Box Turtle Bulletin

Today in History: Magnus Hirschfeld

Today is the 140th anniversary of the birth of Magnus Hirschfeld, the famous German gay rights advocate and founder of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Research) in Berlin. He was born on May 14, 1868.

Hirschfeld founded the Scientific Humanitarian Committee in 1897. The Committee was established to perform sexual research in support efforts to repeal Paragraph 175, Germany’s anti-sodomy law. Over time, tthe committee was able to gather more than 5,000 signatures on a petition to the Reichstag calling for Paragraph 175’s repeal. The bill was first brought before the Reichstag in 1898, and for more than two decades it continued to garner more support until the Nazi takeover in 1933 obliterated all hopes for its repeal.

After the first World War, Hirschfield founded the Institute for Sexual Research in 1919. The goal of the institute was similar to the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, but its scope was more ambitious. Hirschfield’s institute was intended to conduct research in four major areas: sexual biology, sexual pathology (medicine), sexual sociology, and sexual ethnology. In addition to publicly lobbying for the repeal of Paragraph 175, the Institute also performed premarital counseling, held public lectures on sexological subjects and offered expert testimony in criminal cases.

To support its activities, the Institute established what would become the world’s largest library and archives dedicated to sex research. That library eventually grew to include more than 20,000 volumes, 35,000 photographs and a large art collection. It also maintained some 40,000 biographical letters with names and addresses.

All that changed when the Nazi’s came to power in 1933. On May 6, of that year, a crowd of students and stormtroopers stormed the Institutes’s offices while Hirschfeld was away on a speaking tour of the U.S. The raiders carted off all the contents of the priceless library and burned it in a public bonfire. They destroyed more than 10,000 books, articles, magazines, and other research material. After the Institute’s sacking, Hirschfeld remained in exile, where he tried to re-establish the Institute in Paris. He was unsuccessful however, and he died in 1935 on his 67th birthday in Nice.

Paragraph 175 remained in effect, and was expanded in 1935 by the Nazi regime to include “lewdness”, which could include kissing or fondling. It was also elevated from a misdemeanor to a felony. It is estimated that a quarter of a million gay men and women were swept up in Nazi raids, with tens of thousands dying in concentration camps. After the war when the camps were emptied, several hundred gay men were re-arrested by allied authorities to serve out their sentences under Paragraph 175 because the law was regarded as a legitimate criminal law rather than a political one. In fact, between 1945 and 1969 about 100,000 men were indicted and about 50,000 men sentenced to prison. Paragraph 175 wasn’t repealed until March 10, 1994.

On May 6, 2008, the city of Berlin renamed a stretch of the Spree river for Magnus Hirschfeld in commemoration for the Nazi’s distruction of the Institute 75 years earlier. The riverbank is located near the site of the former Institute.

Florida School Must Allow Pro-Gay Students

We reported about David Davis, the principal of Ponce de Leon High School who forbid any support for gay students on campus. Now a judge has determined that this censorship cannot be allowed.

Judge Richard Smoak of the United States District Court, Northern District of Florida, Panama City Division, issued an order that forces the school to stop its unconstitutional censorship of students who want to express their support for the fair and equal treatment of gay people. The judge also warned the district not to retaliate against students over the lawsuit.

The ACLU has more information on their website including a draft of the judge’s comments. Smoak was not particularly sympathetic to Davis, the School Board, or their attorneys.

I think the School Board may have take a different direction in this case and responded differently perhaps with wiser counsel.

He was particularly unimpressed by the School Superintendant’s “investigation” into the matter, the attorney’s paranoid rantings about a secret/illegal society, and the principal’s fear of imminent chaos.

LaBarbera Rants On Like… Well, LaBarbera

In response to our criticism of his alliance with racists, Peter LaBarbera has lashed out in his usual way, ranting and frothing and void of all reason or accuracy.

Pete doesn’t rebuke his allies David Duke and Ted Pike for their racism and anti-Semitism. He doesn’t admit that he is fearful of the story that might come out in court if Vanasdlen is prosecuted. He doesn’t allow that “the homosexual”, the witnesses, and the police just might be telling the truth. He doesn’t acknowledge that his language contrasting Velasquez with the “strapping, clean-cut, All-American looking young man” lends itself to racism.

Ah, but if he did any of that, he wouldn’t be Peter LaBarbera.

No, instead Pete identifies me as “the Left”, accuses me of hate, and calls me an anti-Christian bigot like Barney Frank (I don’t know why he brings up Barney Frank, but I’m guessing it’s because he’s Jewish and we know what Pete’s allies think about those radical homosexual Jews).

Oh, and to prove that LaBarbera is not a racist he posts a picture of a Black ex-lesbian (yes, he capitalizes “black”). If it wasn’t so tragic it would be funny.

OK. Sure I question the theology of exclusion and condemnation. Yeah I point out when conservatives twist Scripture, logic, and truth to fit their anti-gay agenda.

But “the Left”?

Anti-Christian?

Now that’s what I call irony.

So we have a challenge for LaBarbera: Hey, Pete, give us an example of how our writings here at Box Turtle Bulletin show that we hate Christians. Provide us an example of the anti-Christian bigotry that you think is so prevalent on this site.

APA Symposium’s Critical Flaw: What About The Ex-Gay Survivors?

Don’t you hate it when you know that people are talking about you and you’re not there? And don’t you hate it even more when they’re talking about something that’s directly relevant to your experience, and that the whole point of their conversation is to arrive at conclusions about how to deal with you in the future? And you’re not invited to be a part of the conversation?

I know I do. But the now-canceled American Psychiatric Association Symposium “Homosexuality and Therapy: The Religious Dimension” was about to do just that.

The symposium, as the title suggests, was intended to discuss the intersection of faith and therapy, with special consideration to issues surrounding homosexuality. One particular topic was likely to dominate the discussion: efforts to change sexual orientation through therapeutic means. After all, this panel’s formation came as a response to the APA’s decision to form a working group to review its stance on ex-gay therapy.

The panel was organized by Dr. David Scasta, past president of the APA’s Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists. Also participating would have been Dr. Warren Throckmorton, who defends sexual reorientation therapy for those who want it, while recognizing that some forms can be harmful. Together they were to have covered the “therapy” aspects of what might have been a interesting exchange (although it would have been grossly incomplete for reasons I’ll get into in a moment).

But the panel was doomed from the start with the participating of two starkly polarizing figures representing the “religious dimension” of the panel. Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Rev. Albert Mohler was to be one participant. He has been a stridently vocal advocate for sexual reorientation therapy, so much so that he even approved of prenatal therapy if such a thing were to exist — which, of course, it doesn’t. What contribution he might have had to a symposium which was supposed to bring “scientists and clinicians” together is very unclear.

Providing “balance” for the other side would have been Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in the Anglican community. He too is a very odd choice. Bishop Robinson may be famous for his groundbreaking position in the church, but there’s no indication that he has any background for speaking about sexual reorientation therapy. Against Dr. Throckmorton and Rev. Mohler (who often speaks in support of reorientation therapy), Rev. Robinson would have been very much out of his element. No wonder Focus On the Family was so excited to mischaracterize the event as a “debate” between Robinson and Mohler to validate their position on sexual reorientation therapy.

That would have left Dr. Scasta as the only one who would have had even a remote possibility of speaking knowledgeably about reorientation therapy as an LGBT-affirming advocate. But unlike Throckmorton, Scasta has not published anything himself concerning sexual reorientation therapy that I’m aware of. With his background as editor of the Journal of Gay and Lesbian Psychotherapy, he may have been able to hold his own just fine, but I’ve not been able to find anything which speaks to his knowledge on this particular subject.

We were about to hear a lot of people talking about people who tried to change their sexual orientation, but it wasn’t clear that we were going to hear a lot of informed people talking about them. And worse, in setting up the symposium they left out the most important perspective: ex-gay survivors. This seems to happen all too often. Christine Bakke, ex-gay survivor and a Beyond Ex-Gay organizer, put the problem this way:

What got lost was the actual people who were doing [the ex-gay ministries]. It’s like a kid in a custody battle.

Well they’re definitely not kids anymore. Over the past year, we’ve seen hundreds of former ex-gays come forward in something that is beginning to resemble a movement. Before now, we all knew they existed — we certainly talked about them a lot — but we are just now starting to hear from them directly in pretty significant numbers — as well as from former ex-gay leaders and spokespersons. The days when they were seen but not heard are clearly over. Their experiences in ex-gay therapy are far too compelling to ignore, and their rapidly growing numbers in just a few short years suggests that many more will follow.

But so far, their existence was been largely overlooked or, worse, dismissed as a stunt. When survivors organized their very first conference in Irvine, California, more than two hundred people showed up. But Exodus International president Alan Chambers responded with snide comments while Focus On the Family spread bold-faced lies about the gathering. Even Dr. Throckmorton cast doubts on the ex-gay survivors motives during their historic, first-ever meeting.

Clearly this new movement has touched a nerve. Before now, the ex-gay movement and their defenders have had a free hand in defining the parameters of debate with very little effective opposition. Beginning in the 1990’s they embarked on a massive television and billboard campaign to convince the world that “ex-gays do exist” and “change is possible.” Exodus International took out full-page ads in national newspapers, and ex-gay ministry leader Michael Johnston appeared in television commercials. This, of course, was before his downfall in 2003 when it was learned that he had been hosting orgies, taking drugs and practicing unsafe sex without disclosing his HIV status.

Dr. Throckmorton himself has contributed to this publicity effort. In 2004, he produced the video “I Do Exist,” which he encouraged churches and schools to show as a counter to National Coming Out Day. In it, he described studies which he claimed documented cases “of people who had changed from completely homosexual to completely heterosexual.” The video featured several ex-gays including Noé Gutierrez, Sarah Lipp, Joanne Highley, and Cheryl and Greg Quinlan. All of these were presented as though they were ordinary, run-of-the-mill ex-gays who had an interesting story to tell.

But Sarah Lipp certainly isn’t an ordinary humble ex-gay picked at random. Her segments were filmed in Chattanooga, where she happens to be the women’s ministry coordinator for the Harvest USA ex-gay ministry, having founded several ex-gay support groups throughout the mid-South. Joanne Highley also leads an ex-gay ministry in New York. She’s an especially interesting character. She describes her lesbian past as having been “under demonic oppression.” She has also said that she heard a voice telling her that she would be “ministering to homosexuals and Jews.” That, of course, is not on the video, where she instead appears as a nice, kindly, and perhaps even a timid older lady.

Also not on the video is Greg Quinlan’s exuberance for manufacturing public confrontations while representing PFOX. He does that when he’s not acting on behalf of his own Dayton-based Pro Family Network. He and his wife Cheryl were very active in promoting Ohio’s anti-marriage constitutional amendment, which is just one example of how ex-gay leaders routinely leverage their own marriages for political causes against LGBT citizens.

In fact, of the five ex-gays appearing in that video, four of them had a personal vocational stake in promoting ex-gay ministries. Not surprisingly, this fits a well-known pattern. In Spitzer’s famous 2003 ex-gay study of people who claimed to have changed, he reported that “the majority of participants (78 percent) had publicly spoken in favor of efforts to change homosexual orientation, often at their church,” and that “nineteen percent of the participants were mental health professionals or directors of ex-gay ministries.” Exodus president Alan Chambers and vice-president Randy Thomas were just two of those participants.

The only person featured in “I Do Exist” who was not an anti-gay activist was Noé Gutierrez. He proclaimed himself to be “entirely heterosexual” in the video, but after the video’s release he announced that he regretted that his story became a part of “the divisive message of the ex-gay movement.” In a later update to his web site, he described how quickly Exodus International banned him from their annual conferences after he expressed doubts about ex-gay ministries, and some of the harms that he experienced as a fallout from his participation in ex-gay ministries — harms that are remarkably familiar to many ex-gay survivors I’ve talked to over the past year.

Nevertheless, “I Do Exist” is still available for sale on Dr. Throckmorton’s web site.

So yeah, we’ve all heard a lot from ex-gays. They’ve had free reign for nearly two decades to use their lives as examples to argue against advancing the civil rights of their fellow LGBT citizens. And until now, they’ve enjoyed something of a monopoly on the public square. Sure, there have always been activists who argued against sexual reorientation therapy, but many of them — as well-intentioned as they may have been — were often demonstrably uninformed about the movement, and that has diminished both their credibility and their effectiveness.

But now we have real live former ex-gays who, in concordance with their faith, tried to change their lives to fit the only mold their faiths allowed them — only to find themselves outside the false promise of “change” and, worse for some of them, feeling as though they were beyond reconciliation with God. These are people who really tried to bring their lives into congruence with their faiths, and yet this is where their ex-gay experiences left them. Ex-gays and their supporters have been speaking for decades now; it is way past time now for survivors to have a place at the table.

Talking is good, but this forum would not have included the very people who most needed to be heard. Ex-gay survivors really do exist, to borrow a phrase. And until these survivors are invited to speak to those who would presume to speak about them, a critical part of the conversation will remain unheard. And that won’t do anyone any good.

Supporting Equality Not Allowed at Florida School

David Davis is the principal at Panama City, Florida’s Ponce de Leon High School. He also has some interesting ideas about which symbols are appropriate and which are offensive to wear on clothing at his campus.

For example, WMBB reports

Davis says clothes with the confederate flag are allowed at school. He says they haven’t caused a distraction. Of the 406 students at the high school, none of them are African American.

But if symbols associated with slavery are inoffensive, what ever could be?

Well, that would be any reference whatsoever that you support equality. Yikes!! That could just lead to civil unrest.

It all started when a student who was ridiculed for being gay approached the principal. Instead of protecting her, he advised that she stay in the closet and not talk about her orientation.

That didn’t go over so well with some of the other students. A couple dozen of them thought they’d stand up for their gay classmates.

Days later, Davis heard of students making gay rights signs, and reports of 25 of them coming to school with the letters “GP” or “Gay Pride” written on their hands.

[17 Year old Heather] Gillman says she is not gay, but her cousin (a student at PDL High) is.

Gillman made t-shirts with slogans like:
-“I support equal marriage rights”
-“I support gays”
-“Equal not special rights”

Well Davis couldn’t have that. He suspended eleven students and threatened expulsion. Unlike Confederate symbols, supporting equal marriage rights is against the school dress code.

So Gillman sued David Davis and the Holmes County School Board.

The case is in trial and so far Davis is showing himself to be intensely stupid.

Monday in court, Davis said students who see the slogans and symbols would be distracted in class, even have mental images of gays having sex.

And this is the man they have in charge of education at Ponce de Leon High School.

sigh.

Racists Gain More Allies from the Anti-Gay Movement

The defense of homophobic violence that started with an article by Ted Pike on David Duke’s virulently racist and anti-Semitic website has now been taken by Peter LaBarbera to his fellow anti-gays: Concerned Women for America (CWA)’s Matt Barber, and Bob Knight of the Culture and Media Institute.

Bob Knight and Peter LaBarbera are old friends from when they were part of Concerned Women, but I really don’t know if either Barber or Knight also share Pike and Duke’s racist and anti-Semitic agenda. They may just have been brought into the alliance by LaBarbera.

AZ House Approves Anti-Marriage Amendment Proposal

We’ve just learned that thirty-three members of the Arizona House of Representatives approved SCR1042, the proposed anti-marriage amendment. The resolution passed 33-25, with two representatives not voting. You can see how each representative voted here. The battle now moves to the Senate. If SCR1042 passes the Senate, the proposed anti-marriage amendment goes onto the ballot for November’s general election.

Now it’s time for Arizona residents to shift their attention to their state Senator.If you don’t know who your Senator is, the Equality Arizona web site can find him or her for you and provide you with phone numbers and contact information. You can call directly, or you can even send a message via Equality Arizona. They’ve made it extremely easy to do this.

Moldovan Pride Rally Attacked By Skinheads, Police Stand By And Watch

Yesterday’s scheduled Gay Pride parade in the Moldovan capital of Chisinau was attacked by a mob of skinheads and Moldovan nationalists before the parade could begin. Moldovan police stood by and refused to intervene as angry mobs, estimated at 200 to 400 people, surrounded a bus carrying 60 pride marchers, trapping them inside for 45 minutes. Skinheads also blocked the door to the offices of GenderDoc-M, the organizers of the weekend’s Pride activities, and trapped several people in the offices for several hours. GenderDoc-M made nine calls to police for help. Police refused to respond.

This latest violence follows a last-minute ban by Chisinau city officials a few days before the parade was scheduled to take place. Officials imposed the ban in defiance of a recent Moldovan Supreme Court ruling which guaranteed GenderDoc-M’s right to assemble.

Former Ex-Gay Spokesperson: “I Was Disowned”

Noé Gutierrez has experienced quite a few twists and turns in his young life. He originally appeared in the gay-affirming video “It’s Elementary,” which teaches school children the importance of respecting diversity. Later, he entered the ex-gay movement and was featured in Dr. Warren Throckmorton’s 2004 video “I Do Exist.” In early 2007, he issued a statement regretting that his story became a part of the “divisive message of the ex-gay movement.” Now he talks about how quickly the ex-gay movement has disowned him, an experience that has an eerily familiar ring among other ex-gay survivors I’ve talked to.

In a long but fascinating statement posted on his web site last month, Gutierrez describes his first-hand account of his involvement in the ex-gay movement. He recounts that while the ex-gay movement preaches about love and compassion toward the ex-gay movement, he found little evidence of it:

Forgiveness and reconciliation were a promise held at the far end of a road filled with sacrifice, self-discipline, and a commitment to never practice anything related to homosexuality. The amount of mental/emotional stress these ministries place on their members is insurmountable. Everyone seemed to manage the stress through various coping strategies. The most successful coping strategy seemed to be for someone to remain immersed in ex-gay ideology. You could accomplish this by becoming a member of a weekly support group or joining a ministry team as a volunteer or staff. The more active you were in a ministry the less likely you were to doubt your ability to achieve change. In short, you would have to eat, live and breathe ex-gay ministry.

Other coping mechanisms that Gutierrez observed included same-sex “couples” who were in ex-gay ministry together doing “God’s work,” and others who married an opposite sex partner in relationships which tended to remind him of the “‘best girl friend’ dynamic of the gay community.”

And of course, there was Noé’s own coping mechanism: his big splash as a spokesperson for the ex-gay movement through Dr. Throckmorton’s 2004 video. But as he grew more famous as a result of the documentary, he began to have doubts about what he had done. That’s when he got the full flavor of how quickly the ex-gay movement can turn on its own:

As I began to sever ties to ex-gay ministry I was shocked to see how quickly people turned away their friendship and camaraderie. It was as if overnight my name had been erased from the hearts and minds of all those who supported and “cared” for me. There was no outreach and no attempts at reconciliation. I was for all intents and purposes “disowned”. Since no outreach was made in my direction, I reached out to Exodus International. I signed up to attend their annual conference because a part of me still held the hope that what they believed could be real. After registering for the conference I got word that the leadership of Exodus had serious concerns that my attendance would do “harm” to the progress of other attendees. I could not believe how my change of heart was treated as though it were leprosy with others around me shouting “Unclean!! Unclean!!”

Following his being cast out, Noé struggled with a very serious depression as a result of the isolation and rejection he experienced from those who were his friends. This, too, is a common experience according to other ex-gay survivors I’ve talked with:

…[T]heir acceptance had in my mind been associated with my own sense of being loved and accepted by God. Therefore I not only felt like a failure in the eyes of Exodus but also in the eyes of God. The weight of this burden is one that I do not wish on anybody, but also one I am glad to have experienced because now I know what harm can come from setting people up for this type of failure. If we instill in men and women that their only way to heaven is to repent and commit to a lifelong pursuit of heterosexuality cloaked under terms of “purity” and “holiness”, what will these men and women do when they find the pursuit is never ending? Is it fair to make such an unattainable goal the key to personal and relational success in love and faith? Will they ever truly feel forgiven by God? Can they then ever experience the freedom in the gospel of Jesus Christ? Or are we committing them to a life of shame and chains for which there is no end?

Noé concludes his statement with a beautiful testimony of a faith that was strengthened, not shattered. In many ways he describes a faith that is similar to my own, although I would never have been able to put it into words as beautifully as his. It is a very inspiring statement for everyone who has ever had to face the seemingly impossible task of reconciling their faith and their sexuality. It’s difficult, but not impossible. What’s more, it’s definitely worth it. After all, “we do exist” also.

Meanwhile — and despite all this — “I Do Exist” remains available for sale on Dr. Throckmorton’s web site.

AZ Anti-Marriage Bill Scheduled For Vote Monday

As we reported earlier, the Arizona House of Representatives gave preliminary approval to move a bill onto the House floor that would place an anti-marriage amendment proposal on the ballot for November. Since that vote was taken, Speaker Jim Weiers (R-Phoenix) has placed SCR1042 on the calendar for a third reading on April 28th, 29th, 30th and May 5th. Each day has come and gone without a vote, and SCR1042 was pulled off the calendar for May 6th and 7th. Now we see it back on the calendar for Monday, May 12.

For Arizona residents, it’s still not too late to act. Remember: there are two representatives for each legislative district. Contact both of them and let them know where you stand. If you don’t know who your representatives are, the Equality Arizona web site can find them for you and provide you with their phone numbers and contact information. You can call them directly, or you can even send a message via Equality Arizona.

Obama Supporter to Marry Bush Daughter

Tonight Jenna Bush, the daughter of President Bush, will marry Henry Hager in a ceremony at the president’s ranch. Officiating will be Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell.

This is an unusual selection in that Caldwell has endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and will be campaigning for him. Caldwell, whose church had supported an ex-gay ministry, raised concerns in January among some gay Democrats about Obama’s commitment to equality.

Jenna Bush released a book in September of last year about the personal experience of a young woman in Latin America living with AIDS and her opinions about the efficacy of “abstinence only” education differ from those of her father.

We wish the young couple all happiness and hope that Jenna’s wedding day goes without a hitch.

Another Gay Bar Comes Out

Speaking of straight bars going gay, there’s another one that’s come out of the closet. From The Onion. (Where else?)

Straight Convention Workers An Epicenter For Potentially Deadly Norovirus

It was just last January when the San Francisco Chronicle stoked fears over a new “gay plague” in their article about methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MSRA), a bacterial staph infection that is resistant to certain antibiotics. An article published in the Annals of Internal Medicine documented an outbreak of MRSA in the Castro, which lead anti-gay activists to falsely accuse gay men of spreading MRSA from the gay community into the straight community. The only problem with that charge is that MRSA had been making its rounds among heterosexuals for several decades. Ironically, athletes are at particularly high risk.

The Chronicle headline that started that hysteria read:

S.F. gay community an epicenter for new strain of virulent staph

Today, San Francisco activist Michael Petrelis noticed that this morning’s Chronicle headline about an outbreak of a potentially deadly norovirus among straight workers is very different:

Moscone Center workers sickened by norovirus

San Francisco public health officials are warning of an outbreak of a virus that has sickened dozens of people at Moscone Center.

About 70 people who fell ill had been at the Moscone Center between April 30 and Thursday, authorities said Friday. All but three were staff members working at the convention center, said Moscone spokesman David Perry.

Michael Petrelis observes that while the MRSA story in January hyped fears of a dreaded disease in the gay community infecting the “general population,” this story is being treated by some news outlets as a light-hearted, low-key tech story (this norovirus epidemic started during a JavaOne tech conference) aimed at calming fears rather than stoking them. He noticed that CNET’s coverage was downright adolescent:

To clarify, this is a virus that makes you barf and gives you diarrhea. It’s not the kind of virus that sends Viagra-pitching e-mails to all your friends or treats you to a Rick Astley sing-along every time you turn on your computer.

No, you won’t drop dead from it. Norovirus is better known as one of the viruses that causes a nasty stomach flu. Symptoms only last about a day or two, but it’s highly contagious. Just to up the gross-out factor: Norovirus is found in the fecal matter or vomit of people who are infected. If they don’t wash their hands properly, they spread it when they handle food or drinks.

What a difference. When it was gays coming down with MRSA, headlines screamed, “New Superbug Hitting Gay Men” or “Flesh-eating bug spreads among gays.” This time, it’s “Did you get infected? Virus runs amok amid JavaOne.”

The norovirus is passed exactly the same way as MRSA — by people who don’t wash up. And get this: fecal matter is a culprit. That detail is an anti-gay activist’s wet dream. I wonder when Matt Barber and Peter LaBarbera will exploit this latest danger coming from the heterosexual community.

[Hat tip: Michael Petrelis]

Controversey Turns Foe Into Ally

For 25 years, Scottsdale, Arizona’s Anderson’s Fifth Estate was an ordinary rock and new wave dance club whose popularity was waning. That popularity took a dive in 2006 when club owner Tom Anderson asked a transgender woman, Michele de LaFreniere, to leave because of complaints from other patrons.

That incident brought on a year of controversy as Scottsdale residents grappled with a reputation for hostility to the LGBT community. Following that incident, another gay couple was assaulted outside a Scottsdale restaurant and Mayor Mary Manross refused to observe GLBT month in June

But now, things couldn’t be more different. Anderson got to personally know a lit of gay and transgender residents during discussions with the LGBT community, and in the process Anderson underwent a huge transformation. Today Anderson’s Fifth Estate is now called Forbidden, and it is one of metro Phoenix’s hottest gay clubs. And Anderson and his wife are now staunch LGBT allies and good friends of Michele de LaFreniere.

Sometimes all it takes is some conversation and getting to know real people.

Chisinau Mayor Bans Gay Pride Parade

It was just this morning when we reported that Moldova was about to witness its very first Gay Pride parade n Chisinau, the nation’s capital. Now we find that the mayor of Chisinau has banned the parade just two days before it was to take place.

GenderDoc-M, the group that is organizing the parade, says that the mayor has no power to ban the march under a new Moldovan law on public manifestations. According to GenderDoc-M, if the authorities have proof that there could be serious trouble at an event, then a court decision is needed to impose a ban. The mayor has no power to act unilaterally. Last year, the Moldova Supreme Court ruled that Chisinau city officials had violated the Moldovan constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights by banning a previous Gay Pride march.

GenderDoc-M is calling on city authorities to rescind the ban and for city police to provide adequate protection for Pride participants.