fairies or male degenerates, as you call them, they sing some songs.
[From Jonathan Katz’s Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1976): pp 46-47.]
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May 31st, 2012
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Dharun Ravi Begins Serving 30-Day Sentence: New Brunswick, NJ. Dharun Ravi, the former Rutgers University student who was convicted in March of multiple charges stemming from his using a webcam to spy on Tyler Clementi, his dorm roommate, during an intimate encounter with another man, will turn himself in today to begin serving his 30-day jail sentence.
New Jersey’s sentencing guidelines call for five to seven years in prison for second-degree crimes with a maximum of ten years, although it can be reduced for “extraordinary circumstances.” Ravi’s reduced sentence prompted an appeal by the prosecutor’s office. While the sentence is on appeal, Ravi’s sentence was stayed, but he has the option of going ahead and serving it as long as he waives double jeopardy if the prosecutor’s arguments prevail on appeal. According to a statement released Tusday, Ravi chose to go ahead and begin serving his sentence, saying, “It’s the only way I can go on with my life.”
Philadelphia Trans-Health Conference: Philadelphia, PA. The free three-day conference offers workshops and activities focused on the health and well-being of transgender people, and provides important information and support for transgender allies. The conference, now in its eleventh year, draws approximately 2,000 people. The conference take place at the Pennsylvania Convention Center and will continue through Saturday, with inclusive worship services lined up for Sunday.
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Albany, NY (Black & Latino Pride); Birmingham, UK; Boston, MA; Buffalo, NY; Cambridge/Kitchener/Waterloo ON; Davenport, IA; Dayton, OH; Detroit, MI; Dresden, Germany; Gothenburg, Sweden; Honolulu, HI; Kansas City, MO; Karlsruge, Germany; Kiel, Germany; Lille, France; Ljubljana, Slovenia; Los Ranchos, NM; Mexico City, DF; Nantes, France; Pittsburgh, PA; Queens, NY; Riga, Latvia; Sacramento, CA; Salt Lake City, UT; Santa Cruz, CA; Sheffield UK; Sonoma Co, CA; Spencer, IN; Springfield, MA; Staten Island, NY; Tulsa, OK and Warsaw, Poland.
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Beaver Lake, NY; Boston, MA; Clinton, NY; Long Beach, CA and Syracuse, NY.
Other Events This Weekend: AIDS Lifecycle, San Francisco to Los Angeles; Connecticut Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Hartford, CT; Gay Days at Walt Disney World, Orlando, FL.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
Scientists Trace AIDS To 1951: 1986. The summer of 1986 looked to be another terrible year in the nearly five-year-old AIDS epidemic. To be precise, that should be the five-year-old known AIDS epidemic. The CDC first noted the new disease in 1981 with the death of five young men, “all active homosexuals” whose immune system had been mysteriously and severely compromised. Out of the 23,000 known cases of people with AIDS between 1981 and the end of 1986, 56% were already dead (PDF: 32KB/5 pages).
While anti-gay activists rushed to declare that the so-called “gay plague” was a divinely inspired “terrible retribution,” scientists sought to figure out where the deadly disease came from. It wasn’t long before doctors in Europe and Africa noticed that the new disease first reported in America was remarkably similar to a mysterious illness striking the Congo River basin of Zaire and was already spreading eastward to Uganda. Swedish doctors remembered an infant born in Zaire who had contracted a similar disease in 1975 and finally died in 1982. Others recalled a Danish surgeon who died in 1977 after working in the Congo River region. Preserved blood and tissue samples tested positive for HIV, and this sent scientists scurrying to identify earlier possible samples which may offer clues to the disease’s origin.
On May 31, 1986, a team of American scientists published a letter in the British journal The Lancet announcing that they were able to determine that a blood sample that had been taken from an unknown patient at a Kinshasa hospital in 1959 tested positive for HIV. Nothing was known of the patient — neither a name nor medical records survive — but we can certainly guess at the suffering he or she must have endured. Nevertheless, this finding was an early clue that the epidemic itself was much older than previously thought. Later genetic analysis of the virus in that blood sample would indicate that the virus had actually entered the human population sometime around 1931. And later analysis still would push that estimate back to around 1908. But as early as 1986, it was already clear that it was only the stigma surrounding the disease, and not the disease itself, that was then approaching its fifth birthday.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Walt Whitman: 1819. Usually I commemorate famous birthdays by providing a brief biographical sketch. But when describing the life of the great American poet, it strikes me as unseemly to describe a man’s life when he has already written all that needs to be said:
When I Heard At The Close Of The Day.
WHEN I heard at the close of the day how my name had been
receiv’d with plaudits in the capitol, still it was not a happy
night for me that follow’d,
And else when I carous’d, or when my plans were accomplish’d,
still I was not happy,
But the day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect health,
refresh’d, singing, inhaling the ripe breath of autumn,
When I saw the full moon in the west grow pale and disappear in
the morning light,
When I wander’d alone over the beach, and undressing bathed,
laughing with the cool waters, and saw the sun rise,
And when I thought how my dear friend my lover was on his way
coming, O then I was happy,
O then each breath tasted sweeter, and all that day my food
nourish’d me more, and the beautiful day pass’d well,
And the next came with equal joy, and with the next at evening
came my friend,
And that night while all was still I heard the waters roll slowly
continually up the shores,
I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands as directed to
me whispering to congratulate me,
For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover
in the cool night,
In the stillness in the autumn moonbeams his face was inclined
toward me,
And his arm lay lightly around my breast and that night I was
happy.
This poem was originally part of a sequence of poems titled “Live Oak with Moss,” which tells the story of an unhappy affair with a man. When Whitman published the third edition of Leaves of Grass in 1860, he included them among the forty-five poems of “Calamus,” but re-arranged their order to obliterate the narrative. For the fourth edition of Leaves of Grass, two of the three poems dropped were “Live Oak ” poems, perhaps revealing that Whitman still feared that the poems told more than he could safely reveal. You can see the reconstructed “Live Oak” series at the Whitman Archive.
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May 30th, 2012
ExxonMobile protesters in 2010.
TODAY’S AGENDA:
ExxonMobil Shareholders To vote On Anti-Discrimination Policy: Dallas, TX. When Exxon merged with Mobil Corporation in 1999, the merged company ended Mobil’s domestic partnership program for its employees and rescinded Mobil’s non-discrimination policy. Since the merger, LGBT advocates have been trying to convince the ExxonMobil board to reinstate the non-discrimination policy. In 2010, only 22% of shareholders voted to uphold the policy, with most shareholders allowing the ExxonMobile board to vote their shares by proxy.
Today, New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, who is responsible for investment decisions for the $140 billion New York State Common Retirement Fund, will once again bring a shareholder resolution to the annual board meeting calling for the corporation to adopt policies that ensure its employees are not fired or harassed at work because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. ExxonMobile earlier this year tried to block a vote on the proposal, claiming that the company has already informally implemented most of the changes sought. The Securities and Exchange Commission disagreed, ruling last March, “Based on the information you have presented, it appears that ExxonMobil’s policies, practices and procedures do not compare favorably with the guidelines of the proposal and that ExxonMobil has not, therefore, substantially, implemented the proposal.”
ExxonMobil is currently rated a minus 25 on Human Rights Campaign’s annual “Corporate Equality Index,” making ExxonMobil the first corporation ever to receive a negative score on the index. The shareholders meeting takes place at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center (a.k.a “The Mort”) in Dallas, beginning at 9:00 a.m. CDT. It will be streamed live.
Lambda Legal, ACLU Announce Marriage Lawsuits On Behalf of Illinois Couples: Chicago and Springfield, IL. On June 1 last year, Illinois began granting civil unions for same-sex couples. Today on the eve’s eve of that anniversary, Lambda Legal and the ACLU are coordinating a joint announcement of separate lawsuits that will be field on behalf of LGBT families seeking full marriage equality. The Chicago press conference will take place at the Westin Chicago River North (320 North Dearborn Avenue, and will feature Camilla Taylor, National Marriage Project Director for Lambda Legal who lead the litigation in Iowa resulting in the historic unanimous Iowa Supreme Court decision winning marriage for same-sex couples in Iowa. The Springfield press conference will take place at the State House Inn (101 East Adams), and will feature Christopher Clark, Senior Staff Attorney in Lambda Legal’s Midwest Regional Office based in Chicago. Both press conference will begin at 10:30 a.m. CDT.
California Senate May Vote On Ex-Gay Therapy Curbs: Sacramento, CA. It now appears likely that the California Senate will vote on SB 1172, which would prevent licensed therapists from providing therapy to change sexual orientation to minors. It would also require that all others sign an informed consent statement. The bill would apply to licensed therapists only. Religious-based ex-gay programs and ministries would remain unaffected by the bill.
Several changes have been made to the proposed bill since the last time we looked at it, but the basic outlines remain the same. The bill has strong support from Equality California, and from several ex-gay survivors and their families. The bill’s supporters received a boost when Robert Spitzer retracted his 2001 ex-gay study and apologized to those who underwent ex-gay therapy believing it was effective. They also received unexpected support when the Pan American Health Organization called on governments to to ensure that “clinics offering (ex-gay therapy are) reported and subject to adequate sanctions.” NARTH strongly opposes the bill, and it has also drawn qualified opposition (PDF: 115KB/9 pages) from the California Psychological Association, which opposes the outright ban on therapy for minors as an intrusion on the organization’s management of its own code of ethics.
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Albany, NY (Black & Latino Pride); Birmingham, UK; Boston, MA; Buffalo, NY; Cambridge/Kitchener/Waterloo ON; Davenport, IA; Dayton, OH; Detroit, MI; Dresden, Germany; Gothenburg, Sweden; Honolulu, HI; Kansas City, MO; Karlsruge, Germany; Kiel, Germany; Lille, France; Ljubljana, Slovenia; Los Ranchos, NM; Mexico City, DF; Nantes, France; Pittsburgh, PA; Queens, NY; Riga, Latvia; Sacramento, CA; Salt Lake City, UT; Santa Cruz, CA; Sheffield UK; Sonoma Co, CA; Spencer, IN; Springfield, MA; Staten Island, NY; Tulsa, OK and Warsaw, Poland.
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Beaver Lake, NY; Boston, MA; Clinton, NY; Long Beach, CA and Syracuse, NY.
Other Events This Weekend: AIDS Lifecycle, San Francisco to Los Angeles; Connecticut Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Hartford, CT; Gay Days at Walt Disney World, Orlando, FL.
Paul Guilbert and Aaron Fricke
TODAY IN HISTORY:
Male Couple attends Senior Prom: 1980. Aaron Fricke was a Senior in High school when he publicly came out as gay and stated dating Paul Guilbert and decided to ask him the Cumberland (Rhode Island) High School senior prom. His principal prohibited their attendance, saying the move “upset other students, sent the community abuzz, and rallied out-of-state newspapers to consider the matter newsworthy.” It also earned Fricke five stitches under his eye when he was attacked in the hallway. Fricke filed a lawsuit in Federal court, charging that the school district was infringing on his first amendment right to free speech. “I feel I have the right to attend,” he told the judge. “I feel I want to go to the prom for the same reason any other student would want to go.” The judge agreed (PDF: 60KB/7 pages), and not only ordered the school district to allow the couple to attend, but to beef up security in case there were any problems. And on this day in 1980, Frike and Guilbert attended the prom, and the case of Frike v. Lynch became an important legal precedent for other gay couples across the nation since then.
Fricke later wrote about his experiences in Reflections of a Rock Lobster: A Story about Growing Up Gay. He also collaborated with his father on another book about coming out, Sudden Strangers: The Story of a Gay Son and His Father
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Christine Jorgensen: 1926. She was born in the Bronx, and described herself as “frail, tow-headed, introverted little boy who ran from fistfights and rough-and-tumble games.” She was also known as George. After a stint in the army following World War II, her identity as a woman was overwhelming — and her physical development as a man was underwhelming. As she attended dental school, she began taking the female hormone ethinyl estradiol on her own and began researching the subject of sexual reassignment surgery. At the time, the only surgeries being performed were in Sweden. But at a stopover in Copenhagen to visit relatives, she discovered Dr. Christian Hamburger, a Danish endocrinologist and specialist in rehabilitative hormonal therapy. Denmark’s Minister of Justice allowed her surgery to take place.
Christine’s surgery was not the first of it’s kind, but that’s how it was presented on December 1, 1952 when the New York Daily News carried the front-page headline, “Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Beauty.” When she returned to New York the following February, she became an instant celebrity. She was reputedly the most written-about person in 1953, and she tried to use her celebrity as an opportunity for education. Educating the entire world turned out to be a huge task, but it was a task she was ready to take on. She acted in summer stock, toured the lecture circuit, wrote an autobiography, and made countless radio and television appearances. After her surgery, she was engaged to marry John Traub, but that engagement was called off. In 1959, she announced her engagement to Howard J. Knox, but the couple were unable to obtain a marriage license because Jorgensen’s birth certificate still listed her as a male. By the time the engagement was called off, Knox had already been fired over the publicity. Shortly before she died in 1989, she said she had given the sexual revolution “a good swift kick in the pants.” She died of bladder and lung cancer just a month shy of her 63rd birthday.
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May 29th, 2012
TODAY IN HISTORY:
Daughters of Bilitis Hold First National Convention: 1960. When Del Martin and Phyllis Lyons co-founded the Daughters of Bilitis in 1953, the tiny group only had eight members. Seven years later, and the Daughters were large enough to hold its first biennial convention at the Hotel Whitcomb in San Francisco. The DOB sent press releases to local radio and print media. The March issue of the DOB’s official newsletter The Ladder reprinted part of a column by the San Francisco Chronicle’s Herb Caen, who wrote, “Russ Wilden, if nobody else, will be interested to learn that the Daughters of Bilitis will hold their nat’l convention here May 27-30. They’re the female counterparts of the Mattachine Society — and one of the convention highlights will be an address by Atty. Morris Lowenthal titled ‘The Gay Bar in the Courts.’ Oh brother. I mean sister. Come to think of it, I don’t know what I mean.”
The convention drew two hundred women and the San Francisco police, who checked to make sure the ladies were wearing ladies’ clothing. As the Daughters had long emphasized outward conformity in the hopes that it would put larger society at ease, the Daughters were already prepared for the “inspection.” Del Martin brought the police inside inside to verify everyone — the women, anyway — was wearing dresses, stocking and heels. After the convention ended, Helen Sandoz ended her Ladder report with a note of thanks to everyone who attended, including those who were undercover: “Thank you, DOB, ABC (California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control); Vice Squad, professional folk… thank you all for letting us see you and letting you see us.”
“Polyester” Premieres: 1981. The John Waters film Polyester
Barney Frank Comes Out: 1987. Barney Frank became only the second member of Congress to confirm that he was gay, when he told a Boston Globe reporter:
“If you ask the direct question: ‘Are you gay?’ the answer is yes. So what? I’ve said all along that if I was asked by a reporter and I didn’t respond it would look like I had something to hide and I don’t think I have anything to hide.”
Rep. Franks said that the disintegration of Gary Hart’s presidential campaign earlier that month over reports of his extra-marital relationship with a young model, and the recent revelation that Rep. Stewart B. McKinney of Connecticut had died of AIDS, had prompted his decision to come out. On May 31, the Globe reported that most of his constituents were unperturbed by his announcement, and many unsurprised.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Nancy Cárdenas: 1934. The poet, playwright, journalist, theater director and social activist was born in Parras, Coahuila in Mexico. She became a noted radio announcer at the age of 20 before turning to the stage. Her interest in literature became apparent in the 1950s when she participated in a public reading program, Poetry Out Loud followed in the 1960’s with the publication of her one-act play El Cántaro Seco (The Empty Pitcher).
In the 1970s, she became an acclaimed theater and film director. Her 1970 film, El Efecto de los Rayos Gamma Sobre las Caléndulas (The Effect of Gamma Rays on Marigolds), was a critical hit, earning the Theatre Critics Association Award. It was also very controversial for being gay themed. She drew death threats and the film was protested by the brother of then-President Luis EcheverrÃa, which was no small thing: President EcheverrÃa had been the hardline Interior Secretary during the 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre, when the Mexican government opened fire on protesting students ten days before the 1968 Summer Olympics. But such was Cárdenas’s influence that not only was the film shown in the Mexican capital, but in a theater on Insurgentes no less — Insurgentes being one of the principal boulevards in Mexico city. It was a huge success.
It was during a 1974 interview on the public affairs television program 24 Horas when she came out as a lesbian. That act made her the first publicly declared lesbian in Mexico. That year she founded El Frente de Liberación Homosexual (FLH, the Gay Liberation Front). In 1975, she co-wrote with Carlons Monsivais the Manifiesto en Defensa de los Homosexuales en México. On October 2, 1978 as part of a commemoration of the Tlatelolco Massacre, she headed the first Gay Pride march in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas. She continued her advocacy throughout the 1980s through her plays, poetry and public statements. She died in 1994 of breast cancer.
Gene Robinson: 1947. When he was elected Bishop of the Episcopal Church’s Diocese of New Hampshire, he became the first openly gay, non-celibate priest to be elevated to the episcopate. His election was so controversial, he wore a bullet-proof vest during his consecration. In a BeliefNet interview the day after he gave a prayer at the opening of President Barack Obama’s inaugural celebrations, he talked about his journey toward coming to terms with his sexuality:
I’ve been the reparative therapy route. I did that. My own experience is it doesn’t work. I think what it does it that it teaches gay and lesbian people to become so self loathing that they are willing to not act in a natural way, and deprive themselves of the kind of love and support that makes life worthwhile, that makes sense of our own lives and being. I can’t be supportive of that. It only underscores the way the church has gotten this wrong. God doesn’t ever get it wrong but the church often does.
Rupert Everett: 1959. It was his 1981 role as a gay schoolboy in the stage version of Another Country that proved to be his break, opening the way for his screen appearance in the 1984 film version with Colin Firth. In 1989, Everett moved to Paris and came out as gay, which he said may have damaged his career. Wags would say that the 1987 flop Hearts of Fire may have been a factor. But his appearance in the 1997 film My Best Friend’s Wedding and 2000’s The Next Best Thing showed that his career wasn’t entirely over — although it did appear that he would forever be typecast as the heroine’s gay best friend. In 2009, he told the British newspaper The Observer:
The fact is that you could not be, and still cannot be, a 25-year-old homosexual trying to make it in the British film business or the American film business or even the Italian film business. It just doesn’t work and you’re going to hit a brick wall at some point. You’re going to manage to make it roll for a certain amount of time, but at the first sign of failure they’ll cut you right off… Honestly, I would not advise any actor necessarily, if he was really thinking of his career, to come out.
Melissa Etheridge: 1961. Her debut album was completed in just four days after her record label rejected her first effort as too polished. That stripped down album, titled simply Melissa Etheridge, not only defined her sound, but it yielded a hit single, “Bring Me Some Water” and a Grammy nomination. In 1992, she won her first Grammy for Best Rock Vocal Performance on the strength of her third album, Never Enough. Her breakthrough album, 1993’s Yes I Am, was certified Platinum and garnered her a second Grammy for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance for her single “Come to My Window”. Her 2006 song “I Need to Wake Up” was recorded for Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth and won an Academy Award for Best Original Song.
She came out publicly in 1993 and has been a committed gay rights advocate ever since. She is also a committed advocate on behalf of the environment and breast cancer research, having herself undergone chemotherapy for breast cancer in 2004 and 2005. On an interview with Dateline NBC, she discussed her recovery and her use of medical marijuana while undergoing chemo. Last year, she announced her separation from her wife, Tammy Lynn Michaels, after seven years together. They have two children, fraternal twins, who were born in 2006. Etheridge also has two children from her previous long-term relationship with Julie Cypher.
David Burtka: 1975. He began as an actor, appearing in a guest role on The West Wing and How I Met Your Mother. It was that appearance which fed rumors that Burtka was romantically involved with one of the series’ stars, leading Neil Patric Harris to publicly acknowledge in 2006 that he was gay. Last October, Burtka and Harris, who have been together since 2004, became fathers to fraternal twins, a boy and a girl. Birtka is no longer acting, and is now running a Los Angeles catering company and working as a full time chef.
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May 28th, 2012
Left: Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta is welcomed home by her partner Petty Officer 3rd Class Citlalic Snell at Virginia Beach in December. Right: Sgt. Brandon Morgan leaps into the arms of his partner Dalan Wells in Hawaii in February.
Today is Memorial Day in the United States, and this year it’s a special one. It’s the first Memorial Day to take place in the post-Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell era. Since then, we have seen the impact that being able to serve openly has had on servicemembers around the world. It’s been a joy to watch our proud soldiers, sailors and airmen and women come home from assignments overseas to their partners, spouses and loved ones here at home. Today is set aside to remember the men and women who went off to serve and didn’t come home.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
First Pro-Gay Film Released 1919. The German silent film Anders als die Andern (“Different From the Others”) tells the story of a famous concert violinist, Paul Körner (played by Conrad Veidt, who later appeared in Casablanca as Major Heinrich Strasser) who falls in love with his student Kurt Sivers (Fritz Schulz). Both men experience the disapproval from their parents, and Körner becomes the subject of a blackmail attempt. The real-life Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, the famous German sexologist and gay-rights advocate, makes several cameo appearances in the film. In one scene, he explains to Körner’s parents that their son “is not to blame for his orientation. is not wrong, nor should it be a crime. Indeed, it is not even an illness, merely a variation, and one that is common to all of nature.”
Hirshfeld’s appearances appear directed more toward the audience than the characters he’s speaking to. In one flashback scene, when Körner first meets Hirschfeld’s character after discovering that an “ex-gay” hypnotherapist was a fraud (some things never change), Hirschfeld tells him, “Love for one of the same sex is no less pure or noble than for one of the opposite. This orientation can be found in all levels of society, and among respected people. Those that say otherwise come only from ignorance and bigotry.”
The acting is stilted, as is common for that era, and the plot is fairly predictable. Körner reports Bollek for blackmail and has him arrested. In retaliation, Bollek exposes Körner. Both men wind up in court, and both are found guilty, despite Hirshfeld’s testimony on Körner’s behalf (and another soliloquy for the audience). The judge has mercy on Körner however, and sentences him only to one week. Disgraced and shunned by his family, Körner kills himself. Sivers also tries to kill himself, but Hirschfeld intervenes. “You have to keep living; live to change the prejudices by which this man has been made one of the countless victims. …Justice through knowledge!”
Many prints of the film were burned by the Nazis after they came to power in 1933, and censorship laws prevented its general viewing. Only small fragments of the film survives today. You can see some of those fragments here.
Ma Vie en Rose: 1997. The Belgian film Ma Vie en Rose (“My Life in Pink”) premiered in France. It’s the story of a little boy named Ludovic (Georges Du Fresne), who insists that she is a girl and talks of marrying her best friend, a boy who lives next door. When the film opened in the U.S., it received an R rating by the Motion Picture Association of America, even though the film has minimal sexual content, minimal violence, and mild language. Nevertheless, the film was critically acclaimed and won a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Kylie Minogue: 1968. She began her career on Australian television as a child actress before beginning her singing career in 1987. Her first hit single, a cover version of “The Loco-Motion,” remained as number one in Australia for seven weeks. For whatever reason, she somehow managed to become a gay icon. “I am not a traditional gay icon” she once remarked. “There’s been no tragedy in my life, only tragic outfits.” But there was one touch of tragedy; in 2005 she was diagnosed with breast cancer. That sidelined her career, but not for long. By late 2006 she was touring again, and the video for her 2010 hit “All the Lovers” firmly re-established her presence in video bars everywhere.
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May 27th, 2012
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Protest Against “Electric Fence” Pastor: Newton, N.C. Pastor Charles Worley of of Providence Road Baptist Church near Newton, North Carolina, shocked the consciences of decent people everywhere last Sunday when he declared that he “figured a way to get rid of all the lesbians and queers.” His final solution involved electrified fences and just waiting for everyone inside to die out. At least one church member appeared on CNN to back him up. Today, the civilized half of Newton will make itself heard, with a protest on the lawn of the Catawba County Government Center from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Cambridge/Kitchener/Waterloo ON; Dresden, Germany; Durban, South Africa; Düsseldorf, Germany; Eskilstuna, Sweden; Hanover, Germany; Ljubljana, Slovenia; Melbourne, FL; Moscow, Russia; Pensacola, FL and Washington, DC (Black Pride).
Other Events This Weekend: Bearpawcalypse, Chicago, IL; International Mr. Leather, Chicago, IL; Great Plains Rodeo, Oklahoma City, OK and Inside Out Toronto LGBT Film Festival, Toronto, ON.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
Homosexual Ring Broken Up: 1948. A veteran University of Missouri journalism professor was arrested and charged with sodomy as Prosecutor Howard B. Lang, Jr. described to reporters fantastical tales of “mad homosexual parties” in Columbia, Missouri. According to the Associated Press on the day of his arrest:
The prosecuting attorney said he had issued a warrant for the arrest of E.K. Johnston, for 24 years a member of the faculty of the university’s school of journalism, after a long investigation into abnormal sex orgies here and other central Missouri cities. Two other men were held in the Boone County jail on similar charges. They are Willie Coots, a gift shop employee here, and Warren W. Heathman, 35, Rolla, Mo., an itinerant instructor for the veteran administrations’s farm training program.
Lang siad both had singed statements, implicating Johnston as a principal in what he called a homosexual “ring” at Johnston’s apartment which Coots had shared for the last 15 or 16 years. At least of score of University of Missouri students and other residents here, Lang said, also are implicated in the ring. No charges have been filed against any one except Coots, Heathman and Johnston, but several are being held in jail for investigation or as material witnesses.
Heathman, Lang reported, told a near-fantastic story of “mad parties” at Johnston’s apartment and at a cabin near Salem, Mo., in which as many as 30 members of the “ring” gathered to boast of conquests and to indulge in homosexual practices.
Johnston was fired the next day. He initially pleaded not guilty to the charge of sodomy, but after the other two testified against him, he changed his plea to guilty in exchange for four years’ probation under a $2,000 bond. Terms of the probation included “cessation of homosexual practices.” The others also pleaded guilty and were placed on probation.
Russia Decriminalizes Homosexuality: 1993. President Boris Yeltsin signed a decree which repealed the law forbidding male homosexuality on this date. Since 2006, Moscow gay rights advocates have attempted to commemorate the anniversary of this historic event by conducting a gay pride march in Moscow. And every year, Moscow authorities have suppressed the march, usually violently. This year, the pattern remains the same: LTBT advocates have announced a gay pride march, and as always Russian authorities have vowed to prevent it from happening.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Chris Colfer: 1990. If you watch Fox’s Glee, you know him as Kurt Hummel, the fashionably gay kid who is routinely bullied in school. He had auditioned for the wheelchair-bound Artie Abrams, but the show’s creators were so impressed with Colfer that they created the role of Kurt especially for him. Colfer, who is gay himself, says that he was accepted by his family but often bullied in school.You can see Colfer’s video for the “It Gets Better” project here. On March 3, 2012, Colfer participated in the West Coast premiere of of a reading of Dustin Lance Black’s play “8”, based in the trial transcripts of the Federal Lawsuit that resulted in Prop 8 being declared unconstitutional. A recording of that performance will be available for download from iTunes and Amazon beginning on June 1, and will be broadcast on NPR the week of June 9.
If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).
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May 26th, 2012
TODAY’S AGENDA (Ours):
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Alkmaar, Netherlands; Bradford, UK; Cambridge/Kitchener/Waterloo ON; Dresden, Germany; Durban, South Africa; Düsseldorf, Germany; Eskilstuna, Sweden; Hanover, Germany; Ljubljana, Slovenia; Melbourne, FL; Moscow, Russia; Pensacola, FL; Salerno, Italy; and Washington, DC (Black Pride).
Other Events This Weekend: Bearpawcalypse, Chicago, IL; International Mr. Leather, Chicago, IL; Great Plains Rodeo, Oklahoma City, OK and Inside Out Toronto LGBT Film Festival, Toronto, ON.
TODAY’S AGENDA (Theirs):
World Congress of Families: Madrid, Spain. The Rockford, Illinois-based Howard Center will continues its sixth World Congress of Families for the second day today in Madrid. Today’s speakers include Alveda King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who trades on her family ties to campaign against LGBT rights. Her topic is “Culture of live vs. culture of death: the greatest civil rights issue of today.” The conference will also hear from:
. Incredibly, she will be a part of a panel discussion which asks, “Can we have Democracy and Human Rights without God?”TODAY IN HISTORY:
Massachusetts Buggery Law: 1697. After the Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth colonies were united into the new Massachusetts Colony, a revision to the old Massachusetts Bay Law of 1672 revised its old sodomy law. The death penalty remains, but now “Buggery” is defined to include bestiality as well as sodomy:
For avoiding of the detestable and abominable Sin of Buggery with Mankind or Beast, which is contrary to the very Light of Nature; Be it Enacted and Declared … That the same Offence be adjudged Felony … And that every Man, being duly convicted of lying with Mankind, as he lieth with a Woman; and every Man or Woman that shall have carnal Copulation with any Beast or Brute Creature, the Offender and Offenders, in either of the Cases before mentioned, shall suffer the Pains of Death, and the Beast shall be slain and Burned.
Massachusetts abolished the death penalty for sodomy and bestiality in 1805.
First Intersex Actress On Film: 1976. She made her debut on the screen in the 1976 movie Drive-In. Set in small town Texas, the story portrays a slice of life as the town’s teens gather at the local drive-in to watch a disaster flick. The film’s movie-within-a-movie (the movie being screened at the drive-in) is a hilarious sendup of action movies. Among the cast is Katherine Connella (billed as Neely Richlond) who plays a student and is the first intersexed person to star in a motion picture. Katherine’s biography
Maryland Adds Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity to Hate Crime Law: 2005. Five days after vetoing a bill that would provide domestic partnership for same sex couples, Maryland governor Robert Ehrlich (R) signed a bill to add sexual orientation and gender identity to the state’s hate crime law. Conservative religious groups naturally protest.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Sakia Gunn: 1987. If she were alive today, she’d be celebrating her twenty-fifth birthday. Instead, she didn’t quite make it to sweet sixteen. On May 11, 2003, she and her friends were waiting for the #1 New Jersey Transit bus in downtown Newark when they were propositioned by two men. The girls rejected their advances by declaring themselves to be lesbians. The men attacked, and when Gunn fought back, one of the attackers stabbed her in the chest. After both attackers fled, Gunn was rushed to the hospital where she died. The murder became the subject of several protests in Newark, and more than 2,500 people attended her funeral.
One of the attackers, Robert McCullough, was arrested and charged with murder. In a tale that could have come from a bad comedy sketch, McCullough claimed that Gunn died after she ran into his knife. He eventually agreed to a plea bargain in which the murder charges were dropped in exchange for a guilty plea for manslaughter, aggravated assault and bias intimidation. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
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May 25th, 2012
TODAY’S AGENDA (Ours):
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Alkmaar, Netherlands; Bradford, UK; Cambridge/Kitchener/Waterloo ON; Dresden, Germany; Durban, South Africa; Düsseldorf, Germany; Eskilstuna, Sweden; Hanover, Germany; Ljubljana, Slovenia; Melbourne, FL; Moscow, Russia; Pensacola, FL; Salerno, Italy; and Washington, DC (Black Pride).
Other Events This Weekend: Bearpawcalypse, Chicago, IL; International Mr. Leather, Chicago, IL; Great Plains Rodeo, Oklahoma City, OK and Inside Out Toronto LGBT Film Festival, Toronto, ON.
TODAY’S AGENDA (Theirs):
Family “Research” Council’s National Pastor’s Briefing: Washington, D.C. The FRC’s Watchmen On the Wall project winds up its National Pastor’s Briefing today at the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill. Today’s speakers include Lt. General Jerry Boykin (retired), Bishop Harry Jackson, and FRC president Tony Perkins. The meeting breaks up at 2:30, leaving plenty of time for everyone to get their disco-naps in before hitting the town for the weekend.
World Congress of Families: Madrid, Spain. The Rockford, Illinois-based Howard Center will kick off its sixth World Congress of Families today in Madrid. Among today’s speakers are the Howard Center’s Allan C. Carlson, Don Feder (who once described himself as making Atilla the Hunn look like a “a limousine liberal”), the Family “Research” Council’s Patrick Fagan, and the National Civic Council’s Peter Westmore (Australia). Tomorrow, American ex-gay therapist Richard Cohen will present a discussion on “solutions to homosexual behavior.”
TODAY IN HISTORY:
Oscar Wilde Convicted: 1895. In 1891, author, poet and playwright Oscar Wilde was the toast of London. He made his mark in literature in The Picture of Dorian Gray (a new annotated edition
In 1891, Wilde was denounced as a homosexual by the Marquess of Queensbury. Wilde, who was involved with the marquess’ son, Alfred Douglass, sued the Marquess for libel but lost the case when evidence supported the marquess’ allegations. Because homosexuality was still considered a crime in England, that evidence led to Wilde’s arrest. His first trial resulted in a hung jury, but a second jury in 1895 sentenced him, along with another friend by the name of Alfred Taylor, to two years of hard labor. Justice Alfred Wills pronounced the sentence in the harshest of terms. From the court record:
Justice Wills: Oscar Wilde and Alfred Taylor, the crime of which you have been convicted is so bad that one has to put stern restraint upon one’s self to prevent one’s self from describing, in language which I would rather not use, the sentiments which must rise in the breast of every man pf honor who has heard the details of these two horrible trials. That the jury has arrived at a correct verdict in this case I cannot persuade myself to entertain a shadow of a doubt; and I hope, at all events, that those who sometimes imagine that a judge is half-hearted in the cause of decency and morality because he takes care no prejudice shall enter into the case, may see that it is consistent at least with the utmost sense of indignation at the horrible charges brought home to both of you.
It is no use for me to address you. People who can do these things must be dead to all sense of shame, and one cannot hope to produce any effect upon them. It is the worst case I have ever tried. that you, Taylor, kept a kind of male brothel it is impossible to doubt. And that you, Wilde, have been the center of a circle of extensive corruption of the most hideous kind among young men, it is equally impossible to doubt.
I shall, under the circumstances, be expected to pass the severest sentence that the law allows. In my judgment it it totally inadequate for a case such as this. The sentence of the Court is that each of you be imprisoned and kept to hard labor for two years.
[Cries of “Oh! Oh!” and “Shame!”]
Wilde–And I? May I say nothing, my Lord?
The court adjourned.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Ian McKellen: 1939. His roots are in theater, mainly Shakespeare, where he continues to perform in a number of state productions in Britain. But beginning in 1969, he branched out in film and television, covering a wide range of genres from drama (And the Band Played On, Gods and Monsters), to mystery (Six Degrees of Separation, The Da Vinci Code), to action and fantasy (X-Men, The Lord of the Rings trilogy).
McKellen was among the earliest actors to come out publicly as gay. He came out in 1988 during a BBC interview while discussing the controversial Local Government Bill (section 28), which stated that local governments “shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality” or “promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.” According to a 2003 interview, McKellen said he visited Environment Secretary Michael Howard (who was responsible for local governments) to lobby against the bill. Howard reaffirmed his approval of Section 28, and in a defining moment of chutzpah, asked McKellen to leave an autograph for Howard’s children. He did. It read, “Fuck off, I’m gay.” McKellen remained politically active and co-founded the British gay-rights group Stonewall in 1989. In 2007, he became a patron of The Albert Kennedy Trust, an organisation that provides support to homeless and troubled LGBT youth.
McKellen is properly called Sir Ian McKellen. He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1979, was knighted in 1991 for services to the performing arts. He was also named a Companion of Honour for services to drama and to LGBT equality in 2008. He is currently reprising his role as Gandolf for The Hobbit, which is currently in production as a two part series. An Unexpected Journey is scheduled for release this December, and There and Back Again is slated for December, 2013.
Anne Heche: 1969. She got her start on the NBC soap opera Another World, where she won a Daytime Emmy in 1991. Appropriate, given that so much of her life reads like a soap opera. She was the daughter of a Baptist choir director who disclosed his homosexuality to his family just before dying of AIDS in 1983. That same year, her brother died in a car accident. Four years later, Heche launched her acting career with Another World as soon as she got out of high school. From there she took a series of roles in television and film, including If These Walls Could Talk (1996), Walking and Talking (1996), Wag the Dog (1997), and I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997).
It was at about that time that Heche began dating comedian Ellen DeGeneres. They had said they would get a civil union if it became legal in Vermont, but they broke up in August, 2000. Just hours after news broke of their relationship ending, she appeared that the rear door of a house in Fresno County wearing nothing by shorts and a bra, asking if she could take a shower. She had curled up on the couch for a nap when sheriff deputies arrived. She told officers that she was “God, and was going to take everyone back to heaven in a spaceship.” She was taken by ambulance to a hospital, but was released a few hours later.
That episode became the stuff of tabloid headlines and served as a turning point in her 2001 memoir Call Me Crazy
If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).
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May 24th, 2012
TODAY’S AGENDA (Ours):
Pride Celebrations This Weekend:Alkmaar, Netherlands; Bradford, UK; Cambridge/Kitchener/Waterloo ON; Dresden, Germany; Durban, South Africa; Düsseldorf, Germany; Eskilstuna, Sweden; Hanover, Germany; Ljubljana, Slovenia; Melbourne, FL; Moscow, Russia; Pensacola, FL; Salerno, Italy; and Washington, DC (Black Pride).
Other Events This Weekend: Bearpawcalypse, Chicago, IL; International Mr. Leather, Chicago, IL; Great Plains Rodeo, Oklahoma City, OK and Inside Out Toronto LGBT Film Festival, Toronto, ON.
TODAY’S AGENDA (Theirs):
Family “Research” Council’s National Pastor’s Briefing:Washington, D.C. The FRC’s Watchmen On the Wall project convened its National Pastor’s Briefing yesterday, and it will continue through Friday at the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill. Today’s speakers include Sen. Mark Rubio (R-FL), Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA), New York City Councilman Fernando Cabrera (D-The Bronx), FRC president Tony Perkins, vice president Tom McClusky, and senior fellow Ken Blackwell. The conference will break in the afternoon so that participants can board busses to Capitol Hill for Congressional meetings anda prayer walk.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
Pat Buchanan Declares AIDS “Awful Retribution”: 1983. “The sexual revolution has begun to devour its children,” proclaimed Pat Buchanan in a New York Post op-ed that was relayed in newspapers across America. “And among the revolutionary vanguard, the Gay Rights activists, the mortality rate is higher and climbing.” By 1983, the known AIDS epidemic was about to reach its two year mark. A general panic was spreading in the gay community, and a general backlash was brewing everywhere else. Buchanan fueled that backlash with this op-ed, warning that no homosexual should be permitted to handle food. He also warned that the Democratic party’s decision to hold their 1984 convention in San Francisco would leave their delegates wives and children at the mercy of “homosexuals who belong to a community that is a common carrier of dangerous, communicable and sometimes fatal diseases.” And he attributed all of it to divine retribution with his now-infamous money-quote: “The poor homosexuals… they have declared war upon nature, and now nature is exacting an awful retribution.”
Buchanan had a flare for the dramatic turn of the phrase, having served as an opposition researcher and speechwriter for President Richard Nixon. He would go on to serve as communications director for the Reagan White House from 1985 to 1987. His speech before the Republican National Convention in 1992 would bring the term “culture war” to a nationwide audience.
If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).
And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?
May 23rd, 2012
TODAY’S AGENDA (Ours):
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Alkmaar, Netherlands; Bradford, UK; Cambridge/Kitchener/Waterloo ON; Dresden, Germany; Durban, South Africa; Düsseldorf, Germany; Eskilstuna, Sweden; Hanover, Germany; Ljubljana, Slovenia; Melbourne, FL; Moscow, Russia; Pensacola, FL; Salerno, Italy; and Washington, DC (Black Pride).
Other Events This Weekend: Bearpawcalypse, Chicago, IL; International Mr. Leather, Chicago, IL; Great Plains Rodeo, Oklahoma City, OK and Inside Out Toronto LGBT Film Festival, Toronto, ON.
TODAY’S AGENDA (Theirs):
Family “Research” Council’s National Pastor’s Briefing: Washington, D.C. The FRC’s Watchmen On the Wall project will hold a National Pastor’s Briefing beginning today and continuing through Friday at the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill. Today’s events are fairly low-keyed, mainly registration, exhibits, and “U.S. Capitol Spiritual Heritage Tours” as well as tours of FRC headquarters. The real fun begins tomorrow.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
Harvard’s Secret Court: 1920. On May 13, 1920, Cyril Wilcox, a Harvard undergraduate, committed suicide after telling his older brother, George, that he had been having an affair with another man. Shortly after Cyril’s death, George intercepted two letters from a Harvard student and a recent graduate. George took these letters to Harvard’s Acting Dean, Chester N Greenough, and shared with him what he knew. After consulting with Harvard President Abbot Lowell, Greenough formed a special five-man tribunal on this date in history which became knownas the “Secret Court.”
The court launched a wide-ranging witch hunt, with Greenough summoning each witness one-by-one with a brief note. The Court’s inquiry was exhaustive, posing questions about masturbation practices, sex with women or men, cross-dressing, overnight guests, parties, and reading habits. The scope of the inquiry soon expanded to area businesses, cafés and bars. Eight students were expelled, ordered to leave Cambridge and reported to their families. They were also told that Harvard would disclose the reasons for their expulsion if employers or other schools sought references. Four others unconnected to Harvard were also deemed “guilty.” The school couldn’t punish them directly, but they did pressure one café to fire a waiter.
In 2002, a researcher from Harvard’s daily newspaper, The Crimson, came across a box of files labeled “Secret Court” in the University’s archives. After pressure from newspaper staff, the University finally released five hundred documents related to the Court’s work, and The Crimson published its findings in November of that year. Harvard’s president Lawrence H. Summers responded to the revelations, expressing deep regret for the anguish the students and families experienced. He called the reports “extremely disturbing” and the court’s actions “abhorrent.” Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan responded to Summers’s statement by saying that “Harvard embraces bathhouse values”:
Harvard’s code is now based on Summers’ values, which hold that the old moral code of Christianity, which teaches that sexual relations between men are unnatural and immoral, is “abhorrent and an affront to the values of our university.” Harvard has not only turned its back on its Christian past, it has just renounced its Christian roots as poisoned and perverted. If Harvard is educating America’s leaders, this country is not Slouching Toward Gomorrah, we are sprinting there.
[More information can be found in William Wright’s Harvard’s Secret Court: The Savage 1920 Purge of Campus Homosexuals
State Department Announces Tougher Scrutiny for Job Applicants: 1950. By May of 1950, the State Department had withstood blistering attacks from members of Congress over allegations of homosexual employees allegedly posing as security risks (See Feb 28, Mar 14, Mar 23, Apr 18, Apr 26, May 2, and May 19). By May 22, the State Department announced steps in the hiring process to try to address those criticisms. The State Department’s top security officer, R.W. Scott McLeud said that he ordered his aides to be “completely ruthless” on passing on new job applicants who had a hint of security issues. According to news reports, McLeod said that someone who made a single mistake in the past might be able to “cancel it out” with good performance since then, with one exception. He said that a single homosexual act, no matter how long past, would make the employee subject to blackmail and would never be hired.
If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).
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May 22nd, 2012
TODAY IN HISTORY:
Karen Ulane Dies In Plane Crash: 1989. The decorated Vietnam War combat pilot who was fired from Eastern Airlines in 1980 for transitioning to a woman, died in a private plane crash along with two others. Eastern Airlines had fired her after twelve years with the company following her gender reassignment, claiming possible safety hazards in stressful situations. A Federal judge ordered her reinstated in 1983 and awarded her $158,590 in back pay and other expenses, saying she was protected under the 1964 Federal anti-discrimination law. An appeals court disagreed and reversed the decision. Ulane eventually reached a settlement with Eastern, reportedly for a”substantially” higher sum than was ordered by the Federal judge.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Harvey Milk: 1930. Known as the Mayor of Castro Street, Harvey Milk finally succeeded in becoming California’s first (and the nation’s fourth) openly gay non-incumbent candidate to win a political office for two reasons: he refused to hide who he was; and he made it his mission to build alliances with groups that other gay activists thought were impossible to reach. So to those who knew Harvey well weren’t surprised when his 1977 as San Francisco City Supervisor that he was good terms with conservative supervisor Dan White. White, a former cop, was supported by the city’s police union whose leaders were angry over city policies which they considered to be soft on crime and homosexuals. The local media ate it up as the two made joint appearances on local talk shows where they both talked warmly of each other. Harvey began to privately telling friends that he thought White was “educatable,” and that the two might actually be able to work together.
But all that changed when Milk wound up voting against White’s proposal to bar a psychiatric treatment center from opening in White’s district. White retaliated by voting against Milk’s gay rights bill (it passed anyway), and for the next several months, White would not speak to Milk or his aides. Other supervisors noticed that White stopped spending as much time at his office in City Hall, and he was sullen during the weekly board meetings. White abruptly resigned on November 10, 1978. When he had a change of heart a few days later, Mayor George Moscone refused to commit to re-appointing him to the board. On November 27, 1978, White snuck into City Hall and confronted Moscone in his office, and shot him twice in the abdomen, then twice more in the head. He then walked down the hall to Milk’s office. After arguing with Milk, White shot him three times in the chest, once in the back and twice in the head.
Milks short political career changed the face of LGBT politics. During the 1978 campaign against the Briggs Amendment which would have required the firing of gay teachers and any school employee who supported gay rights, Milk insisted on aggressively confronting the anti-gay campaign by raising the visibility of the gay community. The campaign against the Briggs Amendment was also a campaign against the closet. He told a crowd during San Franscisco’s Gay Pride that year:
“On this anniversary of Stonewall, I ask my gay sisters and brothers to make the commitment to fight. We will not win our rights by staying quietly in our closets… We are coming out to fight the lies, the myths, the distortions. We are coming out to tell the truths about gays, for I am tired of the conspiracy of silence, so I’m going to talk about it. And I want you to talk about it. You must come out. Come out to your parents, your relatives.”
Mark Bingham: 1970. A true hero, Mark Bingham was among the passengers who stormed the cockpit of United Airlines Flight 93 after it had been hijacked by Al-Qaeda terrorists on September 11, 2001. His personal bravery was well known before that fateful day. His boyfriend of six years, Paul Holm, recalled that Bingham had thwarted two attempted muggings, one at gunpoint. His friends recalled that he proudly showed off the scars he received during a running of the bulls in Pamploma. During the hijacking, Bingham, who was sitting in first class, made a brief call to his mother. She later called him back after learning of the other 9/11 attacks and said the flight was being used on a suicide mission. Bingham has been honored with several others for bringing the aircraft down and preventing a much greater loss of life.
If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).
And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?
Featured Reports
In this original BTB Investigation, we unveil the tragic story of Kirk Murphy, a four-year-old boy who was treated for “cross-gender disturbance” in 1970 by a young grad student by the name of George Rekers. This story is a stark reminder that there are severe and damaging consequences when therapists try to ensure that boys will be boys.
When we first reported on three American anti-gay activists traveling to Kampala for a three-day conference, we had no idea that it would be the first report of a long string of events leading to a proposal to institute the death penalty for LGBT people. But that is exactly what happened. In this report, we review our collection of more than 500 posts to tell the story of one nation’s embrace of hatred toward gay people. This report will be updated continuously as events continue to unfold. Check here for the latest updates.
In 2005, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that “[Paul] Cameron’s ‘science’ echoes Nazi Germany.” What the SPLC didn”t know was Cameron doesn’t just “echo” Nazi Germany. He quoted extensively from one of the Final Solution’s architects. This puts his fascination with quarantines, mandatory tattoos, and extermination being a “plausible idea” in a whole new and deeply disturbing light.
On February 10, I attended an all-day “Love Won Out” ex-gay conference in Phoenix, put on by Focus on the Family and Exodus International. In this series of reports, I talk about what I learned there: the people who go to these conferences, the things that they hear, and what this all means for them, their families and for the rest of us.
Prologue: Why I Went To “Love Won Out”
Part 1: What’s Love Got To Do With It?
Part 2: Parents Struggle With “No Exceptions”
Part 3: A Whole New Dialect
Part 4: It Depends On How The Meaning of the Word "Change" Changes
Part 5: A Candid Explanation For "Change"
At last, the truth can now be told.
Using the same research methods employed by most anti-gay political pressure groups, we examine the statistics and the case studies that dispel many of the myths about heterosexuality. Download your copy today!
And don‘t miss our companion report, How To Write An Anti-Gay Tract In Fifteen Easy Steps.
Anti-gay activists often charge that gay men and women pose a threat to children. In this report, we explore the supposed connection between homosexuality and child sexual abuse, the conclusions reached by the most knowledgeable professionals in the field, and how anti-gay activists continue to ignore their findings. This has tremendous consequences, not just for gay men and women, but more importantly for the safety of all our children.
Anti-gay activists often cite the “Dutch Study” to claim that gay unions last only about 1½ years and that the these men have an average of eight additional partners per year outside of their steady relationship. In this report, we will take you step by step into the study to see whether the claims are true.
Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council submitted an Amicus Brief to the Maryland Court of Appeals as that court prepared to consider the issue of gay marriage. We examine just one small section of that brief to reveal the junk science and fraudulent claims of the Family “Research” Council.
The FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics aren’t as complete as they ought to be, and their report for 2004 was no exception. In fact, their most recent report has quite a few glaring holes. Holes big enough for Daniel Fetty to fall through.
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