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 lobbyMarch 31st, 2012
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebration This Weekend: Exeter, UK.
Other Celebrations This Weekend: BFI London Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, London, UK; Dinah Shore Weekend, Palm Springs, CA.
AIDS Walk This Weekend: Bloomington, IN; Ft. Worth, TX.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Richard Chamberlain: 1934. He first gained fame as the handsome young intern, Dr. Kildare, in the television series fo the same name in 1961, a role that lasted until the series ended in 1966. From there, he became involved in repertory theater and film roles which had a more literary bent: The Tree Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Music Lovers, and The Lady Carline Lamb (his 1974 appearance in The Towering Inferno being a notable departure.) He returned to television in the 1970s in several popular miniseries, including Centennial, ShÅgun, and The Thorn Birds as Father Ralph de Bricassart. He lived in Hawaii with his partner, Martin Rabbett, from 1976 to 2010; and it was during that time that he was outed by a French women’s magazine in 1989. While that outing didn’t really stick very well with the general public, it didn’t surprise many people when Chamberlain finally and officially came out in 2003 in his autobiography Shattered Love
Barney Frank: 1940. He has represented Massachusetts’s 4th Congressional district since 1981, and he has done so as an openly gay representative since 1987. When he came out to The Advocate that year, he became the first member of Congress to do so voluntarily. He recalled that when Rep. Stewart McKinney of Connecticut died of complications from AIDS (McKinney’s physician claimed that McKinney became infected from a blood transfusion, but many didn’t believe it.), there was “an unfortunate debate about ‘Was he or wasn’t he? Didn’t he or did he?’ I said to myself, I don’t want that to happen to me.” After coming out, Frank easily won re-election in 1988 and in just about every election since then.
He earned a reputation for being one of the House’s quickest wits, saying, for example, that he was unable to finish reading the Starr Report about President Bill Clinton’s relationship wth Monica Lewinsky because it was “too much reading about heterosexual sex.” In 2006, Rep. John Ostettler (R-IN) accused Frank of pushing a “radical homosexual agenda.” Frank acknowledged that he supported marriage equality, gays in the military, and non-descrimination in the workplace, “but I do not think that any self-respecting radical in history would have considered advocating people’s rights to get married, join the army, and earn a living as a terribly inspiring revolutionary platform.” Frank has announced that he will be retiring from Congress at the conclusion of the current term. He also announced that he will marry his partner, Jim Ready, sometime this year.
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Tony P
March 31st, 2012
My favorite demonstration of Frank’s wit was the video where he’s asked by a batshit tea bagger and then verbally eviscerates here on the spot. It included the phrase “I would rather talk to a dining room table…”
Funny stuff!
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