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 lobbyOctober 23rd, 2011
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations Today: Benidorm Spain and Minsk, Belarus (Banned!).
Also Today: Out In Africa Film Festival, Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa and Glasgay!, Glasgow, UK.
Le Journal de Montreal's front page coverage of the Truxx and Le Mystique raids (click to enlarge)
TODAY IN HISTORY:
Demonstrations Against Montreal Police Raids: 1977. About two thousand of Montreal’s gay community took to the streets and jammed downtown Ste. Catherine Street very early on Sunday morning shouting “fascist dogs” and “gestapo” at motorcycle police who were called to clear the area. The focus of the anger was the brutal “morality squad” raids early Saturday morning at Truxx and Le Mystique, two gay bars. Police barged in wielding machine guns and bullet-proof vests as they arrested 144 men for being in a “bawdy house” or for “gross indecency” — common charges for anyone who was thought to be gay. Those raids capped two years of nearly constant police harassment and raids which had begun as a campaign to “clean up” the city in preparation for the 1976 Olympics. But with this latest raid, the gay community fought back in what was later dubbed, “Quebec’s Stonewall.” Also different this time, gays and lesbians had the news media’s support. By the end of the year, the Parti Québéois adopted Bill 88 which ensured that sexual orientation would be covered under the province’s Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms which prohibited all forms of discrimination. However, the change failed to have much of an appreciable affect, and police raids would continue until Montreal’s “other” Stonewall rebellion in 1990 following a riotous raid of a loft party.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Jean Acker: 1893. She appeared in several silent films in the 1910s and 1920s, thanks, in part, to a relationship she struck up with another silent film actress, Alla Nazimova, who introduced Acker to a group of lesbian and bisexual actresses known as the “sewing circle.” Acker’s greatest claim to fame, however, is in her real-life role as Mrs. Rudolph Valentino. They married in 1919 after a two month courtship, but the marriage was reportedly never consummated (it’s said that she locked him out of the hotel bedroom on their wedding night). They filed for divorce a few years later. In 1923, Acker met former Ziegfeld Follies girl Chloe Carter, and they remained together for the rest of their lives. Acker died in 1978 of natural causes and was buried next to Carter.
Lilyan Tashman: 1896. The actress got her start in vaudeville and Broadway before moving to Hollywood to become a well-known film star. Most of her roles were that of a “bitchy” other woman or as a sharp, clever villainess. She married a vaudevillian performer in 1914, but they divorced in 1921. In 1925, she married openly gay actor Edmund Lowe, and they had what Hollywood reporters described, perhaps with a bit of snark, as an “ideal marriage.” The couple entertained lavishly at their home, where their weekly parties reportedly becoming “full-blown orgies.” One reporter described her as “the most gleaming, glittering, moderne, hard-surfaced, and distingué woman in all of Hollywood.” She died young, at the age of 37, of cancer shortly after filming her final film in New York in 1934.
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F Young
October 23rd, 2011
Quebec’s “sexual orientation” amendment to its Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms in December 1977 prohibited discrimination in all employment, housing, public services, and some other activities, that fall under provincial jurisdictionin in both the public and private sectors in the Province of Quebec.
It was the first law (as opposed to city or county ordinance) anywhere in the world to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation. However, it was largely unknown outside Quebec because of the English/French legalese/everyday language barriers.
Until Wisconsin became the first US State to adopt its law in 1982, Quebec was the only major jurisdiction in the world that protected LGB’s against discrimination. It had a population of over 6 million, with about 90% of employees and clients being subject to the Quebec Charter. About 10% of LGB employees and clients in Canada are under federal jurisdiction and were unprotected until the Canadian Human Rights Act was amended in 1996.
After the repeal of Miami-Dade County’s ordinance in June 1977 due to Anita Bryant’s “Save the Children” crusade, the only other jurisdictions in the world with protection in the private and public sectors were a few US cities (East Lansing MI; Tucson AZ; Aspen, CO; and possibly others).
Reed Boyer
October 23rd, 2011
Jean Acker and Chloe Carter were together 55 years? Amazing, wonderful women – and yet another example that refutes the lie that “gays and lesbians are fickle, incapable of lasting relationships, and doomed to lives of loneliness.
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