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 lobbyApril 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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And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?
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Timothy Kincaid
April 17th, 2012
This is more of a question.
Is protest the best word for Soulforce? I was under the impression that they primarily sought dialog and their activism was less about chants at someone and more about taking the first step in conversation, even if that step is trespassing and they get arrested for it.
But, as I said, it’s a question. Perhaps this action today is more protest.
Jim Burroway
April 17th, 2012
Actually, that’s a good point. They use the word “direct action,” which I interpreted as protest, perhaps wrongly
Jim Burroway
April 17th, 2012
I have to correct myself again. The description they used in an emailed press release describes the action at CCU as a “Protest of anti-LGBTQ policies at Colorado Christian University”.
Timothy Kincaid
April 17th, 2012
Then protest is the right word
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