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
April 21st, 2012
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Celebration of Life Rally: Salt Lake City, UT. The Celebration of Life Rally is to show community support for LGBT people and their allies. The rally is sponsored by Soulforce Equality Ride (which is in Salt Lake City for the next few days), Equality Utah, Utah Pride Center, Ogden’s OUTreach Resource Center, PFLAG, City of Hope Church, Sacred Light of Christ Church, and Affirmation (An affirming group for LGBT Mormons). It goes from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. at City Creek Park at N. State and E. 2nd Sts, and features free food, fun, and entertainment.
Circling the Wagons Conference for LGBT Mormons: Washington, D.C. According to their web site:
The goal of the Mormon Stories “Circling the Wagons” conference is to create a space where LGBTQ or SSA individuals and their families and allies can gather to acknowledge, explore and honor shared experiences. No issues strike more deeply than who we love and how we understand and honor God. These issues carry an especially profound weight in Mormon communities and have been the source of a great deal of misunderstanding, judgment and hurt. Consequently, gay Mormons are deeply divided over how to address same-sex attraction and negotiate the choices they face.
In convening this conference, we are inviting LGBTQ Mormons and their families and allies to step beyond historic divisions to establish a shared space where all who have ever self-identified as Mormon and have experienced same-sex attraction can speak truthfully and respectfully. Mormon Stories and the Open Stories Foundation are hosting this conference as an expression of our longstanding commitment to LGBTQ issues and in the spirit of our “Shared Values”
Guest speakers will include author Carol Lynn Pearson; Mitch Mayne, an out gay man who is also executive secretary of his LDS ward; and Sister Jeannine Gramick, a Catholic nun and the co-founder of a ministry in support of LGBT people. The conference takes place today at the Community of Christ, 3526 Massachusetts Avenue NW, from 11:00 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., with dinner provided.
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Beaumaris, Wales, UK; Mobile, AL; Phoenix, AZ; Potsdam, Germany and Tallahassee, FL.
Other Events This Weekend: Sunshine Stampede Rodeo, Davie, FL and the ONE National Archives Queer Film Festival, Los Angeles, CA.
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Binghamton, NY and Miami, FL.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
Wall Street Journal Covers Ex-Gay Movement: 1993. The article opens with a description of an ex-gay meeting at the Foursquare Pentecostal Church in Hayward, California, near San Francisco, where a 31-year-old former missionary talked about his dispair over trying to change:
He confesses: “It’s not working, and I don’t know why.” The others, regulars at this Friday-night support group, are sympathetic; they know the temptations of the flesh and the damnation they figure awaits those who succumb. “It’s a matter of will,” says one. “You have to make the choice.” Maybe, suggests another, it is demonic possession.
The erstwhile missionary’s eyes grow watery. He has begged God to free him, has surrounded himself with Christians and spent a month in an in-patient treatment program. But nothing has worked, and thinking about it just makes it worse — especially at these meetings. “I’m having sex, I’m having fun, and I don’t feel bad about it,” he confesses. “Not getting AIDS is all I care about.”
Having sex, having fun and not feeling bad about it are not options here. One of those interviewed was John Evans, who had helped to found Love In Action (which would later move to Memphis), and who had already left the ex-gay movement when his best friend, Jack McIntyre, killed himself over not being able to “change.” McIntyre had spent four years in Love In Action before winding up in the psychiatric ward at Marin General Hospital:
There, in 1977 at age 46, he recorded his thoughts in a letter: “No matter how much I prayed and tried to avoid the temptation, I continually failed. . . . I love life, but my love for the Lord is so much greater, the choice is simple. . . . To continually go before God and ask for forgiveness and make promises you know you can’t keep is more than I can take. I feel it is making a mockery of God and all He stands for in my life.”
In room 104, he gave himself Communion, swallowed a lethal nightcap of Valium and Dalmane — tranquilizers and sleeping pills — and lay down on a couch to a quiet death.
By 1993, EXodus International claimed 65 affiliated ministries, but Evans said, “They’re destroying people’s lives. If you don’t do their thing, you’re not of God, you’ll go to hell. They’re living in a fantasy world.” Among those in that fantasy world was John Paulk, who was also interviewed for the Journal:
Mr. Paulk had been a prostitute, a female impersonator named Candi and an alcoholic who tried to kill himself before he decided to become straight and marry an ex-lesbian he met in church last year. “I had no sexual interest in women at all,” he says. “But when you begin a relationship with a woman that you believe God has led you to, then you develop attraction to that person. To say that we’ve arrived at this place of total heterosexuality — that we’re totally healed — is misleading.”
In 1993, Paulk was a cautious “success story” for the nascent ex-gay movement. He would later become much more confident in his “success” while at Focus On the Family. There, he would help found Love Won Out, the traveling ex-gay roadshow and informercial put on in conjunction with Exodus International. (Exodus is now the sole producer of Love Won Out.) He and his ex-lesbian wife, Anne, became the face of the ex-gay movement in a massive publicity campaign in 1998 that culminated in their photo appearing on the cover of Newsweek. In 2000, Wayne Besen photographed Paulk as he was leaving a gay bar in Washington, D.C.
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April 20th, 2012
TODAY’S AGENDA:
National Day of Silence: Everywhere. The National Day of Silence is a day when students across the country vow to take a form of silence to call attention to the silencing effect of anti-LGBT bullying and harassment in schools. According to the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network’s (GLSEN) 2009 National School Climate Survey, nearly 9 out of 10 LGBT students report verbal, sexual or physical harassment at school and more than 30% report missing at least a day of school in the past month out of fear for their personal safety.
The Day of Silence web site has important information and resources for those who are participating, and Lambda Legal has put together a pamphlet (PDF: 568KB/3 pages) detailing your legal rights in connection with your participation in the observance. If you are a student in a U.S. K-12 school and feel like your rights are not being respected, please click here to let GLSEN know.
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Beaumaris, Wales, UK; Mobile, AL; Phoenix, AZ; Potsdam, Germany and Tallahassee, FL.
Other Events This Weekend: Sunshine Stampede Rodeo, Davie, FL and the ONE National Archives Queer Film Festival, Los Angeles, CA.
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Binghamton, NY and Miami, FL.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
China Removes Homosexuality From List of Mental Disorders: 2001. After consulting with mental health organizations in the U.S. and elsewhere, the Chinese Psychiatric Association published the third edition of the Chinese Standards for Classification and Diagnosis of Mental Disorders, which formally removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. The move came as Chinese psychiatry was coming under international scrutiny for the growing use of mental institutions to detain dissidents and members of the banned Falun Gong sect. The delisting of homosexual was controversial: the Beijing Youth Daily gave prominent space to a senior psychiatrist who called gay people “abnormal.”
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April 19th, 2012
Today is Yom Hashoah, the internationally recognized date set aside as the Holocaust Remembrance Day. The date corresponds to the 27th day of Nisan on the Hebrew Calendar to commemorate the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum will host a live webcast of the National Days of Remembrance ceremony in the US Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C. this morning at 11 a.m. EDT.
TODAY’S AGENDA:
White House LGBT Conference on HIV/AIDS: Atlanta, GA The White House will host the next of its series of conference s on LGBT issues today on the topic of HIV/AIDS. The conference is hosted by the White House Office of Public Engagement and the White House Office of National AIDS Policy in partnership with Morehouse School of Medicine, and takes place today from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. at the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta.
Early Voting Begins on North Carolina’s Amendment 1: NC. Early voting begins today in North Carolina’s primary, in which the major issue remaining is Amendment 1, which would amend the North Carolina constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage (even though it is already prohibited by law) along with any other state recognition of any sort of relationships, gay or straight, outside of marriage. When the proposed amendment was first placed on the primary ballot, it was feared that an anticipated contested Republican presidential primary coupled with an absence of an urgent reason for Democrats and independents to go to the polls would spell doom for the Tar Heel State’s LGBT community. But now that the GOP primary race has effectively ended, prospects for Amendment 1’s defeat have brightened considerably. If you live in North Carolina, get yourself and everyone you know to the polls now.
As for everyone else, if you donate now, your gift will be doubled with a matching gift from several leading North Carolina citizens (only one of whom is gay; the rest are straight allies). Please make your donation today to Protect ALL NC Families to defeat Amendment 1.
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Beaumaris, Wales, UK; Mobile, AL; Phoenix, AZ; Potsdam, Germany and Tallahassee, FL.
Other Events This Weekend: Sunshine Stampede Rodeo, Davie, FL and the ONE National Archives Queer Film Festival, Los Angeles, CA.
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Binghamton, NY and Miami, FL.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Dick Sargent: 1930. His best known role was that of the second Darrin in the 1960s sitcom Bewitched, after having taken over that role in 1969 when Dick York was forced to leave due to ongoing health problems. It was a fortuitous second chance for Sargent: he was the producers’ first choice for the role in 1964 but was forced to turn it down because he was under contract with Universal Studios to appear in the short-lived sitcom Broadside, a WWII comedy about four girls on an island with 4,000 sailors. (Hilarity allegedly ensued, but only for one season.) Before he got his second chance at Bewitched, Sargent appeared in several films and television programs which helped pad his resume with a growing list of solid if not particularly memorable roles.
He never really made it onto the A-list, bit he did have a solid run opposite Elizabeth Montgomery as America’s favorite put-upon Mortal. And what a strange, gay time he must have had on the set, with openly-flamboyant Paul Lynde as practical-joker Uncle Arthur and the closeted and conflicted Agnes Moorhead as Endora (a character whose style and sarcasm deserves the everlasting homage of drag queens everywhere.) The series ended in 1972 and immediately went into syndication for whole new generations to enjoy. Meanwhile, Sargent kept working in minor roles and voiceovers for commercials and cartoons.
In 1974, he appeared with lesbian Fannie Flagg in the game show “Tattletales,” in which Hollywood couples would try to guess each others’ answers to embarrassing questions about marriage, sex, or other coupley topics. They were, ostensibly, “dating” for the game show’s purposes. Sargent finally came out on National Coming Out Day, October 11, 1991, over concerns about high suicide rates among gay teens. He revealed that when he was a student at Stanford he twice tried to kill himself when he realized he was gay. the following summer, he was Grand Marshall of the Los Angeles Gay Pride parade alongside his former Bewitched co-star and friend, Elizabeth Montgomery. He became involved with the AIDS Project Los Angeles and the American Foundation for AIDS Research. He died in 1994 of prostate cancer.
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April 18th, 2012
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Soulforce Equality Ride: Denver, CO. The Soulforce Equality Riders are spending this week in Colorado. Today looks like it will be more of a fun day, with a meet and mingle during Happy Hour at the Denver Hamburger Mary’s, located at 700 E. 17th Ave., from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m.
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Beaumaris, Wales, UK; Mobile, AL; Phoenix, AZ; Potsdam, Germany and Tallahassee, FL.
Other Celebrations This Weekend: Sunshine Stampede Rodeo, Davie, FL.
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Binghamton, NY and Miami, FL.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
GOP Chairman Warns of “Perverts Who Have Infiltrated Our Government”: 1950. The Red- and Lavendar-Scare of Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) received a boost today when Guy George Gabrielson, Republican National Chairman, issued a letter addressed to about 7,000 party workers. Under the title “This is the News from Washington,” Gabrielson wrote:
Perhaps as dangerous as the actual Communists are the sexual perverts who have infiltrated our Government in recent years. The State Department has confessed that it has had to fire ninety-one of these. (see Feb 28) It is the talk of Washington and of the Washington correspondents corps.
American sensibilities were extremely delicate in 1950, particularly on a subject as contentious as homosexuality. In many respects, it was still the “love that dares not speak its name.” Newspaper editors were reluctant to actually use the word “homosexual,” preferring instead to dance around the subject wherever possible. (The use of the word “pervert,” on the other hand, was totally acceptable and routine.) Gabrielson expressed his frustration over editors’ concerns over their readers delicate sensibilities:
The country would be more aroused over this tragic angle of the situation if it were not for the difficulties of the newspapers and radio commentators in adequately presenting the facts, while respecting the decency of their American audiences.
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April 17th, 2012
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Soulforce Equality Ride: Denver, CO. The Soulforce Equality Riders this week pulled into Colorado, where yesterday they met in private with representatives from Focus On the Family in Colorado Springs. Today, the riders move on to Lakewood, Colorado for an all-day protest against the anti-LGBT policies at Colorado Christian University. The riders will hold their protest on West Alameda Avenue along the campus’s south side, from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
The riders will then move on to the Mercury Cafe (2199 California St in Denver) for spoken word performances by members of the Soulforce Riders and the public. That event will take place from 9:00 to 11:00 p.m. Members of the public (and especially students from CCU) are invited to attend.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Thornton Wilder: 1897. The Pulitzer Award-winning playwright and author is best known for his plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, as well his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey. He also wrote the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt. His works touched on very broad, universal themes: the qualities of good and evil, and finding meaning in the lives of ordinary people. Our Town was particularly inventive: it’s sparse stage setting was quite “modern” in 1938, but not as avant garde as the character of the “stage manager,” who breaks the fourth wall and converses with the audience, even going so far as taking questions.
Details of Wilder’s private life are very hard to come by. The lifelong bachelor was exceptionally circumspect about his private life, although he is known to have enjoyed a wide circle of friends. He was romantically linked with the writer Sam Steward, to whom he was introduced by Gertrude Stein. They were reportedly together while Wilder wrote the third act of Our Town — in which we learn that the town’s choir director and church organist Simon Stimson commits suicide. Sadly, in 1938 it would not have been at all difficult to read that as code.
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April 16th, 2012
TODAY IN HISTORY:
Miami Gay Bar Raided: 1960. Residents of greater Miami woke up on Easter morning to the news that Metro police overnight had raided the “E Club,” located at the corner of Tamiami Trail and SW 37th Avenue “at the request of a citizen. Twenty-three men, including the manager, were arrested at the “deviates’ den” and were charged with “disorderly conduct by being in a known homosexual hangout.” The manager was charged with allowing minors in the bar as well as “operating a known homosexual hangout.” Among those charged was an instructor at Miami Military Academy. When reporters informed the academy’s superintendent, he vowed, “We will drop him immediately, without question. We just can’t have a thing like that. We have enough headaches as it is. I will get in touch with him tomorrow and find out if he was arrested.” Another man from Coral Gables told police he was a teacher, but he later told the Miami News that he was a former teacher who hadn’t taught since 1956.
The names, addresses, and occupations of all twenty-two men arrested were printed in the accompanying article. According to The Miami News:
Habitues of the place were reported to embrace each other, wear tight-fitting women’s pants and bleach their hair, (Metro Capt. Patrick) Gallagher said. When Gallagher and six other officers descended on the place Friday night, they found the dim-lit bar full of men, some of them paired off in “couples” he said. The only woman in the place told police she just dropped by for a drink, and she was not detained. Officers took all the men in the place to headquarters. Several were released after a screening and 22 were booked.
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April 15th, 2012
TODAY’S AGENDA (THEIRS):
Family “Research” Council’s Values Bus Tour: Westlake and Cuyahoga Falls, OH. The Family “Research” Council, an SPLC-certified hate group, continues its Values Bus Tour of Ohio. Today, the tour goes to the Cleveland suburb of Westlake for morning services at Church on the Rise. The bus will be there from 9:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. The bus then departs for an Akron Tea Party “Rescue America Tax Day Rally” at Fall River Square in Cuyahoga Falls. That rally features “Joe the Plumber” (Samuel Wurzelbacher, who is running for Congress to represent the heavily gerrymandered district that stretches from Toledo nearly to Cleveland) and Rep. Jim Renacci (R-OH). That rally goes from 3:00 to 6:00 p.m.
Scott Livley, Brian Camenker, Don Feder Speak at Tea Party Rally: Boston, MA. The SPLC’s list of anti-gay hate groups will be well represented at today’s Patriots’ Day Rally on Boston Commons today, sponsored by the Massachusetts Tea Party. MassResistance’s Brian Camenker and Abiding Truth Ministry’s Scott Lively, and Don Feder (who once described himself as making Atilla the Hunn look like a “a limousine liberal”) are listed as featured speakers. The keynote speaker will be Texas GOP Congressman (and LaBarbara Award winner) Louie Gohmert. Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnston had been on the bill as another keynote speaker, but he withdrew on Thursday after learning about Scott Lively’s participation. Johnson will be at a competing Worcester Tea Party rally instead. The Boston rally will soil the Boston Common Bandstand from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m.
TODAY’S AGENDA (OURS):
Protest of FRC Values Bus: Westlake and Cuyahoga Falls, OH. GetEqual Ohio and Freedom To Marry Ohio will meet that FRC Values Bus events today with counter-rallies at both locations. The first one at Westlake will take place in front of Church on the Rise, and will go from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. The second counter-rally will take in Cuyahoga Falls at Fall River Square from 3:00 to 6:00 p.m.
Pride Celebrations Today: Åódź, Poland; Miami Beach, FL; PiteÃ¥, Sweden
AIDS Walks Today: Honolulu, HI and New Haven, CT.
Other Events Today: Women’s Fest 2012, Camp Rehoboth, DE and Scandinavian Ski Pride, Hemsedal Norway.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Leonardo Da Vinci: 1452. Born in Vinci “at the third hour of the night,” Leonardo was apprenticed to the artist Andrea del Verrocchio in Florence at the age of fourteen. Early descriptions indicate that he was tall (at least 5’8″), athletic and extremely handsome. One contemporary described him as “an artist of outstanding physical beauty who displayed infinite grace in everything he did.” At the age of twenty-four, Da Vinci was among four people accused of sodomy, a very serious accusation because it carried the death penalty. Those charges were dismissed on the condition that there were no further accusations. When accusations were made again that same year, charges were dismissed again, perhaps because one of those charged may have been linked with the powerful Medici family.
Undoubtedly, those accusations made Da Vinci very cautious, even in Florence where, despite those charges, homosexuality was somewhat more tolerated than elsewhere (so much so that in Germany, the word Florenzer became slang for homosexual.) While there is no further contemporary mention of Da Vinci’s sexuality, it was generally known that the life-long bachelor was particularly fond of and generous with his handsome male pupils, some of whom may have inspired some of Da Vinci’s erotic sketches. Later historians mostly assumed that he was gay, an assumption that gained greater currency in the nineteenth century when German, French and British authors began examining the new understanding of what was to be called inversion, uranism, and, finally, homosexuality. Whenever nineteenth century authors sought examples of inverts in history, Da Vinci’s name nearly always earned a prominent mention.
Bessie Smith: 1894. “The Empress of the Blues” was born in Chattanooga, the daughter of a laborer and part-time Baptist preacher. He died before she could remember him, and by the time she was nine, she had lost her mother and a brother. Her older brother had joined a Black Vaudeville troupe owned by Moses Stokes, which featured Ma Rainey as blues singer. In 1912, Bessie joined that same troupe, but as a dancer rather than a singer. While it’s believed that Rainey didn’t teach Smith to sing, (Smith had been singing on the streets of Chattanooga from a very young age), Rainey is credited with teaching Smith about stage presence. By 1913, Smith began singing professionally, and her career exploded in 1923 when she began recording for Columbia Records. By then, she was the highest-paid African-American entertainer in her day.
In 1923, she entered a very stormy marriage with Jack Gee, but he was unable to accommodate her show-biz life or her open bisexuality. They separated but never officially divorced. Meanwhile, she recorded hit after hit for Columbia, including “Downhearted Blues,” “St. Louis Blues”, “Empty Bed Blues,” and the tune she is perhaps best known for today, “Gimme a Pigfoot (And a Bottle of Beer).” By the end of the 1920’s, the arrival of the “talkies” meant the end of vaudeville, while the onset of the Great Depression brought about a collapse of the recording industry. Smith continued touring in clubs, but the going was tough. By 1933, she was recording for Okeh records, where she was paid a non-royalty fee of $37.50 for each side. Those were her last recordings. She was critically injured in a car accident in 1937, her right arm nearly severed in the accident. She died the following morning at the G.T. Thomas Afro-American Hospital in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Her funeral in Philadelphia drew 10,000 mourners. Her grave however remained unmarked; her estranged husband kept pocketing the money raised for a tombstone. She finally got her marker in 1970, courtesy of Janis Joplin.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Who6fTHJ34
George Platt Lynes: 1907. He first wanted to start a literary career after meeting Gertrude Stein and her circle in Paris. In 1927, he opened a bookstore in Englewood, New Jersey and took up photography so he could take pictures of his friends, and that is where his creative energies went. By 1932 Lynes opened his photography studio in New York and began exhibiting in the city’s art galleries. He earned commissions from the New York City Ballet, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Bergdorf Goodmans. After World War II, he moved to Hollywood, where he became chief photographer for Vogue and photographed such illuminaries as Katharine Hepburn, Gloria SWanson, Igor Stravinsky, and Thomas Mann. His work was an artistic success, but a financial failure. He moved back to New York, but was never able to re-establish the success he once had.
The passion he had for his photography can be best seen in the photos that he took which harkened back to his reason for taking up photography in the first place: intimate (usually nude) photos of friends, lovers, performers and models. The artist Paul Cadmus, who posed for Lynes, recalled how he “used flattery to make everyone feel so comfortable.” Those male nudes were never published, at least not in his lifetime. In the late 1940s, he transfered many of his negatives to Dr. Alfred Kinsey’s Institute for Sexual Research in Bloomington, Indiana, and destroyed much of the rest of his work just before dying of lung cancer in 1955. In 2011, Rizolli published George Platt Lynes: The Male Nudes
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April 14th, 2012
TODAY’S AGENDA (THEIRS):
Family “Research” Council’s Values Bus Tour:Perrysburg, OH. The Family “Research” Council, an SPLC-certified hate group, continues its Values Bus Tour of Ohio. Today, the tour continues north to the Toledo suburb of Perrysburg for a Tea Party rally at Hood Park on Front Street, along the banks of the Maumee. The Teasters will denounce socialism and Medicare cuts, among other things, from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
TODAY’S AGENDA (OURS):
Protest of FRC Values Bus: Findlay, OH. GetEqual Ohio and Freedom To Marry Ohio will meet that FRC Values Bus rally with a counter rally at the Hood Park. The counter rally goes from 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Åódź, Poland; Miami Beach, FL; PiteÃ¥, Sweden
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Des Moines, IA; Honolulu, HI; Laramie, WY; and New Haven, CT.
Other Events This Weekend: Women’s Fest 2012, Camp Rehoboth, DE; International Gay & Lesbian Travel Association’s Annual Global Convention, Florianopolis, Brazil; and Scandinavian Ski Pride, Hemsedal Norway.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
Iowa’s Sexual Psychopath Law Goes Into Effect: 1955.The last time anyone saw eight-year-old Jimy Bremmer alive was on the night of August 31, 1954, when the Sioux City youth went to a friend’s house two doors down to play after dinner. He left his friend’s house at around 8:00 to go home, but he didn’t make that short distance. On September 29, his decomposed body was found in a pasture north of town. His crushed skill was several feet away from his decapitated body, and both hands were missing. A man was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment. He had confessed after being sent to a mental hospital and injected with Desoxyn and Seconal. (His conviction would be overturned in 1972.)
After several years of the red scare and pink scare dominating the evening news, Iowans became convinced that the state was crawling with sexual psychopaths. On January 31, 1955 Iowa legislators introduced a bill in the Iowa House of Representatives, the purpose of which was “to provide for the confinement of persons who are dangerous criminal sexual psychopaths.” The bill extended to anyone, whether they had been convicted of a crime or not. The bill passed both houses unanimously with very little discussion and went into effect on April 14, 1955.
On the evening of July 10, 1955, two year old Donna Sue Davis was kidnapped from her crib where she was sleeping. The kidnapper had come in through the open bedroom window, and left the house with Donna Sue through that same window. A neighbor saw the kidnapper flee and gave chase, but the kidnapper got away. The next morning her body was found in a cornfield outside of town. An autopsy revealed that the child had been raped and sodomized. Her left jaw was broken and there were several bruises and cigarette burns on her buttocks. She died of a massive brain hemorrhage from a severe blow to the head. One itinerant farm hand was arrested, but investigators quickly ruled out the possibility that he committed the crime. Panic gripped Sioux Falls as hardware stores reported running out of padlocks. The Sioux City Journal on July 12 demanded that the city be made “the most feared town in American for the sex deviate.” With no other firm suspects to investigate, the police chief began a roundup of “known sex perverts.” On July 23, Gov. Leo Hoegh announced that a special ward at the state mental hospital in Mount Pleasant had been established to house them. Most of those “sex perverts,” it would turn out, were gay men who had not been charged with any crime. By the end of the year, thirty-three men had been committed, at least twenty of them from Sioux City. The Sioux City prosecutor declared, “At least word is out that they’re not welcome in Sioux City any more.”
Donna Sue’s killer was never found. The sexual psychopath law was finally repealed in 1977.
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April 13th, 2012
TODAY’S AGENDA (THEIRS):
Family “Research” Council’s Values Bus Tour: Findlay, OH. The Family “Research” Council, an SPLC-certified hate group, continues its Values Bus Tour of Ohio. Today, the tour goes north to Findlay for a rally at the Angels and Butterfly park behind the Outback STeakhouse off of I-75. The rally, which goes from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m, features Janet Folger Porter of Faith2Action; Pastor Andy Douglas of Christians for Constitutional Awareness; Linda Theis of Ohio ProLife Action, Connie Mackey, of Family “Research” Council and Genevieve Wood of The Heritage Foundation.
TODAY’S AGENDA (OURS):
Protest of FRC Values Bus: Findlay, OH. GetEqual Ohio and Freedom To Marry Ohio will meet that FRC Values Bus rally with a counter rally at the Findlay Implement Co. parking lot, 1640 North Ridge Rd. They are asking people to arrive at 5:15 p.m.
Book Discussion of “Flagrant Conduct” and Lawrence v Texas: Washington, D.C. Author Dale Carpenter will be at the Politics and Prose bookstore this evening to discuss his new book,Flagrant Conduct: The Story of Lawrence v. Texas
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Åódź, Poland; Miami Beach, FL; PiteÃ¥, Sweden
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Des Moines, IA; Honolulu, HI; Laramie, WY; and New Haven, CT.
Other Events This Weekend: Women’s Fest 2012, Camp Rehoboth, DE; International Gay & Lesbian Travel Association’s Annual Global Convention, Florianopolis, Brazil; and Scandinavian Ski Pride, Hemsedal Norway.
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?
April 12th, 2012
TODAY’S AGENDA (THEIRS):
Family “Research” Council’s Values Bus Tour: Middletown (Franklin) and Dayton, OH. The Family “Research” Council, an SPLC-certified hate group, continues its Values Bus Tour of Ohio. Today, the tour heads edges its way north for a rally just off the Interstate outside of Middletown, at the Middletown Christian School. That rally goes from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.
Then the bus packs up and continues on up the road to Dayton, where they will join the Dayton Tea Party Tax Day Forum. That will take place at the Hara Conference and Exhibition Center on Shiloh Springs Road from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m.
TODAY’S AGENDA (OURS):
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Åódź, Poland; Miami Beach, FL; PiteÃ¥, Sweden
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Des Moines, IA; Honolulu, HI; Laramie, WY; and New Haven, CT.
Other Evens This Weekend: Women’s Fest 2012, Camp Rehoboth, DE; International Gay & Lesbian Travel Association’s Annual Global Convention, Florianopolis, Brazil; and Scandinavian Ski Pride, Hemsedal Norway.
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?
April 11th, 2012
TODAY’S AGENDA (THEIRS):
Family “Research” Council’s Values Bus Tour: Columbus, OH. The Family “Research” Council, an SPLC-certified hate group, continues its Values Bus Tour of Ohio. Today, the tour heads south for a voter registration event at the Cincinnati Christian University from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Then the bus heads north the the suburb of Failrfield for a rally at 525 Kolb Drive, which if this google map is any indication, it’s the parking lot of the Roadhouse Grill just west of the perennially moribund Forest Fair/Cincinnati Mills/Cincinnati Mall. That rally will go from 5:00 to 8:30 p.m.
TODAY’S AGENDA (OURS):
Protest of FRC Values Bus: Fairfield, OH. GetEqual Ohio and Freedom To Marry Ohio will meet that FRC Values Bus rally with a counter rally. They are asking people to at 2:00 p.m. for a protest lasting until 5:30 p.m at 525 Kolb Drive.
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Åódź, Poland; Miami Beach, FL; PiteÃ¥, Sweden
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Des Moines, IA; Honolulu, HI; Laramie, WY; and New Haven, CT.
Other Evens This Weekend: Women’s Fest 2012, Camp Rehoboth, DE; International Gay & Lesbian Travel Association’s Annual Global Convention, Florianopolis, Brazil; and Scandinavian Ski Pride, Hemsedal Norway.
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?
April 10th, 2012
TODAY’S AGENDA (THEIRS):
Family “Research” Council’s Values Bus Tour: Columbus, OH. The Family “Research” Council, an SPLC-certified hate group, continues its Values Bus Tour of Ohio today. The tour, which is a joint project of FRC and the Heritage Foundation, is part voter registration drive and part propaganda tour, where they will disseminate “materials on defending life, marriage and religious liberty.” Today’s stop is in Columbus for a rally at the Ohio Statehouse, where they will be joined by Linda Harvey from Mission America (another SPLC anti-gay hate-group) and Janet Folger Porter from Faith 2 Action. The rally takes place from noon to 1:00 p.m., on the south side of Capital Square near State Street.
TODAY’S AGENDA (OURS):
Protest of FRC Values Bus: Columbus, OH. Where there’s a values bus, there will also be a counter rally organized by GetEqual Ohio and Freedom To Marry Ohio. They are asking people to get there early on State Street near the Ohio Theater across from the Statehouse at 11:30 a.m. for a counter demonstration lasting until 1:30 p.m. Homemade signs are encouraged, but please don’t attach sticks or poles to the signs.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
James Ogilvy, 7th Earl of Findlater and 4th Earl of Seafield: 1750. The Scottish peer and landscape architect is known for lavish British landscape garden designs in mainland Europe, where he spent most of his life. Some say he was exiled to Europe, but others say his exile was voluntary. In either case, the cause of his exile appears to be related to his homosexuality which, while a capital offense in Britain, was somewhat more tolerated on the mainland as long as things were kept discreet. And besides, they did like his gardens, particularly in Carlsbad, Bohemia, where he became a major patron of the city’s charities and parklands. Findlater trail is still well-used today.
In 1803, Findlater’s private secretary, Johan Georg Fischer purchased Helfenberg Manor near Dresden on Findlater’s behalf. Its lands gave Findlater yet another opportunity to create a garden of considerable renown. Findlater died in 1811, and his will named Fischler his sole heir. Findlater’s family in Scotland contested the will on the grounds that it was made “for a base cause,” suggesting an unnamed immorality between the two. The lawsuit created a huge scandal, but Findlater’s relatives were partly successful, having been awarded Findlater’s lands and estate in Scotland. Fisher remained at the estate in Dresden until his own death in 1860, when he was buried alongside Findlater at the Loschwitz parish church.
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April 9th, 2012
TODAY’S AGENDA: (THEIRS)
Family “Research” Council’s Values Bus Ohio Tour Begins: Steubenville, OH. The Family “Research” Council, an SPLC-certified hate group, kicks off it’s Values Bus Tour of Ohio today with the Heritage Foundation. The tour is part voter registration drive, and part propaganda tour, where they will disseminate “materials on defending life, marriage and religious liberty.” The tour’s first stop is at Steubenville’s Ft. Steuben Park, 120 S. 3rd St., from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m.
Tomorrow, the bus goes to Columbus for a noontime rally at the Ohio Statehouse, where they will be joined by Linda Harvey from Mission America (another SPLC anti-gay hate-group) and Janet Folger Porter from Faith 2 Action. That rally will be met with a counter rally, details of which you can find here.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
Freud’s Letter to a Concerned Mother: 1935. The letter is often described as being to “an American mother,” perhaps because it was sent anonymously to the American sexologist Dr. Alfred Kinsey from “a grateful mother. Kinsey, in turn, shared it with the American Journal of Psychiatry, where it appeared in the April 1951 edition. The handwritten letter reads as follows:
April 9th, 1935.
Dear Mrs. ——
I gather from your letter that your son is a homosexual. I am most impressed by the fact that you do not mention this term yourself in your information about him. May I question you, why you avoid it? Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation, it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest men among them. (Plato, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc.) It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime and cruelty too. If you do not believe me, read the books of Havelock Ellis.
By asking me if I can help, you mean, I suppose, if I can abolish homosexuality and make normal heterosexuality take its place. The answer is, in a general way, we cannot promise to achieve it. In a certain number of cases we succeed in developing the blighted germs of heterosexual tendencies which are present in every homosexual, in the majority of cases it is no more possible. It is a question of the quality and the age of the individual. The result of treatment cannot be predicted.
What analysis can do for your son runs in a different line. If he is unhappy, neurotic, torn by conflicts, inhibited in his social life, analysis may bring him harmony, peace of mind, full efficiency, whether he remains a homosexual or gets changed. If you make up your mind he should have analysis with me — I don’t expect you will –, he has to come over to Vienna. I have no intention of leaving here. However, don’t neglect to give me your answer.
Sincerely yours with kind wishes,
Freud.P. S. I did not find it difficult to read your handwriting. Hope you will not find my writing and my English a harder task.
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April 8th, 2012
J.C. Leyendecker’s cover for the Saturday Evening Post, April 11, 1925 (Click to enlarge)
So here’s some trivia for you. In most of the world, Easter Sunday, which commemorates the resurrection of Jesus, typically goes by a name derived from the Greek (Paskha), which in turn comes from the Hebrew (Pesaḥ), which is Hebrew for Passover. Early Christianity replaced the Passover lamb with “the Lamb of God” and kept the name for their own commemoration of the Resurrection. The Greek Πάσχα was quickly transliterated into the Latin Pascha, and together those two languages gave rise to the modern Pashkë (Albanian,) Påske (Danish and Norwegian), Pasen (Dutch), Pääsiäinen (Finnish), Pâques (French), Pascua (Galician), Pak (Haitian Creole), Páskar (Icelandic), Pasqua (Italian), Páscoa (Portuguese), Paşti (Romanian), Πасха (Pascha, Russian), Påsk (Swedish), Paskalya (Turkish), Πаска (Paska, Ukrainian), Phục sinh (Vietnamese), and Pasg (Welsh). [Thanks, Google Translate!]
But in the good old King James English, we call it Easter, which has nothing to do with the Paschal sacrifice or Passover or any of that. The Old English word Ēastre or Ēostre refers to the month of the Germanic calendar which the Venerable Bede in the Eighth century said was named for the Anglo-Saxon goddess Ēostre. (Easter in modern German is rendered as Ostern,) Which means that in the Lord’s Red-Letter English, we have long since taken the Paschal Lamb out of Pascha and replaced it with Easter eggs, bunnies, bonnets, and Peeps. Happy Easter everyone!
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Celebrations This Weekend: Spring Diversity, Eureka Springs, AR; Mr. Gay World, Johannesburg, South Africa; White Party, Palm Springs CA
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Sean Kennedy: 1987. He would have been twenty-five today if he hadn’t been killed on May 16, 2007 at about 3:45 a.m. as he left a local bar in Greenville, South Carolina. According to local news reports at the time, the sheriff’s department said that Stephen Andrew Moller got out his his car, walked up to Sean, shouted comments about Sean’s sexual orientation, and punched him hard enough to break several facial bones. When Sean fell, his head hit the pavement so hard that his brain separated from his brain stem. Fifteen minutes later, one of Sean’s friends received a voice mail from Moller:
Hey. (laughter) Whoa stop. (laughter) Hey, I was just wondering how your boyfriend’s feeling right about now. (laughter) (??) knocked the fuck out. (laughter). The fucking faggot. He ought to never stick his mother-fucking nose (??) Where are you going? Just a minute. (laughter). Yea boy, your boy is knocked out, man. The motherfucker. Tell him he owes me $500.00 for breaking my goddamn hand on his teeth that fucking bitch.
Greenville County sheriff’s office arrested Moller as part of a homicide investigation; his arrest warrant described the act as “a result of the defendant not liking the sexual identity of the victim.” But by the time the case reached the grand jury in October, the indictment was reduced to involuntary manslaughter, for which South Carolina law set the maximum penalty at five years. Moller’s attorney argued that Moller “had no idea (Sean) was gay until after the fact. It’s just a freak incident that should never have happened.”
As part of a plea deal, Moller was sentenced to three years, minus seven months for time served. After getting his GED, Moller’s sentenced was reduced again and he was released after just 13 months, his “goddamn hand” having healed quite nicely in the meantime.
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April 7th, 2012
I can really be so gemisht sometimes. I have it in my goyish calendar that today is the first day of Passover. It is the first full day of Passover, but I really should know better. In fact, I do know better. Which is why I should have noted in yesterday’s Agenda that Passover begins at sundown yesterday. And I should have done that yesterday because the beginning of Passover is the most important part of Passover — indeed, perhaps the most solemn occasion in the entire Jewish calendar — when the traditional Seder takes place. And which is why yesterday I should have wished you Chag Sameach, a joyous festival. Yesterday.
Anyway, Happy Pesach, belatedly.
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Harry Hay Centennial Celebration: Los Angeles. At 11:a.m., there will be a ceremony at the foot of the Cove Avenue Steps on Silver Lake Blvd. recognizing the site as a historic place by the City of Los Angeles. The staircase leads up the the cul-de-sac where LGBT-rights pioneer Harry Hays lived. It was at his home where on November 11, 1950, a group met to form the Mattachine Society. Those steps will be dedicated as “The Mattachine Steps” to mark the historic site. Following the dedication, the Radical Faeries will host a picnic in an adjoining park overlooking the Silver Lake Reservoir (east side).
Then, at 2:30, there will be a book signing and reading of Stuart Timmon’s newly updated biography, The Trouble with Harry Hay, at Stories bookstore, 1716 Sunset Blvd, in Echo Park.
Celebrations This Weekend: Spring Diversity, Eureka Springs, AR; Mr. Gay World, Johannesburg, South Africa; White Party, Palm Springs CA
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Harry Hay: 1912. Today is the centenary of Harry Hay, who founded the Mattachine Society which became the first successful society of gay men and women. It wasn’t the first such society however; that distinction went to the short-lived Chicago Society for Human Rights, which didn’t last a year (See Dec 10). But Hay wound up holding a curious and tenuous link between the Chicago group and the Mattachines when, in 1930, at the age of 17:
I enticed an “older” gentleman (he must have been at least 33 ) to “bring me out” by finagling his picking me up in Los Angeles’s notorious Pershing Square. Poor guy–he was appalled to discover, subsequently, that I was both a virgin and jailbait. Champ Simmons didn’t really turn me on, but he was a very decent human being; he was gentle and kind and taught me a great deal.
…Champ, the guy I seduced into picking me up and bringing me out into the gay world, had himself been brought out by a guy who was a member of that Chicago group. So I first heard about that group only a few years after its sad end. My impression was that the society was primarily a social thing. But just the idea of gay people getting together at all, in more than a daisy chain, was an eye-opener of an idea. Champ passed it on to me as if it were too dangerous; the failure of the Chicago group should be a direct warning to anybody trying to do anything like that again.
Hay wasn’t put off by dangerous ideas, a propensity which would always mark him as a controversial figure throughout his life. He joined the Communist Party in 1934, and remained a member until the early 1950s. He also became active in theater, where he briefly became the lover of actor Will Greer. In 1938, he married at the urging of his therapist and party members. He and his wife adopted two daughters, but the couple divorced in 1951.
In 1948, Hay went to a party at USC with several other gay men who supported the presidential campaign of Progressive Party candidate Henry Wallace. It was at that party that Hay conceived of organizing a gay activist group. His first efforts to found the “Bachelors for Wallace” failed, but Hay stuck with the idea of creating an organization specifically for gay people. Finally, on November 11, 1950, Hay and several others met at Hay’s home for the first meeting of “The Society of Fools”, which later became the Mattachine Society, named after the Medieval French secret societies of masked men whose anonymity allowed them to criticize the ruling monarchs. As the Mattachine Society got off the ground, Hay left the Communist Party, which didn’t allow gays to be members.
By 1953, the Society grew to over 2,000 members in Southern California. And also by 1953, Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s red and pink scares were in full swing. With homosexuality being equated with subversion and treason, many Mattachine members became concerned about the communist connections of some of the Mattachine’s founders, principally, Hay. When Hal Call and others Mattachine members from San Francisco sought to amend the Mattachine’s constitution to oppose “subversive elements” and to affirm that members were loyal to the U.S., Hay resigned, he said later, to save the Society from investigations related to the Red Scare. (In 1955, Hay would, in fact, be called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee.)
In the 1960s, Hay and his partner, John Bernside, became involved again with gay activism, helping to found the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations (NACHO), the Los Angeles chapter of the Gay Liberation Front, and, in 1979, a gay spirituality movement called the Radical Fairies. It was during this time when his opposition to assimilationist attitudes within the gay community really began to stand out:
“We pulled ugly green frog skin of heterosexual conformity over us, and that’s how we got through school with a full set of teeth,” Hay once explained. “We know how to live through their eyes. We can always play their games, but are we denying ourselves by doing this? If you’re going to carry the skin of conformity over you, you are going to suppress the beautiful prince or princess within you.”
Hay’s concept of homosexuality, it could be said, was more of a nineteenth century conception than a twentieth century one. He was enamored with the concepts of androgyny, with some of his ideas being similar to the nineteenth-century formulation of homosexuality being a “third sex.” He was influenced by Edward Carpenter, who wrote of gay people as a distinct, well-defined group with its own unique ideals that set if apart from society. Carpenter also wrote of “Greek love” and its pederastic ideals. This perhaps explains how Hay’s radical and anti-assimilationist politics could reach its most controversial limits when, in the early 1980s, he protested NAMBLA’s exclusion from LGBT organizations and activities. He was forcibly removed from the Los Angeles pride parade in 1986 when he showed up with a sign reading “NAMBLA walks with me.” Even some of Hay’s most dedicated supporters and closest friends couldn’t abide this stance. The majority of the gay community had grown, matured, and move in directions that Hays couldn’t accept.
This is perhaps the most difficult aspect of Hay’s legacy that we are left to grapple with. And yet, without Hay’s extremely radical idea — radical for 1950 — that gay people should come together from out of the shadows and begin to ask for simple things like the freedom to gather in bars or not to be arrested or not to have their newsletters and magazines confiscated by the post office, it’s hard to know how long the fruition of a far more radical idea would have been delayed — the extremely radical, impossible-to-fathom-in-1950 idea that gays and lesbians could assimilate, that they could become police officers, run businesses, publish newspapers, serve in the military, run for office, marry, raise children, join PTAs and churches and car pools and homeowners associations and march openly in parades down the middle of public streets in June, and do all of those things without hiding or retreating back into the closet. If Hay saw himself as the sworn enemy of assimilation, his pioneering efforts in 1950 were ultimately what made that assimilation possible. And for that, I think that perhaps the late Paul Varnell put it best:
Hay may have been wrong about almost everything. But in the end we do not insist that founders have the right answers, not even ask the right questions. We can honor them as founders and leave it at that.
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Featured Reports
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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”
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