Box Turtle Bulletin

More Violence in Ft. Lauderdale

Simmie Williams Jr., 17, was shot and killed in Ft. Lauderdale, Fl as week ago. He was dressed in drag when he was shot on February 22. He died later at Broward General Medical Center. Police are still investigating.

The following evening, a gay couple was attacked and beaten at an outdoor restaurant. A man walked past their table when Melbourne Brunner’s partner, Mitchell Mart, said “Good morning.” Moments later, the man returned, yelling, “Are you looking at me, you faggot? You know what I do to faggots? I break their necks!” The couple asked for their check and left. They were attacked as they were getting into their car.

On Thursday, community LGBT leaders gathered for a vigil for Simmie Williams and called for an end to violence against gays and lesbians. Following the vigil, about 120 people, including Melbourne Brunner, gathered at the Gay and Lesbian Community Center in Fort Lauderdale for a forum to discuss the attacks.

Last summer, Ft. Lauderdale’s mayor Jim Naugle ratcheted up local anti-gay sentiments by hyping the epidemic of sex in public restrooms — an “epidemic” which local police say simply doesn’t exist.

Beenie Man to Perform in Tampa

Tampa CBS affiliate WiLD 98.7 is sponsoring a “WiLD Splash” at the Ford Amphitheater on March 8. Ten hip-hop and dance hall artists are on the bill, including Jamaican Dance Hall recording artist Beenie Man whose lyrics advocate killing gays and lesbians. One lyric has him saying, “I’m dreaming of a new Jamaica, come to execute all the gays.” Apparently many others are dreaming of the same Jamaica.

CBS Radio, Budweiser, and MetroPCS Wireless need to know what kind of deadly “entertainment” they are sponsoring. People really are dying in Jamaica and here in this country, including in South Florida. It’s time for blatant calls for more violence to come to an end.

You can contact WiDL 98.7 Promotions, Anheuser-Busch (1-800-342-5283), and MetroPCS (Toll free 1-888-863-8768) and let them know what you think of this.

Hospital Visitation Denied Again

Opponents to gay marriage routinely claim that gay couples can get all the legal protections of marriage through other means. Well that’s a crock:

Four months ago, Lacey resident Janice Langbehn, her partner Lisa Pond and their children Katie, David and Danielle, ages 10 to 13, were set for a relaxing cruise from Miami to the Bahamas.

But Pond, Langbehn’s partner for nearly 18 years, was stricken in Miami with a brain aneurysm and died. The family says the way they were treated by hospital staff compounded their shock and grief.

Langbehn, a social worker, said officials at the University of Miami, Jackson Memorial Hospital did not recognize her or their jointly adopted children as part of Pond’s family. They were not allowed to be with her in the emergency room, and Langbehn’s authority to make decisions for Pond was not recognized.

Here’s the kicker:

After Pond was taken to the emergency room, Langbehn said she was informed by a social worker that they were in an “anti-gay state” and that they needed legal paperwork before Langbehn could see Pond. Even after a friend in Olympia faxed the legal documents that showed that Pond had authorized Langbehn to make medical decisions for her, Langbehn said she wasn’t invited to be with her partner or told anything about her condition.

That’s right. Even with all of the legal paperwork in hand (and even though a straight couple would not have to show any sort of proof), Janice still wasn’t allowed to make any medical conditions, or even to sit alongside her partner as she lay dying. It took a Catholic priest to finally intervene as he administered last rites.

The doctors’ attitudes suddenly changed when they discovered that Lisa was an organ donor candidate. But since her death, the hospital reversed course again. The still haven’t given Janice Lisa’s medical records, and the county hasn’t provided her Lisa’s death certificate, items needed for their two children’s Social Security benefits.

Florida Anti-Marriage Initiative “Barely Meets Deadline”

First it was on, then it was off. Now it’s on again:

After four years of signature gathering, backers of a measure to deny family benefits for unmarried Floridians barely met the requirements to place the so-called “Florida Marriage Protection” constitutional amendment on the November ballot, according to state election officials.

Demographically, Florida has much in common with Arizona, particularly a large Senior Citizen base. And Florida’s proposed amendment, like Arizona’s would strip unmarried seniors from local protections and benefits due them because of their unmarried status. Seeing how difficult it has been to get the required number of signatures in such a socially conservative state, Florida looks like it will be shaping up into a very interesting battle.

Huckabee’s Red Meat Strategy

What do you do when you’re down in the polls so badly observers wonder if you should give up on Florida? If you’re Rev. Mike Huckabee, the answer’s simple: scare ’em with the gays:

“We’ve been in Florida every day this week. . .We’re spending every night in Florida. We’re doing events every day. This nonsense that we pulled out is utterly, utterly, false,” the former Arkansas governor insisted.

As for tonight’s debate, Huckabee outlined some red-meat conservative Republican stands that he believes will set him apart from his opponents, including his advocacy for gun rights, anti-abortion position, and support for a ban on gay marriage.

The Florida Miracle?

Just a month ago gay Floridians were gearing up to face yet another anti-gay marriage amendment. Supporters of constitutional discrimination had cheered the meeting of their signature collection goal and disassembled their signature teams. They had met the magic number of 611,009.

But the most peculiar thing has happened. The petition collectors seem not to have kept their own count, relying on the state. And the state made an error by double counting signatures taken before a certain date from a certain county.

And the petition stands 22,000 signatures short. Now the anti-marriage efforts must start anew and get those signatures collected and validated before February 1.

If the tables were turned, we all know that Pat Robertson and company would be declaring this to be the glorious intervention of God. He had befuddled the minds of the enemy and confused their nefarious homosexual agenda.

But I’m not going to make such claims.

Activists on both sides of the issue predicted the shortfall will be overcome in time, though.

Florida4Marriage.org blasted an urgent e-mail to supporters Tuesday announcing the crisis and urging them to “pull out all stops” in collecting signatures during the next two weeks.

But if by some chance they are not able to get their signatures… well, I may be willing to see the hand of the divine.

Florida Republican Gov. Crist Won’t Push Anti-Marriage Amendment

The signatures are in and the campaign is on. Florida will be voting on a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages — marriages which are already banned under state law. The Florida Republican Party put up nearly three-fourths of the funding to gather signatures, funding which abruptly ended when Gov. Charlie Crist took office and instructed the state GOP to not contribute any further. And now that the proposal has been certified to appear on the ballot, Gov. Crist has declined to offer his endorsement:

And even though he signed a petition to support the same-sex-marriage ban while he was running for office, he says he’s not interested in pushing the issue anymore.

“It’s not something that moves me,” he said last week.

Possible Anti-Gay Vehicular Attack Near Ft. Lauderdale

Ft. Lauderdale has been making some gay news lately, mostly due to a campaign of homophobia coming from the city’s mayor, Jim Naugle.

Now Ft. Lauderdale police are investigating a hit-and-run that, according to an eye-witness, may have been an anti-gay hate crime attack.

Marcus Hopkins … was there that night outside Ramrod, a popular bar primarily for gay men where [Tommy] Davis works as a bartender.

It was shortly after 10 p.m. Sept. 18 when Davis was crossing Northeast Fourth Avenue to return to work. Hopkins said Davis got halfway into the right lane when Davis, he and another friend heard an engine rev.

Hopkins said Davis ran, but before he could get away, the car swerved onto the sidewalk and hit him.

“When he hit the windshield, he bounced off the car and hit the dirt,” said Hopkins.

The driver of the car then swerved back onto the road and kept going. Hopkins believes the incident might have been a hate crime.

Anti-gays often claim that their objections are to “sin not sinners”. And when others point out that their denunciations result in violence, they loudly protest their innocence and that there is “no proof” to link the rhetoric to the crimes. They say, “you can’t prove the one who committed the crime was at the sermon or the press conference”.

Well, it is my observation that when anti-gay language escalates in an area, anti-gay violence soon follows. And I’m tired of bigots refusing to see the link. I’m disgusted at those who claim to “love the sinner” but take no responsibility for the results of their campaign against “the sin”.

To those who use God as a justification for their denunciations of their gay brothers and sisters, I ask this question, “Don’t you think He’s watching? Don’t you think He cares about the consequences of your campaign?”

Family Impact Summit “Attendance Less Than Hoped”

The American Family Association’s OneNewsNow reports on the dismal turnout for last weekend’s “Family Impact Summit” held in Brandon, Florida. The final tally was only about half of what they had hoped to achieve:

By Friday evening, just over 100 people had registered to hear speakers that included Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, Southern Baptist leader Richard Land, former presidential candidate Gary Bauer and the American Family Association’s Don Wildmon.

A workshop on grass roots activism drew a handful of people — and one was a spy, an activist for Americans United for Separation of Church and State researching the opposition.

Well, there was more than just that one “spy” there. There was also Cathy James, whose calm and measured demeanor brought low the mighty during a question and answer session. And of course, there was yours truly.

But I can vouch for the low turnout, especially during the morning and afternoon sessions. It often felt as if there were more volunteers, exhibitors and speakers milling around than actual attendees. Only during the evening hours would the audience swell to three hundred or so. On the last night of the event, the turnought might have approached four hundred to hear the much-anticipated stars of the event, Ken Blackwell and Tony Perkins. By the way, the evening events were generally free of charge to the public.

I often overheard a few speakers and volunteers grumble about the attendance during breaks and over dinner. The disappointments weren’t limited to this event either. A few complained about how difficult it was to get a decent turnout at even larger, better funded and more heavily advertised events as well.

Is this a harbinger for things to come?

Family Impact Summit: A Lesbian Shows Peter Sprigg How To Debate

It was last Saturday afternoon, and I had already endured nearly two full days of the Family Impact Summit in Tampa. You can imagine what kind of a mood I was in by then. And as I sat down to enjoy another dose of verbal gay-bashing at a town hall meeting called “Defending Marriage: What’s At Stake?” I overheard two people behind me talking about a small protest by gay activists that was taking place outside.

“Do you think any of them will try to come in here?” the older one asked.

“Nah. They won’t bother because they know they won’t be able to find anyone to have sex with afterwards,” sneered the other.

“Hah! So true!”

Nice crowd. These were the kind of people whose company I enjoyed for most of the weekend.

Only about 120 people took their seats in the sanctuary for the main even that afternoon. This session was conducted by four B-list speakers: Rena Lindevaldsen, law professor at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University and associate director of the Center for Constitutional Litigation and Policy; Peter Sprigg, vice president for policy at the Family Research Council; John Stemberger, president of the Florida Family Policy Council which is collecting signatures to put a gay marriage ban on the Florida ballot; and Dale O’Leary, a speaker and author who bills herself as an expert on the “lies” of the gay rights movement.

And when they began their panel, we heard about a two more hours of lies from the anti-gay movement.

I won’t get into all of them here – it would take a book to do it and they aren’t anything you haven’t heard before. But it mostly went like this: we’re all prone to mental illnesses and physical diseases, we’ve all been abused as children, we’re all substance abusers, and we don’t really want marriage because we don’t want it to interfere with our promiscuity. Dale O’Leary put it this way:

And so I think we need to understand is that the desire to live in a nice little cottage with a dog and two children and all the things we think of as parents is not their goal. That is their P.R.

But at least she was nice enough to note, “The fact is, they love the children they acquire.” But after detailing the supposedly horrible childhoods these “acquired” children endure, she concluded, “Nobody should be in the business of making tragedies.”

After the panelists had their say (after about an hour of this, I might add), the “town hall meeting” was finally opened up to questions from the floor. And the second questioner, a brave young woman wearing a red tee-shirt, was a stunner:

Hi. My names is Cathy James and I would like to challenge all of the individuals here listening today to really take a look at some of the rationale and some of the comments that speakers have given in regard to things such as …why government gets involved with personal relationships, that is, for the procreation of children. I think as most of the attorneys will tell you, that civil marriage was created for one purpose only, and that was property and how to divide property.

And so I am a lesbian, I live in the Riverview area with my partner of thirteen years and our son who is seven. And I go to work Monday through Friday and attend church weekly, I volunteer at the school, I volunteer at the homeowners association. And what I have a hard time understanding is why you are interested in keeping a legal framework from us in being able to handle the same things as heterosexual couples and such things as visitation, and hospital…. And how to divide our property in the same way, and how to parent our child?

The stunned silence was amazing. John Stemberger thanked her for coming and tried to stammer out an answer. He said that some forms of discrimination are perfectly legitimate (“home ownership benefits society in the way renters do not.”) and ended by saying, “marriage uniquely benefits society in the way same sex couples do not.” But Cathy remained calm and firm:

But in what way? What’s the difference in the benefit? How does your marriage benefit society more than my relationship with my same gender partner does not?

Peter Sprigg jumped in to assert that “without question” the best family structure was headed by a man and a woman. But Cathy persisted:

…But now you’re devaluing, what, over fifty percent of the children who live with one parent or that one parent as died or that they’re divorced and now they’re just living with one parent. You’re devaluing them and that’s not fair.

By now the panel was speechless, leaving Peter Sprigg to stumble around trying to get his footing. “Each person’s relationship choices serves as an example to the rest of society… and if that example becomes more widespread, more people will make the same choice, more children will suffer.”

So you’re saying a man and a woman in a marriage are valued higher than single people? They’re valued higher than…

Sprigg cut her off and instead of relying on his own outwitted wits, he decided to read from David Blankenhorn’s book, The Future of Marriage. And as he read, his voice rose, becoming more strident, more angry, more sharp with each word. “I would be rich if I had a nickel for every time someone who knows almost nothing about marriage has told me that historically marriage was all about property. That is nonsense!” But as he continued to spit out the words, it slowly dawned on him that Blankenhorn was talking about dowries and gifts to the bride’s family – which had nothing do with Cathy’s questions.

Clearly Sprigg is a man who doesn’t like having his reputation as an “expert” challenged. And it became obvious that he wasn’t up to this particular challenge. But he kept reading, vainly looking for the rescue that he was sure he’d find in Blankenhorn’s book. But it wasn’t there. He finally gave up and Cathy graciously thanked all of the panelists for their time.

For the two and a half days of the summit so-called “experts,” one after another, paraded from one stage to another convincing everyone who would listen that homosexuals would be the downfall of society. The solution? “Ordered Liberty Under God” went the oft-repeated battle cry.

But one brave woman burst through the bluster and showed that the emperors had no clothes. It was a wonderful moment, and for me the greatest highlight of the whole conference.

Words Have Consequences

In May we reported about Waymon Hudson and Anthony Niedwiecki, a couple that was startled to hear Scripture played over the Ft. Lauderdale-Hollywood Airport calling for their death. Steve Rothaus, on a Miami Herald blog site, provides a follow-up on how the incident turned the men into activists.

Just a few days ago, we reported how Alan Chambers went to Florida to tell anti-gay activists that they were fighting an “evil agenda”.

Why do I list Chambers’ words of demonization (literally) here with Hudson and Niedwiecki? Because this is what Hudson tells us has happened in Florida since their experience:

”A woman came up to me [in Publix] and asked if she had seen me on the news,” Hudson said. “I said possibly. She looked at me right in the face and said, `You two deserve what that man said to you.’

”The next day I was at the gym,” Hudson said. ‘A large-size note that had `fag’ scrawled across it was stuck in my windshield. At that point I started to take side roads going home. It was a weird way to live. A few days later, a woman came up to me and spit in my face in the grocery store, with her 6-year-old son in hand.”

Can I prove that these vile people were in the audience at the Family Values Summit? No, of course not. But when you tell people that they are fighting against “evil”, you justify anything they do. All the “love the sinner” in the world won’t offset giving permission for cruelty and abuse.

Maybe they Needed Robo-Johns

The other day I referenced that Ft. Lauderdale’s mayor wanted automated bathrooms to cut down on “homosexual sex”.  Now perhaps we know where he got the idea.

State Rep. Bob Allen (R-Merritt Island) was arrested Wednesday afternoon at a local park after offering to perform a sex act on an undercover officer [in a bathroom stall] in exchange for $20, police said.

Those wacky Floridians. And because hypocrisy and irony dance a tango:

Allen, who sponsored a failed bill that would have tightened the state’s prohibition on public sex, scheduled a news conference at his lawyer’s office to discuss Wednesday’s arrest.

UPDATE: Allen has held his press conference wherein he claimed he was not guilty – but said some peculiar things:

It is not true. It is unaccurate, and it is therefore not guilty…and I will be standing strongly for that.   …

And there are many details that they will lose the burden of proof.

In other words, Allen will try to claim that the cop was lying and that you can’t prove otherwise. I have doubts that this will be very convincing either to the court or to his constituents. My predictions: plea to some lesser charge, leaving office to pursue other ventures, claims that he’s doing so to shelter his family from scrutiny.

A Sign of Poor Hospitality

The CEO of a resort hotel operating company thinks it’s okay to discriminate against gays in housing. In fact, he’s hopping mad that Orlando no longer does so.

Orange County, Florida passed a fair-housing ordinance to protect gays and lesbians from discrimination, and this led one of Mayor Rich Crotty’s prominent supporters, Tom Hutchinson, CEO of CNL Hotels & Resorts Inc., to stomp out of Crotty’s re-election campaign:

Hutchison’s e-mail to Crotty argued that the mayor’s recent “position (actually lack thereof)” of “favoring the absolutely ridiculous vote on legal protection for equal housing for gays” prodded him to “withdraw my name from any further association” with the campaign. “I am not interested in supporting candidates with seemingly zero Christian biblical principals [sic –BTB Ed.] on the issues regarding the alternative gay lifestyle,” it concluded.

A spokeswoman for CNL tried to clear up the mess by releasing a statement saying the CEO’s comments were a personal statement and did not reflect the views of the company. Hutchinson then issued his own statement:

I do not believe in discrimination of any kind, for any reason — period,” it said. “I am thankful that this is a community that embraces the individual views of all its citizens.”

Hutchison’s written statement to the Orlando Sentinel said he never intended to offend anyone and regrets “the way the exchange was handled.” He could not be reached for further comment.

So which is it? Does Hutchinson support discrimination, or is he against it? Or was he for it before he was against it?

And when it comes to extending hospitality toward his hotel’s many gay and lesbian guests, does Hutchinson offer similar self-contradictory statements?

So here’s the question. Does the Arizona Biltmore Resort and Spa treat all of its guests fairly? What about the Capital Hilton in D.C., or the JW Marriott Grande Lakes in Orlando, or the Grand Wailea Resort in Maui? Or any of these other fine establishments?

And since the CEO of these hotels has thrown his hissy fit over gays buying and renting homes, should we really be renting rooms from him?