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 lobbyJune 12th, 2014
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Albany, NY; Anchorage, AK; Baltimore, MD; Bentonville, AR; Bisbee, AZ; Blackpool, UK; Boston, MA; Brooklyn, NY; Casper, WY; Chemnitz, Germany; Edmonton, AB; Grand Rapids, MI; Huntington, NY; Indianapolis, IN; Kalamazoo, MI; Key West, FL; Ljubljana, Slovenia; Luleå, Sweden; Lyon, France; Memphis, TN (Black Pride); Nanaimo, Vancouver BC; Nantes, France; Nashville, TN; Pittsburgh, PA; Portland, OR; Regina, SK; Sacramento, CA; San Mateo, CA; Shanghai, China; Sitges, Spain; Spokane, WA; Strasbourg, France; Tel Aviv, Israel; Thunder Bay, ON; Vienna, Austria; Warsaw, Poland; Wuppertal, Germany; Zagreb, Croatia; Zurich, Switzerland.
Other Events This Weekend: Lesbian and Gay Stadtfest, Berlin, Germany; Cedar Point Gay Days, Cedar Point, OH; AIDS Walk, Long Beach, CA; Out in the Vineyard Gay Wine Weekend, Sonoma, CA; Tel Aviv LGBT International Film Festival, Tel Aviv, Israel.
TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:
From Contact, March 1974, page 4.
It may have been “The place” in 1974, but Mae’s Cabaret looks like it was located a good safe distance — about twenty miles — from Jackson. This is just the kind of place that I would love to know more about, but so far all I have is this lone ad from an early gay newspaper out of Houston.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
► Loving v. Virginia: 1967. Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving were an unusual couple. They had long crossed the racial barrier as friends in rural Central Point, Virginia: she was Black and Native American, he was white. But friendship turned to dating, and when Mildred became pregnant at the age of 18 in 1958, they decided to go to Washington, D.C. to elope. When they returned home, a group of police officers invaded their house late at night hoping to catch them in the act of having sex (which would have been a crime because of their racial differences). Mildred pointed to the marriage license that they had hung on the wall, hoping that it would protect them. Little did she know, but that license was proof that they had committed another crime. Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924 prohibited any “colored” person with so much as one drop of African American or Indian blood from marrying a white person. Miscegenation was a felony, punishable by a prison sentence of between one and five years. The couple pleaded guilty on January 6, 1959, and they were sentenced to one year, with the sentence suspended for 25 years on the condition that they left Virginia.
The Lovings moved to D.C., and in 1963 the ACLU began a series of motions and lawsuits alleging that Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Those lawsuits eventually made their way all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. On June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court struck down Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law, along with similar laws in fifteen other states. In the unanimous ruling, the Court held that “Marriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man,’ fundamental to our very existence and survival.” Despite this ruling, anti-miscegenation laws remained on the books for several years to come, despite their being unenforceable. In 2000, Alabama voters approved a ballot initiative to repeal its anti-miscegenation law, although even then more than half a million — 40% — voted to keep it.
Mildred and Richard were never political people. After the Supreme Court victory, the couple returned to Virginia and raised three children. Richard died in 1975 at the age of 41 when their car was struck by a drunk driver. Mildred lost her right eye in the accident. She passed away in 2008 of pneumonia at the age of 68. But a year before she died, she issued a statement on the 40th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, in which she saw the fight for the freedom to marry as unfinished business:
My generation was bitterly divided over something that should have been so clear and right. The majority believed that what the judge said, that it was God’s plan to keep people apart, and that government should discriminate against people in love. But I have lived long enough now to see big changes. The older generation’s fears and prejudices have given way, and today’s young people realize that if someone loves someone, they have a right to marry.
Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the ‘wrong kind of person’ for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people’s civil rights.
I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard’s and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight, seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
► Jim Nabors: 1930. The Sylacauga, Alabama, learned to sing at his high school and church, and didn’t get into acting until he attended the University of Alabama. After graduating, he eventually landed his first job in television: cutting film for a television station in Chattanooga. He eventually decided to move to Los Angeles because of his asthma, where he began singing and acting in a local Santa Monica cabaret. That’s where he developed a character similar to the one we would later come to know as Gomer Pyle: a naive, golly-gee southern bumpkin with a high-pitched voice and thick accent would would launch into a nearly operatic baritone when singing. That’s where Andy Griffith discovered him, and signed to play a gas station attendant on The Andy Griffith Show. Nabor’s character was so popular that he soon ended up with his own spin-off, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C, which ran for five seasons from 1964 to 1969.
Nabors was among a handful of actors who were openly gay among friends and co-workers, but who were never put publicly. “I haven’t ever made a public spectacle of it. Well, I’ve known since I was a child, so, come on. It’s not that kind of a thing. I’ve never made a huge secret of it at all,” Nabors said recently. What made Nabors so unusual is that he never bothered to play the game of “dating” women for publicity’s sake. There was one rumor going around that Nabors had “married” Rock Hudson in the early 1970’s, sparked by a joke invitation that went out among friends which said that Hudson wold take the last name of Nabor’s character and become “Rock Pyle.” When fan magazines found the invitation, they turned the joke into a story, causing embarrassment for both men. It’s also the only time I know of when Nabors gave the standard 1960s response to why he wasn’t married. “I love kids,” he said. “But I’ve been so busy with my career that I really haven’t given marriage much thought.”
After CBS decided to re-vamp its lineup and cancel all of its “cornball” programs (which constituted almost all of the network’s comedic lineup by 1969), Nabors briefly hosted his own variety show and made several guest appearances on other programs, including a few children’s television programs. But by the mid-1970s, he was pretty much done with TV, and move to Hawaii, where he and his then-longtime partner and now husband, Stan Cadwallader, have made their home.
If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).
And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?
June 11th, 2014
The election of Dave Brat as Virginia’s 7th District GOP candidate, a move that expels House Majority Leader from the House of Representatives, has shocked the political world.
Tea Party advocates are seeing this as an indication that the Tea Party Movement is live, well, powerful, and underestimated. And many in our community see anything Tea Party to be a threat to our community.
They may be correct. But that also may be too simplistic of an assumption.
The Tea Party movement incorporates a great many people who see Washington politicians as out of touch and beholding to moneyed special interests. Certainly some of those include those who see an increasingly anti-religious fervor in government to be a threat and for many of them gay issues are a weathervane.
But the movement also includes those who see ever increasing federal involvement in their lives as a violation of the GOP purported belief that the state that governs least governs best. And many others see the constant ‘kick the can down the road’ approach to fiscal policy to be a sell out of the nation’s children.
And it also includes the somewhat disenfranchised libertarian wing of the party. These are the folks who mock both the Right and the Left for their incessant claims of freedom and liberty while simultaneously seeking to remove the rights of those they perceive as enemies.
It may be that Dave Brat fits in the latter category. The Wall Street Journal has reviewed some of his writings including this
Can Christians force others to follow their ethical teachings on social issues? Note that consistency is lacking on all sides of this issue. The political Right likes to champion individual rights and individual liberty, but it has also worked to enforce morality in relation to abortion, gambling, and homosexuality. The Left likes to think of itself as the bulwark of progressive liberal individualism, and yet it seeks to progressively coerce others to fund every social program under the sun via majority rule. Houston, we have a problem. Coercion is on the rise. What is the root word for liberalism? (Answer: Liberty)
On the other hand, Brat is a fervent Christian, holds Divinity degree (along with an economics degree), and clearly sees a role for faith in governance. That seldom promises hope for pro-gay positions on legislation.
It will be interesting to see how his views play out in the coming campaign and (as this is a safe Republican district) in his votes. I simply don’t know enough about this out-of-nowhere politician and think it far too soon to predict.
June 11th, 2014
The Southern Baptist Convention has elected a new leader. (Christianity Today)
Rev. Ronnie Floyd of Cross Church in Springdale, Arkansas was elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) on June 10.
The megachurch pastor received 1,834 votes, or 51.62 percent, and replaces New Orleans pastor Fred Luter, Jr.
Rev. Floyd was nominated by Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President R. Albert Mohler Jr., who called him a “gifted and visionary pastor,” as well as a “unifier and a denominational statesman”.
The SBC exists in a nation that is increasingly finding that the moral demands of Southern Baptist Churches are not consistent with a good and decent society. Nor are Americans finding that the Golden Rule, as espoused by Jesus (and other religious figures), can be much found in the SBC teachings on homosexuality.
And such conflict and disagreement is not safely outside the walls of the church. Increasingly, SBC pastors are having to counsel members and deal with family and friends who are gay and are finding that the ol’ time religion assumptions do not hold up well in the face of honesty and personal reality.
Yet in this time of cultural challenge, the SBC decided to double down and turn to leadership from a culture warrior. Specifically, an anti-gay pastor with a history of histrionics and fear-mongering about The Gay Agenda. Here is what he had to say in a 2003 sermon.
Satan has taken his tool of homosexuality, a gross and evil sin, and done a con job on the American culture, making it seem like all is okay when you are gay. I hope you are aware that what was once subtle has now turned into the rage of a lion as brazen and threatening as anything in our culture. I must sound the trumpet loud and clear, praying that we do not run in retreat, but march in the truth of God valiantly. This is not a skirmish or a conflict or a disagreement, but it is a war. The war they have declared against our culture has an agenda and we need to be aware of it.
Rev. Floyd not only has preached about how doing unto gay people as you would like done to you would destroy the country, he’s written a book. In his 2011 The Gay Agenda he rails on against the evils he imagines and warns against gay villians worthy of a 1950’s comic book. (Arkansas Times)
The Gay Agenda is not just any agenda. For Ronnie Floyd and his flock, the Gay Agenda – you know it’s serious because of the capital letters – is set to destroy American culture as we know it.
The Gay Agenda opens on a bizarre note – Ronnie Floyd is watching an episode of The West Wing that he says “astounded” him. In the episode in question, the President of the United States, played by Martin Sheen, confronts a radio talk show host obviously patterned after “Dr. Laura.” As Floyd recounts the incident, he writes, “My eyes widened as his anger rose.”
After confirming that the Bible (Leviticus 18:22) does, indeed, refer to homosexuality as an “abomination,” the Sheen character then recounts a few other warnings from the Bible, such as working on the Sabbath, or touching the skin of a dead pig (specifically, footballs).
Floyd leaps from describing the scene on his TV screen to discussing his take on the Gay Agenda, charging that “proponents” of homosexuality have declared war on American culture. He also writes that, “It seems that everything you see these days, everything you read, and everything you hear, is about the gay lifestyle.”
It is possible that Rev. Floyd has mellowed in the past couple of years. And this vote does follow on the footsteps of a conference in which voices within the church have called for less divisive and insulting language, a small but important step.
But from where I sit, it looks to me as though the Southern Baptist Church has chosen a path that will not only exclude gay congregants but the growing band of Baptists who no longer wish to live in hatred and war against their gay children, family, coworkers, and friends. And unless the SBC changes course, it’s hard to envision a future in which they remain relevant.
June 11th, 2014
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Albany, NY; Anchorage, AK; Baltimore, MD; Bentonville, AR; Bisbee, AZ; Blackpool, UK; Boston, MA; Brooklyn, NY; Casper, WY; Chemnitz, Germany; Edmonton, AB; Grand Rapids, MI; Huntington, NY; Indianapolis, IN; Kalamazoo, MI; Key West, FL; Ljubljana, Slovenia; Luleå, Sweden; Lyon, France; Memphis, TN (Black Pride); Nanaimo, Vancouver BC; Nantes, France; Nashville, TN; Pittsburgh, PA; Portland, OR; Regina, SK; Sacramento, CA; San Mateo, CA; Shanghai, China; Sitges, Spain; Spokane, WA; Strasbourg, France; Tel Aviv, Israel; Thunder Bay, ON; Vienna, Austria; Warsaw, Poland; Wuppertal, Germany; Zagreb, Croatia; Zurich, Switzerland.
Other Events This Weekend: Lesbian and Gay Stadtfest, Berlin, Germany; Cedar Point Gay Days, Cedar Point, OH; AIDS Walk, Long Beach, CA; Out in the Vineyard Gay Wine Weekend, Sonoma, CA; Tel Aviv LGBT International Film Festival, Tel Aviv, Israel.
TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:
From Contact (Houston, Texas), February 5, 1975, page 25.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
► Life Magazine Opposes Decriminalization: 1965. A year before, Life magazine published a groundbreaking essay on “Homosexuality in America,” (see Jun 26), which was notable for being one of the earliest relatively balanced portrayals of gay life in California. Gay rights advocates had hoped that the article might portend more positive press for gay issues, at least in the pages of Life, but that hope proved short-lived. In 1965, there was a proposal before the New York legislature to repeal that state’s sodomy law, which banned “deviant sexual intercourse” between unmarried persons. If passed, New York would have become only the second state, after Illinois, to decriminalize consensual sexual behavior between gay adults (see Jul 28). Life, in an unsigned, self-contradictory and illogical editorial in its June 11, 1965 edition, opposed the move:
As readers of LIFE’s survey of homosexuality in America will remember, the “gay world” (actually a sad world) is coming increasingly above ground in many big cities and is lobbying for more sympathetic treatment. Homosexuality is frequently curable, but jail is the last place to expect a cure, and the laws restricting it are notoriously ineffective. Enforcement is either nonexistent or unjust and repugnant because of its peep-hole and entrapment methods. …
But the legislative debates have produced some robustious arguments on the other side. In Albany one legislator, who favored lifting the sanctions against adultery but not against homosexuality, explained that “after all, there are more of us than there are of them.”
There are more cogent arguments for retaining the laws against homosexuality. Its practice can and does break up families; and protection of the family is a legitimate area for legislation. Repeal would imply an indifference that society cannot afford. Until it finds a better way of discouraging the practice, a statute at least expresses society’s disapproval.
The proposal failed to make it into law, and New York’s sodomy law would remain on the books until 1980 when the New York Court of Appeals struck it down as unconstitutional.
[Source: “The law and the homosexual problem.” Life 58, no. 23. (June 11, 1965): 4.]
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
► 75 YEARS AGO: Wilma Burgess: 1939-2003. Before Chely Wright came out, there was k.d. lang. But before k.d. lang — before everyone, in fact — there was Wilma Burgess. The difference with Burgess however was that she never really came out. She was always out, throughout her career. She enjoyed recording romantic ballads, but in a break from most “girl singers,” she avoided recording gender-specific songs whenever she could. A southerner from Orlando, Wilma wasn’t much interested in country music when she first began singing professionally. But when she attended an Eddie Arnold concert, she was struck by the emotional honesty of Arnold’s music. She made her way to Nashville in 1962 where she cut her first single. “Confuses” didn’t really go anywhere, but it got her a contract for Decca Records.
After a several singles, she landed pay dirt in 1965 with “Baby,” which peaked at #7 on the country music charts. That same year, she purchased Patsy Cline’s old home in Nashville. In 1966 she recorded two more notable hits, “Don’t Touch Me” and “Misty Blue,” which became her signature song. That song was eventually covered by the man who inspired her to perform country music, Eddie Arnold. She had several more Top Forty country hits, but by the mid-1970s she decided to retire from the music business. She then opened the Hitching Post, Nashville’s first lesbian bar, where she regularly performed. She died suddenly in 2003 of a massive heart attack.
If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).
And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?
June 10th, 2014
This may be Italy’s first pro-gay commercial (Time)
It does look delicious… though I’m troubled by any culture in which one isn’t mocked for saying, “It’s so good because of the microwave!”
June 10th, 2014
TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:
From Michael’s Thing, February 2, 1976, page 50.
Harry’s Back East was a longtime gay bar whose origins went back to at least 1968. In 1971, the weekly newsmagazine GAY called it “the busiest bar in New York any night.” It probably owed its popularity to its reputation as a simple, laid-back and friendly establishment. At least one story has it that Judy Garland paid a visit there in 1969 shortly before she died. The front bar area was a narrow space, with a very long bar in front that ran the length of the front room and just about every item imaginable hanging from its ceiling — toys, dolls, musical instruments, you name it. In the back was a dance floor, adorned with a disco ball and a large red light connected to a light switch at the front bar that the bartender could flip whenever the cops came in. When the red light came on, that was everyone’s signal to stop dancing together and act innocent — whatever that meant — lest the cops start arresting them for “lewd” conduct. If the owners were current on their bribes, then the cops would leave, the red light would go out, and everyone would go back to doing whatever they were doing before they were so rudely interrupted. But if the bribes had gone unpaid, the cops would stay and become a general nuisance, making everyone uncomfortable until either all the patrons left or the owner arrived and paid up. Harry’s survived that era and soldiered on until 1982 when it finally closed. The location’s latest incarnation appears to have been a restaurant that has recently closed.
Michael Stark (L) and Michael Leshner (R)– later known as “the two Michaels” — kiss after marrying in Superior Court in Toronto on June 10, 2003.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
► Ontario Registers First Same-Sex Marriage in North America: 2003. Nearly a year earlier, on July 22, 2002, the Ontario Superior Court issued a 3-0 ruling in the case of Halpern et al. v. Canada, finding that restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples violated the equality provisions of the Charter of Rights. While also finding that current statutes didn’t prohibit same-sex marriage, the court stayed its ruling for two years to give the federal government time to pass legislation implementing same-sex marriage. The plaintiffs, seven same-sex couples who were suing for the right to marry, appealed the lower court’s stay and asked that the decision take effect immediately. On June 10, 2003, the Court of Appeals for Ontario agreed, and struck down the lower court’s stay, and that afternoon Michael Stark and Michael Leshner became the first gay couple to legally marry.
The next day, the Attorney General of Ontario announced that he would comply with the ruling. But while the Ontario Appeals Court ruled on Canadian law, its jurisdiction was limited to Ontario. Nevertheless, the province was the first jurisdiction in North America to provide same-sex marriage. (Massachusetts wouldn’t begin marrying until almost a year later: see May 17.) On February 24, the provincial legislature enacted Bill 171, (“An Act to amend various statutes in respect of spousal relationships”) which cleaned up several Ontario laws to bring them into accord with the court rulings. Meanwhile, other provincial courts began issuing similar rulings — British Columbia in 2003; Quebec, Yukon Territory, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland and Labrador in 2004; and New Brunswick in 2005. By the time Parliament enacted marriage equality nationwide in July of 2005, only Alberta, Prince Edward Island, Nunavut and Northwest Territories had yet to act on marriage equality.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
► Anita Berber: 1899-1928. She lived fast and died young, and along the way came to epitomize the anything-goes attitude of the Weimar Republic. She moved to Berlin at the age of 16 to become a cabaret dancer and a film dancer by the age of 20. Audiences took her art quite seriously early in her career as one of the pioneers of modern expressive dance. Some of her dances were set to music by Claude Debussy, Richard Strauss, and Camille Saint-Säens, and she was known for her erotic gestures and exotic costumes — or no costumes at all.
Her nude dancing and androgynous-for-the-era looks — she bobbed her hair and died it fiery red — those things alone would have been the chatter classes plenty to chatter about. Klaus Mann described her this way: “One dances hunger and hysteria, fear and greed, panic and horror… Anita Berber — her face frozen into a garish mask under the frightening locks of the scarlet coiffure — dances the coitus.” Shocking the seen-it-all Weimar audiences wasn’t an easy thing to do, but Berber’s increasingly macabre performances soon earned her the nickname, “The Priestess of Depravity.” Her Dances of Depravity, Horror and Ecstasy included dances with such titles as “Byzantine Whip Dance,” Cocaine,” “Morphine,” and “Suicide.”
Otto Dix, The Dancer Anita Berber, 1925.
But after a while, audiences began dismissing her work as exhibiting nothing more than shock value. Her off-stage behavior only reinforced her notoriety, thanks to her enthusiastic bisexually, insatiable sexual appetite, legendary drug use, and the rough crowd of boxers, prostitutes and homosexuals who she partied with. She spent her evenings touring the city’s clubs wearing nothing but her trademark makeup and nothing more except a sable coat, which she would have a waiter ceremoniously remove. Her antique brooch carried her nights’ supply of cocaine, but her favorite drug was a mixture of absinthe and ether, which she mixed in a bowl and swirled about with a white rose before eating the pedals. While dancing in Zagreb, she publicly insulted the Yugoslav King and spent six weeks in prison. Her three short (mostly sham) marriages only added to her provocative image. By the time Otto Dix immortalized her on canvas in 1925, he offered a searing portrayal of her dissipative lifestyle, showing a woman who looked much, much older than her twenty-six years. In the summer of 1928, she collapsed on the stage of a Beirut nightclub and was diagnosed with tuberculosis. With her body already ravaged by years of drug use, she didn’t last the year. When she died in November, a friend said that “she had the mask of a mad old hag.” She was buried in a pauper’s grave.
Judy Garland’s legendary 1961 Carnegie Hall concert.
► Judy Garland: 1922-1969. A straight friend of mine, shortly after I came out to him, asked me to explain “the Judy Garland thing.” What was I to say? The Rainbow reference seemed obvious to me — Somewhere Over the Rainbow, the rainbow flag — but that didn’t explain why she meant so much to so many generations of gay men. (I would later learn that the rainbow flag was meant to symbolize diversity, not Judy Garland. Silly me.) I then turned to the song’s lyrics, but it turns out they are incredibly simple — almost a throw-away. So it’s not the song itself either. Instead, I think the explanation begins with how she sang about her yearning to find a land of happiness somewhere over there, where “the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.” And if birds can fly overt there, “why then, oh why can’t I?”
Why can’t I? — that’s the plaintive refrain that every LGBT person has uttered at some of the most painful moments of their lives, at least for those who spent any significant time in the closet. Judy’s life also had its painful moments, including a marriage to the barely-closeted gay director Vincente Minnelli, a nervous breakdown, morphine addiction, alcohol problems, you name it. But her Carnegie Hall comeback concert in 1961 was called by many “the greatest night in show business history.” The resulting two-record recording, Judy At Carnegie Hall,
That and those ruby shoes.
► Maurice Sendak: 1928-2012. He was known for more than a dozen books he wrote and illustrated himself, most famously his 1963 best-seller Where the Wild Things Are
Sendak remained publicly closeted most of his life, despite a fifty year enduring relationship with his partner, psychoanalyst Dr. Eugene Glynn. Sandak wasn’t even out to his parents, Polish Jewish immigrants whose relatives died in the Holocaust. “All I wanted was to be straight so my parents could be happy,” he once said. “They never, never, never knew.” Glynn died in May 2007, and Sendak came out in a 2008 interview, saying that the idea of a gay man writing children books would have hurt his career when he was in his 20s and 30s. But when Sendak died in 2012 at the age of 83, he was hailed by The New York Times as “the most important children’s book artist of the 20th century.” Another picture book, My Brother’s Book
► 40 YEARS AGO: Dustin Lance Black: 1974. Growing up in a Mormon family, Black’s early childhood included fears of going straight to hell. “I had my first crushes on a boy neighbor when I was like six, seven. I knew what was going on, I knew I liked him, but what Texas did and what the culture of growing up Mormon, growing up military [reinforced], was, the very second thought I had, ‘I really like that boy, and it’s not just as a friend,’ the very second thought was, ‘I’m sick, I’m wrong, I’m going to hell. And if I ever admit it, I’ll be hurt, and I’ll be brought down.'” No wonder he became withdrawn, intensely shy, and had thoughts of suicide. “I was a pretty dark kid, because I had an acute awareness of my sexuality, and was absolutely convinced that I was wrong.”
He says that darkness lifted when he went off to college, came out during his senior year and graduated with honors from UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television. Much of his career as a screenwriter, director, and producer has touched on LGBT themes. In 2000, he wrote and directed the gay romance films The Journey of Jared Price
“It was tough. It was clearly, in my mind, a gay movie. I wasn’t so interested in the politics, I wasn’t so interested in Dan White; I was interested in this man who, to me at least, was a father figure to his people — to people who lost their fathers, their parents and their families because of their sexuality. Here was this father figure, and it was something I craved!”
Milk was a critical and commercial success, and Black won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay in 2009.
Black has turned his writing skills to other topics as well. He leveraged his Mormon background as one of the screenwriters (and the only Mormon writer) for HBO’s Big Love, and he wrote the sceenplay for 2011’s J. Edgar
If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).
And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?
June 9th, 2014
About 10,000 Texas Republicans wrapped up their annual convention in Fort Worth this weekend to approve a new platform for the 2016 elections. Things looked promising at first, when the Dallas Voice reported that the party had stripped a statement from their proposed platform proclaiming: “We affirm that the practice of homosexuality tears at the fabric of society and contributes to the breakdown of the family unit. Homosexual behavior is contrary to the fundamental, unchanging truths that have been ordained by God, recognized by our country’s founders, and shared by the majority of Texans.”
Whatever good news that represented evaporated when a new plank on homosexuality surfaced:
Homosexuality must not be presented as an acceptable alternative lifestyle, in public policy, nor should family be redefined to include homosexual couples. We believe there should be no granting of special legal entitlements or creation of special status for homosexual behavior, regardless of state of origin.
Additionally, we oppose any criminal or civil penalties against those who oppose homosexuality out of faith, conviction, or belief in traditional values. We recognize the legitimacy and value of counseling which offers reparative therapy and treatment to patients who are seeking escape from the homosexual lifestyle. No laws or executive orders shall be imposed to limit or restrict access to this type of therapy.
The Texas Republican Party approved that platform over the weekend.
The enshrinement of ex-gay therapy into the official agenda of the Texas Republican Party goes against the recommendations of every legitimate mental and medical health professional organization in America, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Psychoanalytic Association, and the American School Counselors Association.
The platform also opposes same-sex marriage, as well as “the recognition of and granting of benefits to people who represent themselves as domestic partners without being legally married.”
June 9th, 2014
TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:
From Just US, 1975, page 38.
The Pier was a two-story club, originally with a restaurant downstairs and a dance bar upstairs. The restaurant had a peculiarly 1970s novelty: telephones at each table with a unique phone number so people could call each other at different tables. While phones like these were novelty gimmicks at straight bars and restaurants, at the Pier they served a particular purpose, where the phones were used to circumvent old liquor laws which required patrons to remain seated at a table with their drinks. Later, the restaurant was renovated out of existence and the Pier became a two-story disco with a staircase connecting the two floors. Today, the building houses a gay entertainment complex consisting of two clubs: a drag bar downstairs (Zigfield’s), and a male strip club upstairs (Secrets).
An “undesirable” discharge from the Navy, 1948 (click to enlarge).
TODAY IN HISTORY:
► Newsweek on “Homosexuals in Uniform”: 1947. “Although Army regulations strictly forbade the drafting of homosexuals, scores of these inverts managed to slip through induction centers during the second world war. Between 3,000 and 4,000 were discharged for this abnormality; others were released as neuropsychiatric cases. Last week, with most of the records on homosexuals tabulated, Army medical officers, for the first time, summed up their strange story.”
That strange story, in retrospect, was that gay people came from all walks of life. But in 1947, neither the Army nor Newsweek in its June 9, 1947 story could wrap their heads around that fact. Newsweek was also surprised to learn that gays were, on average, intelligent, not particularly feminine, and “as a whole, these men were law-abiding and hard working. In spite of nervous, unstable and often hysterical temperaments they performed admirably as workers. Many tried to be good soldiers.” If gay soldiers were “nervous,” that undoubtedly came from the consequences of being found out. “Once this abnormality was detected, the man was usually evacuated by the unit doctors to a general hospital where he received psychiatric treatment while a military board decided whether or not he was reclaimable. A good number begged to be cured, but doctors usually doubted their sincerity, and recommended discharge.”
But being discharged was far from the end to these soldiers’ problems. During the first half of the war, they were brought up on court-martial, punished and dishonorably discharged. But by 1943, courts-martial were overwhelmed by the rising caseload, so the Army decided to let them go with an administrative “blue” discharge — neither honorable or dishonorable, and so named for the color of paper they were printed on.
The suspiciously vague nature of blue discharges made it very difficult when these soldiers hit the job market. In an economy where nearly every able-bodied man served, one’s discharge papers were as important to obtaining a job as a diploma or good references. In fact, discharge papers were considered among the most important references one could have — from Uncle Sam himself. And when the vast majority of those job applicants could present their honorable discharges to their prospective employers, these blue discharges stood out, and not in a good way. On top of that, the Veterans Administration routinely denied benefits to blue discharge holders, despite the law’s explicit language stating that only dishonorable discharges were grounds for denial of benefits. As of July 1, 1947, the situation was about to get worse: “Instead of leaving the service with the vague and protective ‘blue’ discharge, the homosexuals who had not been guilty of a definite office would receive an ‘undesirable’ discharge.”
Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital, Washington, D.C.
► Congress Allows Indefinite Confinement of “Sexual Psychopaths” in Washington, D.C.: 1948. The nation’s capital had experienced explosive growth through the New Deal and World War II. And in the relatively short time period, the sleepy Southern town became a major bustling East Coast city, with all of the attendant problems and anxieties which comes with rapid urban growth. Among those anxieties were worries over a declining moral environment in the growing city. In response, Congress passed and the President Harry Truman signed Public Law 615 on June 9, 1948 which provided for the indefinite interment and treatment for “sexual psychopaths” in the District. (Before D.C. was given Home Rule with an elected mayor and council in 1973, the district was ruled directly by Congress and administered by a three-person appointed commission.) The Miller Act, as it was popularly known, defined a “sexual psychopath” as a:
“person, not insane, who by a course of repeated misconduct in sexual matters has evidenced such lack of power to control his sexual impulses as to be dangerous to other persons because he is likely to attack or otherwise inflict injury, loss, pain, or other evil on the objects of desire.”
The act specifically excluded rape or assault with intent to rape. Those charges were handled as normal criminal complaints. But according to this new law, the U.S. Attorney was empowered to initiate proceedings against anyone else — even if they hadn’t been charged with a crime — to have them committed to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital until the superintendent “finds that he has sufficiently recovered so as not to be dangerous to other person.” The act refers to the individual as “the patient”, not the accused or the defendant. It was the sole prerogative of the U.S. Attorney, after reviewing “information… from any source” to decide whether to initiate proceedings. And those proceedings were civil proceedings, not a criminal one with constitutional guarantees against self-incrimination that a criminal procedure would guarantee. Instead, the accused “patient” was required to submit to an examination by two psychiatrists and was required to answer their questions which became part of the official record.
The law’s wording suggested the aim was to keep dangerous people off the streets, but the vague definition of “sexual psychopath” left the door open to all sorts of abuse. U.S. Attorney Sidney Sachs, who helped draft the legislation, recalled in 1964 as a guest speaker at a conference of the East Coast Homophile Organizations (ECHO) — this was long after he left the Justice Department for a position in private practice — that the law was an open invitation to abuse:
“Though it’s not right,” Mr. Sachs admitted, the courts generally take the path of least resistance when the mental condition of someone accused of sex crime “comes into question”: they commit him to Washington’s mental hospital. There the overworked psychiatrists “write brief reports” on the person. And when his trial comes up, it’s “just perfectly understandable then” that the doctors’ judgment is chiefly relied on.
A women in the audience challenged the merit of the Miller Act by pointing out — and Mr. Sachs had to agree — that condemnation to psychiatric incarceration is potentially worse than jail because the person could languish in a mental hospital forever. Then a man bluntly asked the prime question: “Would I, as a habitual practicing homosexual, be called a sexual psychopath?” “I think that you would be,” Mr. Sachs replied. Yet, he reminded us, “everything that’s on the books that is oppressive to homosexuals is not carried out to the letter.”
According to a paper read at a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in 1950, the law’s reach did, in fact, extended to “habitual practicing homosexuals” in consensual relationships. Dr. Francis Tartaglino of St. Elizabeth reported that as of March 1, 1950, twenty-four patients had been admitted to the hospital’s maximum security ward under this new law, “including 2 non-coercive homosexuals and 1 aggressive sodomist.”
[Sources: Bernard A. Cruvant, Milton Meltzer, Francis J. Tartaglino. “An institutional program for committed sex deviants.” American Journal of Psychiatry 107, no. 3 (September 1950): 190-194.
Lily Hansen, Barbara Gittings. “East Coast Homophile Organizations — Report ’64. Part Two: Highlights of ECHO.” The Ladder 9, no. 4 (January 1965): 10-11.]
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
► Cole Porter: 1891-1964. American songwriters could match the sophistication, wit, and discreet naughtiness of Let’s Do It (1928), You Do Something To Me (1929), Love for Sale (1930), Anything Goes (1934), Let’s Misbehave (1937), Well Did You Evah! (1939) or Too Darn Hot (1948). That barely scratches the surface of Porter’s musical output. He was born to a wealthy family in Peru, Indiana, and after graduating from an exclusive prep school, he studied law, first at Yale (where he wrote two of Yale’s football fight songs that are still played today), then at Harvard for his graduate studies. But after finally deciding that he was more interested in music, he left Harvard Law and enrolled in Harvard’s music program. In 1917, he moved to Paris to lend his hand at the war effort, and where his luxury Paris apartment became the scene of lavish parties.
That was where he met Linda Thomas, a rich Kentucky divorced socialite who was eight years his senior. She was reportedly aware of Porters homosexuality — his affair with Ballet Russes star Borish Koncho in 1925 wasn’t much of a secret — but they both found marriage mutually advantageous. For Porter, a wife like Linda afforded a respectable heterosexual front, and for Linda, Porter’s success and growing fame only enhanced her social position. And besides, he was genuinely kind to her, which was very unlike her abusive first husband.
In 1928, Porter returned to Broadway, where he found considerable success and offers from Hollywood. The Porters moved there in 1935, but Linda didn’t appreciate Cole’s increasingly open dalliances with other men. She moved back to their home in Paris, and Porter became about as openly closeted as any other Hollywood A-gay. A severe horse riding accident in 1937, which left Porter with a permanently-crippling leg injury, brought the Porters back together, but they reconciled with an apparently renewed understanding. Linda was more than just a beard to Porter: by all accounts they were very close, at least in a spiritual or emotional sense. Yet throughout their marriage, Porter also had significant relationships with several men, including Boston socialite Howard Sturges, architect Ed Tauch (who inspired “Easy to Love”), choreographer Nelson Barclift (who inspired “You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To”), actor Robert Bray, and longtime companion Ray Kelly, to whose children Porter left half of his royalties when he died in 1964. (Linda preceded him in death ten years earlier.) Porter’s life was significantly de-gayed in the 2004 biopic De-Lovely: The Cole Porter Story
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June 8th, 2014
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Albany, NY; Athens, Greece; Bergen, Norway; Boston, MA; Birmingham, AL; Charleston, WV; Cheyenne, WY; Davenport, IA; Detroit, MI; Des Moines, IA; Edmonton, AB; Hannover, Germany; Indianapolis, IN; Innsbruck, Austria; Los Angeles, CA; Ljubljana, Slovenia; Maplewood/South Orange, NJ; Milwaukee, WI; Oxford, UK; Philadelphia, PA; Plano, TX; Salt Lake City, UT; Söderhamn, Sweden; Washington, DC.
Other Events This Weekend: AIDS Walk, London, UK; Cinépride LGBT Film Festival, Nantes, France; Gay Days Disney, Orlando, FL; Seoul LGBT Film Festival, Seoul, South Korea; Tel Aviv LGBT International Film Festival, Tel Aviv, Israel.
TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:
From David, August 1974, page 75.
The Second Landing was named for the fact that it was on the second floor of a building that also housed the Aquarius lounge, a straight stripper bar. It was popular with young Latinos looking for older men, and older men looking for young Latinos. It stayed open until 5:00 a.m., which gave everyone plenty of time to find each other. The Second Landing closed down sometime in the 1980s. The building was torn down and replaced with a Walgreens, more or less as what happens everywhere else in America.
Gov. Reubin Askew
TODAY IN HISTORY:
► Florida Bans Gay Marriage and Adoption: 1977. Florida’s gay community took a triple whammy today. Just one day after Miami voters overwhelmingly sided with Anita Bryant to rescind an anti-discrimination ordinance, Governor Reuben Askew (D) signed into law additional two anti-gay measures affecting gay people statewide. The first banned same-sex marriage and the second banned gay adults from adopting.
State Sen. Curtis Peterson, (D-Eaton Park) sponsored both bills, and said that the new laws tell homosexuals, “We are tired of you and wish you would go back in the closet.” He continued: “The problem in Florida is that homosexuals are surfacing to such an extent that they are infringing on average, normal people who have a few rights, too.” The bills sailed through the legislature with little opposition and became effective immediately upon Askew’s signing.
In 2008, Florida voters made same-sex marriage even more illegaler when they passed Amendment 2. In 2010, a Florida appeals court upheld a lower court ruling that found the adoption ban unconstitutional.
► First Gay Days at Disney World: 1991. It started as a very modest idea: a time for about 3,000 gays and lesbians in central Florida to enjoy a day at Orlando’s top attraction — and to become more visible. “Twenty years ago, there were hardly any visible portrayals of our community other than the pride parades,” Chris Alexander-Manley, president of Gay Days Inc., told Time in 2010. He was also one of the volunteers who helped organize the first event in 1991. He said, that the media tended to show “the drag queens and the extremes, the leather people, but that’s only a small part of the overall community.” To increase their visibility, gay attendees wore read shirts in the park. And it was that very visibility which caught the attention of anti-gay activists. The Southern Baptist Convention launched a boycott of all things Disney, despite the fact that Disney never sanctioned the event. Disney always instructed their employees to treat the first Saturday of June just like any other Saturday, which put the SBC in an odd position of, I guess, demanding that Disney ban red shirts or something.
Gay Days at Disney World has grown from that modest 3,000 assemblage to an estimated 150,000 participants in recent years. And with that growth the nature of the event has changed somewhat. There are still family events taking place catering to LGBT families, but they occur alongside pool parties, dance raves and other circuit party-style activities of a more specifically adult orientation. But within the confines of the park itself, it’s all about Mickey Mouse and Magic Mountain and getting the kids in line for the spinning teacups. It just so happens that Gay Days at Disney is going on this very weekend. And despite ongoing grumbling from social conservatives — Disney typically issues refunds to families offended by the sight of red shirts — Gay Days continues to appeal to the kids in all of us.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
► Peter Jepson-Young: 1957-1992. The Vancouver, BC doctor was known to millions across Canada simply as Dr. Peter, host of a regular segment on the CBC’s news broadcast called The Dr. Peter Diaries. That platform made Dr. Peter the country’s best-known educator for AIDS and HIV awareness. Dr. Peter’s approach was uniquely personal: he documented, on his own program, his experiences both as a doctor and as a person with AIDS. He began his weekly segment in 1990, after he was unable to continue his medical practice because of his deteriorating health. He brought a sense of humor to his weekly video diaries, and his frank discussion of AIDS helped to break down stereotypes and stigma surrounding the disease. His Diaries continued for more than two years, until a few weeks before he died in November 1992. Shortly before he died, Dr. Peter had also established the Dr. Peter AIDS Foundation to provide care for people with HIV/AIDS.
In 1993, the CBC and HBO jointly produced a 45-minute documentary, The Broadcast Tapes of Dr. Peter, which consisted of excerpts from his video diaries. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Today, all 111 episodes are available on the CBC’s website.
► Mary Bonauto: 1961. If you’re in a state where you’re allowed to marry, then you have Mary Bonauto to thank. The civil rights attorney, lauded as “our Thurgood Marshal,” has been working with the Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) since 1990, playing key roles in methodically building the legal foundation through a series of court cases which eventually opened the doors, at least part way, to marriage equality for same-sex couples. As Roberta Kaplan told The New York Times in March 2013, “No gay person in this country would be married without Mary Bonauto.”
Bonauto began her work at GLAD by litigating several employment discrimination, custody and free speech cases throughout New England. Seven years later, she was co-counselor for three Vermont couples seeking a marriage license. The goal was full marriage, but at that time it was still difficult to make a legal case. Instead, Baker v. Vermont compelled the Vermont legislature to enact the nation’s first civil union law in 2000. The following year, Bonauto took another crack at marriage as lead counsel for Goodridge v. Department of Public Health. That led to the landmark 2003 decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court which led the Bay State to become the first in the nation in marriage equality. She was also co-counsel in the Connecticut court case which prompted that state legislature to enact a civil union law.
Bonauto next set her sights set on Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act as lead counsel for Gill v. Office of Personnel Management, one of five federal cases which challenged DOMA’s constitutionality. In that case in 2010, a Federal District Court in held that DOMA violated the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection clause, and the First Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision. The case then went on to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the court chose to hear the appeal for Edith Windsor instead and that case ended up dooming DOMA in June 2013.
Bonauto is currently GLAD’s Civil Rights Project Director. She lives in Portland, Maine with her wife and their twin daughters.
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June 7th, 2014
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Marriages Continue in Wisconsin: Milwaukee and Madison. Soon after yesterday’s ruling came down declaring Wisconsin’s ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional, the county courthouses in Madison and Milwaukee stayed open late last night to handle the rush for marriage licenses. This was something of a surprise since Federal District Judge Barbara B. Crabb’s ruling wasn’t accompanied by an injunction ordering the state to make marriage licenses available to everyone everywhere. That’s not expected until sometime after June 16. Yet her decision did say that Wisconsin’s prohibition on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. So that seems to leave county clerks neither required nor prohibited from issuing licenses to same-sex couples. And so 68 couples got married at the Milwaukee County Court House, along with another 61 at the Dane County Court House in Madison. Both courthouses will reopen again this morning at 9:00 a.m.
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Albany, NY; Athens, Greece; Bergen, Norway; Boston, MA; Birmingham, AL; Cambridge/Kitchener/Waterloo, ON; Charleston, WV; Cheyenne, WY; Davenport, IA; Dayton, OH; Detroit, MI; Des Moines, IA; Edmonton, AB; El Paso, TX; Fresno, CA; Hannover, Germany; Honolulu, HI; Indianapolis, IN; Innsbruck, Austria; Lille, France; Los Angeles, CA; Ljubljana, Slovenia; Maplewood/South Orange, NJ; Milwaukee, WI; Oxford, UK; Philadelphia, PA; Plano, TX; Rome, Italy; Salt Lake City, UT; Seoul, South Korea; Söderhamn, Sweden; Spencer, IN; Split, Croatia; Tulsa, OK; Washington, DC; Youngstown, OH.
Other Events This Weekend: Razzle Dazzle Dallas, Dallas, TX; Connecticut Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Hartford, CT; AIDS Walk, London, UK; Cinépride LGBT Film Festival, Nantes, France; Gay Days Disney, Orlando, FL; AIDS Life Cycle, San Francisco to Los Angeles, CA; Seoul LGBT Film Festival, Seoul, South Korea; Tel Aviv LGBT International Film Festival, Tel Aviv, Israel.
TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:
From GPU News, June 1977, page 48.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
► Miami Voters Rescind Gay Rights Ordinance: 1977. The Dade County Commission approved an ordinance in January of 1977 that would outlaw discrimination against gay people in employment, housing and public services (see Jan 18). Miami joined about 40 other communities around the nation had similar anti-discrimination laws in effect.
Reaction from local Christian conservatives was swift. Former beauty queen and Florida Orage Juice spokeswoman Anita Bryant learned about the ordinance when it was denounced from the pulpit at Northwest Baptist Church. She sprang into action, creating a group called “Save Our Children” to overturn the ordinance at the ballot box. Fearmongering about “access to children” would be the group’s main focus. She told one audience, “Some males who would become teachers even want to wear dresses to work and flaunt their homosexuality in front of our children.” To another, she warned, “When the law requires you to let an admitted homosexual teach your children and serve as a role model for them, it’s time to stop being so tolerant.” She also blamed homosexuals for the weather. “Do you know why California has a drought? Because a Southern California city passed a gay rights ordinance. That’s God’s way of punishing civilizations that are tolerant of homosexuals.”
Bryant’s mean-spiritedness reportedly cost her a planned syndicated television series when producers backed away from the controversial singer. This gave her a chance to reveal her persecution complex. Declaring that “the blacklisting of Anita Bryant has begun,” she claimed that in losing that job, “it destroys the dream that I have had since I was a child.” Gay rights leader and local businessman Bob Kunst relished the irony. “She wants to cause gays to lose their jobs and she complains because she has lost a job. The lady is a hypocrite.”
Days before the vote was to take place, Florida Gov. Ruben Askew was asked about the Miami campaign at a news conference. “If I were in Miami,” he responded, “I would have no difficulty in voting to repeal that ordinance.” He also said that he had no known gay people on his staff, and he wouldn’t hire any. Askew had been seen as being among a new breed of open-minded Southern Democrats, and his name was often mentioned as a potential Presidential contender.
The final vote wasn’t even close. When the special election came around, the final tally was 202,319 to just 89,562. Dade County voted overwhelmingly to jump onto Anita Bryant’s bandwagon. Bryant responded, “The laws of God and the cultural values of man have been vindicated,” and she announced that she would take her campaign to other cities across America.
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June 6th, 2014
Shari Roll (purple) and Renee Currie embrace after becoming the first same-sex couple to marry in Madison, WI.
It wasn’t clear whether Crabb’s 88-page ruling cleared the way for same-sex marriages to begin immediately, but Milwaukee and Dane county officials began issuing licenses and officiants were at the clerk’s office ready to go in Dane County. Both counties were keeping clerk’s office open past regular closing hours Friday.
Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen says he will seek an emergency federal court order to stop the marriages in light of clerks going ahead with marriages.
Dane County (Madison) and Milwaukee County will stay open until 9:00 tonight. Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele says he will personally pay for the overtime costs associate with keeping his courthouse open. But Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen said current law is still in force:
“In light of the decision of some county clerks to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, I will be filing emergency motions in the federal courts to stay Judge Crabb’s order,” he wrote. “The United States Supreme Court, after a referral from Justice Sotomayor, stayed a lower court’s decision striking down Utah’s ban on same-sex marriage. There is no reason to believe the Supreme Court would treat Wisconsin’s ban any differently.”
Matthew Schreck and José Fernando Gutierrez were the first to marry in Milwaukee.
June 6th, 2014
Wisconsin! (PDF: 439KB/88 pages)
It is DECLARED that art. XIII, § 13 of the Wisconsin Constitution violates plaintiffs’ fundamental right to marry and their right to equal protection of laws under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Any Wisconsin statutory provisions, including those in Wisconsin Statutes chapter 765, that limit marriages to a “husband” and a “wife,” are unconstitutional as applied to same-sex couples.
But marriages aren’t available in the Badger State just yet:
Plaintiffs may have until June 16, 2014, to submit a proposed injunction that complies with the requirement in Fed. R. Civ. P. 65(d)(1)(C) to “describe in reasonable detail . . . the act or acts restrained or required.” In particular, plaintiffs should identify what they want each named defendant to do or be enjoined from doing. Defendants may have one week from the date plaintiffs file their proposed injunction to file an opposition. If defendants file an opposition, plaintiffs may have one week from that date to file a reply in support of their proposed injunction.
I will address defendants’ pending motion to stay the injunction after the parties have had an opportunity to file materials related to the proposed injunction. If the parties wish, they may have until June 16, 2014, to supplement their materials related to that motion in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Geiger v. Kitzhaber not to grant a stay in that case.
(UPDATE: It looks like some counties aren’t waiting until the 16th to begin issuing licenses. But without an injunction in place, is that legal? Any lawyers in the bunch, please weigh in with your comments.)
This ruling by Federal District Judge Barbara B. Crabb is the twentieth in a string of rulings which have all found that all or portions of several states’ marriage equality bans are unconstitutional. The unanimity of these rulings since the Windsor ruling last summer is breathtaking. It’s hard to image at this point, regardless of which of the dozens of appeals making their way to the U.S. Supreme Court, how that court can rule that all twenty judges from across the country were somehow reading the law wrong.
The case was brought by the ACLU on behalf of eight Wisconsin same-sex couples. Two of the couples had married out of state — one in Minnesota, and one in Canada.
Judge Crab opened her decision by delineating exactly what the case was all about. In doing so, she issued two notable shout-outs: longtime marriage equality foe Maggie Gallagher, and longtime marriage equality advocate Andrew Sullivan:
In reaching this decision, I do not mean to disparage the legislators and citizens who voted in good conscience for the marriage amendment. To decide this case in favor of plaintiffs, it is not necessary, as some have suggested, to “cast all those who cling to traditional beliefs about the nature of marriage in the role of bigots or superstitious fools,” United States v. Windsor, 133 S. Ct. 2675, 2717-18 (2013) (Alito, J., dissenting), or “adjudg[e] those who oppose [same-sex marriage] . . . enemies of the human race.” Id. at 2709 (Scalia, J., dissenting). Rather, it is necessary to conclude only that the state may not intrude without adequate justification on certain fundamental decisions made by individuals and that, when the state does impose restrictions on these important matters, it must do so in an even-handed manner.
This case is not about whether marriages between same-sex couples are consistent or inconsistent with the teachings of a particular religion, whether such marriages are moral or immoral or whether they are something that should be encouraged or discouraged. It is not even about whether the plaintiffs in this case are as capable as opposite-sex couples of maintaining a committed and loving relationship or raising a family together. Quite simply, this case is about liberty and equality, the two cornerstones of the rights protected by the United States Constitution.
Although the parties in this case disagree about many issues, they do agree about at least one thing, which is the central role that marriage plays in American society. It is a defining rite of passage and one of the most important events in the lives of millions of people, if not the most important for some. Of course, countless government benefits are tied to marriage, as are many responsibilities, but these practical concerns are only one part of the reason that marriage is exalted as a privileged civic status. Marriage is tied to our sense of self, personal autonomy and public dignity. And perhaps more than any other endeavor, we view marriage as essential to the pursuit of happiness, one of the inalienable rights in our Declaration of Independence. Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher, Case for Marriage 2 (Broadway Books 2000) (stating that 93% of Americans rate “having a happy marriage” as one of their most important goals, an ever higher percentage than “being in good health”). For these reasons and many others, “marriage is not merely an accumulation of benefits. It is a fundamental mark of citizenship.” Andrew Sullivan, “State of the Union,” New Republic (May 8, 2000). Thus, by refusing to extend marriage to the plaintiffs in this case, defendants are not only withholding benefits such as tax credits and marital property rights, but also denying equal citizenship to plaintiffs.
Judge Crabb also found one of the state’s arguments for supporting the marriage ban an odd one:
What is perhaps defendants’ oddest argument relies on a distinction between what defendants call “positive rights” and “negative rights.” In other words, the Constitution protects the rights of individuals to be free from government interference (“negative rights”), but it does not give them a right to receive government benefits (“positive rights”). … Thus, defendants say, although the due process clause may protect the right of individuals to engage in certain intimate conduct (a “negative right”), it “does not preclude a state from choosing not to give same-sex couples the positive right to enter the legal status of civil marriage under state law.
Defendants’ argument has two problems. First, the Supreme Court has held on numerous occasions that marriage is a fundamental right protected by the Constitution. E.g., Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 95 (1987); Cleveland Board of Education v. LaFleur, 414 U.S. 632, 639-640 (1974); Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 12 (1967). Thus, even if marriage is a “positive right” as defendants understand that term, marriage stands as an exception to the general rule.
Second, even if I assume that the state would be free to abolish the institution of marriage if it wished, the fact is that Wisconsin obviously has not abolished marriage; rather, it has limited the class of people who are entitled to marry. The question in this case is not whether the state is required to issue marriage licences as a general matter, but whether it may discriminate against same-sex couples in doing so. Even in cases in which an individual does not have a substantive right to a particular benefit or privilege, once the state extends that benefit to some of its citizens, it is not free to deny the benefit to other citizens for any or no reason on the ground that a “positive right” is at issue. In fact, under the equal protection clause, “the right to equal treatment . . . is not co-extensive with any substantive rights to the benefits denied the party discriminated against.” Heckler v. Mathews, 465 U.S. 728, 739, 646 (1984). Therefore, “[t]he State may not . . . selectively deny its protective services to certain disfavored minorities without violating the Equal Protection Clause.” DeShaney, 489 U.S. at 197 n.3.
Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, a Republican who is seeking re-election in November, has vowed to appeal the ruling to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and will seek a stay of the ruling on the 16th. A spokesman for Gov. Scott Walker has issued a statement supporting Van Hollen’s appeal.
June 6th, 2014
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Albany, NY; Athens, Greece; Bergen, Norway; Boston, MA; Birmingham, AL; Cambridge/Kitchener/Waterloo, ON; Charleston, WV; Cheyenne, WY; Davenport, IA; Dayton, OH; Detroit, MI; Des Moines, IA; Edmonton, AB; El Paso, TX; Fresno, CA; Hannover, Germany; Honolulu, HI; Indianapolis, IN; Innsbruck, Austria; Lille, France; Los Angeles, CA; Ljubljana, Slovenia; Maplewood/South Orange, NJ; Milwaukee, WI; Oxford, UK; Philadelphia, PA; Plano, TX; Rome, Italy; Salt Lake City, UT; Seoul, South Korea; Söderhamn, Sweden; Spencer, IN; Split, Croatia; Tulsa, OK; Washington, DC; Youngstown, OH.
Other Events This Weekend: Razzle Dazzle Dallas, Dallas, TX; Connecticut Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Hartford, CT; AIDS Walk, London, UK; Cinépride LGBT Film Festival, Nantes, France; Gay Days Disney, Orlando, FL; AIDS Life Cycle, San Francisco to Los Angeles, CA; Seoul LGBT Film Festival, Seoul, South Korea; Tel Aviv LGBT International Film Festival, Tel Aviv, Israel.
TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:
From The Advocate, May 13, 1982, page 51.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
► Thomas Mann: 1875-1955. The German author, social critic and 1929 Nobel Prize winner mined the rich material of his own life and family for many of his novels, including the Buddenbrooks, The Magic Mountain, and A Death in Venice, the latter of which is credited with introducing homosexual themes in the general culture. Mann married in 1905 and had six children, but when his diaries were unsealed in 1975, they revealed his struggles with his sexuality. Mann’s political views began on the conservative end of the spectrum, having supported the Kaiser Wilhelm II. But after the Great War, he became increasingly liberal, and his staunch support of democratic principles led naturally to his strident denunciations of Nazi policies. When Hitler came to power in 1933, the Manns were vacationing in Switzerland and they never returned. Mann settled in Southern California and recorded several anti-Nazi speeches which were broadcast during World War II by the BBC into Germany. After the war, he returned to Switzerland, where he died in 1955 of atherosclerosis.
► Harvey Fierstein: 1952. His acting debut was in 1971, when he appeared in Andy Warhol’s only play Pork. He’s most famous as the actor and playwright of the Tony Award-winning Torch Song Trilogy (1982), the story of a drag-performer’s search for true love and family. He the wrote the book for La Cage aux Folles (1983) which garnered him another Tony Award. He won another Tony, this time for Best Lead Actor in a Musical for his role as Edna Turnblad in the Broadway version of John Water’s Hairspray (2002). Film credits include the film version of Torch Song Trilogy and Woody Allen’s Bullets over Broadway, and as Mrs. Doubtfire‘s makeup artist brother. He’s also lent his distinctive gravelly voice to a number of cartoons, including a 1999 HBO special based on his children’s book The Sissy Duckling, and guest appearances in The Simpsons and Family Guy. In 2012, he wrote the book for the stage version of Kinky Boots. His new play, Casa Valentina opened this year on Broadway and has been nominated for four Tonys, including Best Play.
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June 5th, 2014
Bilerico Project learned the news on Sunday:
GOProud has been mired by several controversies since the departure of their founders. The group has bled donors since the widely reported departure of Jimmy LaSalvia from the Republican Party earlier this year. His departure was so loud, but it focused primarily on his shift of ideology and thus projected a new image onto the organization that he helped found.
Finding it difficult to continue without securing more funding, GOProud will be shutting down immediately – an homage to an era gone by. The shuttering is undoubtedly necessary as the organization’s full effectiveness has been tarnished.
The organization may rebrand and regroup later, but for now, the organization will no longer be functioning. Co-director Matthew Bechstein stated in an interview that the “brand is broken” and a rebrand is necessary.
To deflect a story alleging that the organization planned to shut its doors as part of a rebranding effort following years of financial woes and stagnancy, the organization took to social media to claim that “nothing could be further from the truth” and insist that “GOProud is not closing. It is growing.”
Except that it is, sort of:
“I posted what I had to on Facebook so I wouldn’t scare our members and thwart our fundraising efforts,” Executive Director Matthew Bechstein told Bilerico Project in an exclusive interview. “I wanted to mitigate a disaster.”
“We’re leaving GOProud behind and re-branding the chapters.”
While yesterday’s Facebook posting originally denied the report saying it was “misinformation” and the work of someone “that will stop at nothing to discredit our organization and its leadership team,” when presented with quotes he had made to Markle during a previous interview, Bechstein admitted that GOProud would soon cease to exist.
“There have been concerns among our members and investors about whether or not we can continue to grow and be effective without severing ourselves from past controversies,” Bechstein said in a separately emailed statement.
“The fact is, in order to continue promoting the conservative principles upon which this organization was founded, change is needed. One of the changes under discussion is a switch to a different legal type of organization – basic paperwork that requires dissolution and immediate subsequent reorganization. Technically, as some argue, this would be a legal closure,” he emailed. “But if it were to actually happen, it would only be momentary and certainly not the end of our organization.”
…Let me be clear, no matter what happens, our grassroots infrastructure and our daily activism will continue throughout any possible transition,” Bechstein said. “We do not plan to stop working. What has made this organization strong in the past is the support and devotion of our membership, I don’t expect that to waver in the future.”
June 5th, 2014
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Albany, NY; Athens, Greece; Bergen, Norway; Boston, MA; Birmingham, AL; Cambridge/Kitchener/Waterloo, ON; Charleston, WV; Cheyenne, WY; Davenport, IA; Dayton, OH; Detroit, MI; Des Moines, IA; Edmonton, AB; El Paso, TX; Hannover, Germany; Honolulu, HI; Indianapolis, IN; Innsbruck, Austria; Lille, France; Los Angeles, CA; Ljubljana, Slovenia; Maplewood/South Orange, NJ; Milwaukee, WI; Oxford, UK; Philadelphia, PA; Plano, TX; Rome, Italy; Salt Lake City, UT; Seoul, South Korea; Söderhamn, Sweden; Spencer, IN; Split, Croatia; Tulsa, OK; Washington, DC; Youngstown, OH.
Other Events This Weekend: Razzle Dazzle Dallas, Dallas, TX; Connecticut Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Hartford, CT; AIDS Walk, London, UK; Cinépride LGBT Film Festival, Nantes, France; Gay Days Disney, Orlando, FL; AIDS Life Cycle, San Francisco to Los Angeles, CA; Seoul LGBT Film Festival, Seoul, South Korea; Tel Aviv LGBT International Film Festival, Tel Aviv, Israel.
TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:
From the Bay Area Reporter, March 7, 1985, page 28.
When this ad appeared in 1985, it had been well established among medical professionals that AIDS was caused by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus and that the virus was transmitted via the blood or semen and not by “a hug, holding hands, having a good talk, fixing dinner, or going for a drive.” But fear persisted, both inside the gay community and outside, and it would still be many years before that message would take hold.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
► Pneumocystis Pneumonia — Los Angeles: 1981. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published this notice in the June 5, 1981 edition of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The CDC was skittish about how to handle the report, knowing that if it’s gay angle was too provocative or prominent, it might bring about adverse political consequences. The CDC’s concerns about a rising political backlash against the gay community would soon be confirmed when the religious right seized found the new disease to be a handy cudgel. And so this report, the first clinical description of a new disease which we would later know as AIDS, appeared tucked inside on page two, with all references to homosexuality dropped from its title:
Pneumocystis Pneumonia — Los Angeles
In the period October 1980-May 1981, 5 young men, all active homosexuals, were treated for biopsy-confirmed Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia at 3 different hospitals in Los Angeles, California. Two of the patients died. All 5 patients had laboratory-confirmed previous or current cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection and candidal mucosal infection. Case reports of these patients follow.Patient 1: A previously healthy 33-year-old man developed P. carinii pneumonia and oral mucosal candidiasis in March 1981 after a 2-month history of fever associated with elevated liver enzymes, leukopenia, and CMV viruria. The serum complement-fixation CMV titer in October 1980 was 256; in may 1981 it was 32.* The patient’s condition deteriorated despite courses of treatment with trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (TMP/SMX), pentamidine, and acyclovir. He died May 3, and postmortem examination showed residual P. carinii and CMV pneumonia, but no evidence of neoplasia.
Patient 2: A previously healthy 30-year-old man developed p. carinii pneumonia in April 1981 after a 5-month history of fever each day and of elevated liver-function tests, CMV viruria, and documented seroconversion to CMV, i.e., an acute-phase titer of 16 and a convalescent-phase titer of 28* in anticomplement immunofluorescence tests. Other features of his illness included leukopenia and mucosal candidiasis. His pneumonia responded to a course of intravenous TMP/.SMX, but, as of the latest reports, he continues to have a fever each day.
Patient 3: A 30-year-old man was well until January 1981 when he developed esophageal and oral candidiasis that responded to Amphotericin B treatment. He was hospitalized in February 1981 for P. carinii pneumonia that responded to TMP/SMX. His esophageal candidiasis recurred after the pneumonia was diagnosed, and he was again given Amphotericin B. The CMV complement-fixation titer in March 1981 was 8. Material from an esophageal biopsy was positive for CMV.
Patient 4: A 29-year-old man developed P. carinii pneumonia in February 1981. He had had Hodgkins disease 3 years earlier, but had been successfully treated with radiation therapy alone. He did not improve after being given intravenous TMP/SMX and corticosteroids and died in March. Postmortem examination showed no evidence of Hodgkins disease, but P. carinii and CMV were found in lung tissue.
Patient 5: A previously healthy 36-year-old man with clinically diagnosed CMV infection in September 1980 was seen in April 1981 because of a 4-month history of fever, dyspnea, and cough. On admission he was found to have P. carinii pneumonia, oral candidiasis, and CMV retinitis. A complement-fixation CMV titer in April 1981 was 128. The patient has been treated with 2 short courses of TMP/SMX that have been limited because of a sulfa-induced neutropenia. He is being treated for candidiasis with topical nystatin.
The diagnosis of Pneumocystis pneumonia was confirmed for all 5 patients antemortem by closed or open lung biopsy. The patients did not know each other and had no known common contacts or knowledge of sexual partners who had had similar illnesses. Two of the 5 reported having frequent homosexual contacts with various partners. All 5 reported using inhalant drugs, and 1 reported parenteral drug abuse. Three patients had profoundly depressed in vitro proliferative responses to mitogens and antigens. Lymphocyte studies were not performed on the other 2 patients.
Reported by MS Gottlieb, MD, HM Schanker, MD, PT Fan, MD, A Saxon, MD, JD Weisman, DO, Div of Clinical Immunology-Allergy; Dept of Medicine, UCLA School of Medicine; I Pozalski, MD, Cedars-Mt. Siani Hospital, Los Angeles; Field services Div, Epidemiology Program Office, CDC.
Editorial Note: Pneumocystis pneumonia in the United States is almost exclusively limited to severely immunosuppressed patients (1). The occurrence of pneumocystosis in these 5 previously healthy individuals without a clinically apparent underlying immunodeficiency is unusual. The fact that these patients were all homosexuals suggests an association between some aspect of a homosexual lifestyle or disease acquired through sexual contact and Pneumocystis pneumonia in this population. All 5 patients described in this report had laboratory-confirmed CMV disease or virus shedding within 5 months of the diagnosis of Pneumocystis pneumonia. CMV infection has been shown to induce transient abnormalities of in vitro cellular-immune function in otherwise healthy human hosts (2,3). Although all 3 patients tested had abnormal cellular-immune function, no definitive conclusion regarding the role of CMV infection in these 5 cases can be reached because of the lack of published data on cellular-immune function in healthy homosexual males with and without CMV antibody. In 1 report, 7 (3.6%) of 194 patients with pneumocystosis also had CMV infection’ 40 (21%) of the same group had at least 1 other major concurrent infection (1). A high prevalence of CMV infections among homosexual males was recently reported: 179 (94%) had CMV viruria; rates for 101 controls of similar age who were reported to be exclusively heterosexual were 54% for seropositivity and zero fro viruria (4). In another study of 64 males, 4 (6.3%) had positive tests for CMV in semen, but none had CMV recovered from urine. Two of the 4 reported recent homosexual contacts. These findings suggest not only that virus shedding may be more readily detected in seminal fluid than urine, but also that seminal fluid may be an important vehicle of CMV transmission (5).
All the above observations suggest the possibility of a cellular-immune dysfunction related to a common exposure that predisposes individuals to opportunistic infections such as pneumocystosis and candidiasis. Although the role of CMV infection in the pathogenesis of pneumocystosis remains unknown, the possibility of P. carinii infection must be carefully considered in a differential diagnosis for previously healthy homosexual males with dyspnea and pneumonia.
References
- Walzer PD, Perl DP, Krogstad DJ, Rawson G, Schultz MG. Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia in the United States. Epidemiologic, diagnostic, and clinical features. Ann Intern Med 1974;80:83-93.
- Rinaldo CR, Jr, Black PH, Hirsh MS. Interaction of cytomegalovirus with leukocytes from patients with mononucleosis due to cytomegalovirus. J Infect Dis 1977;136:667-78.
- Rinaldo CR, Jr, Carney WP, Richter BS, Black PH, Hirsh MS. Mechanisms of immunosuppression in cytomegaloviral mononucleosis. J Infect Dis 1980;141:488-95.
- Drew WL, Mintz L, Miner RC, Sands M, Ketterer B. Prevalence of cytomegalovirus infection in homosexual men. J Infect Dis 1981;143:188-92.
- Lang DJ, Kummer JF. Cytomegalovirus in semen: observations in selected populations,. J Infect Dis 1975; 132:472-3.
The MMWR went out to thousands of doctors across the country, and to dozens of science and health reporters at the major newspapers. The Los Angeles Times quickly reported on the local story of five gay men who had died in L.A. hospitals, and speculated that the unusual pneumonia was somehow “related to gay life style.” The San Francisco Chronicle’s David Perlman did some digging and determined that the “mysterious outbreak of a sometimes fatal pneumonia” was also occurring in San Francisco and New York. So far, the new disease had only one name: Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, or PCP, but it would quickly become apparent that PCP would be merely a symptom of a much more serious underlying immune deficiency.
A month later, the CDC, in another issue of MMWR, would add more information about additional PCP cases, and add an unusual skin cancer, Kaposi’s sarcoma, as another condition that gay men were dying of (see Jul 3). That report spawned talk of a “gay cancer,” which many in the gay community took to be a separate disease from PCP. The new underlying disease wouldn’t get a semi-official name for almost another year, when it was mistakenly called GIRD, or Gay-Related Immune Deficiency, despite the fact that others who weren’t gay were also coming down with the illness: Haitians, Africans, hemophiliac, intravenous drug users. It wasn’t until mid-1982 when the CDC, which had refused to use GRID to describe the illness, coined the designation of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or AIDS.
House Speaker Tom Foley (D-WA)
► 25 YEARS AGO: Republicans Conduct Whisper Campaign Against House Speaker: 1989. Just as Rep. Tom Foley (D-WA) was about to take the gavel from recently-disgraced former Speaker Jim Wright (D-TX), the Republican National Committee’s communications director Mark Goodin began circulating a memo among state party chairmen and GOP Congressmen titled “Tom Foley: Out of the Liberal Closet.” The memo compared Foley’s voting record with that of Rep. Barney Frank’s (D-MA), who had come out of the gay closet only two years earlier (see May 29). GOP Chairman Lee Atwater, who had made his reputation smearing reputations left and right, stood by Goodin’s memo, calling it “no big deal” and “factually accurate,” and professed astonishment that anyone could interpret the memo as a slur. The memo didn’t come right out and accuse Foley of being gay (labeling someone as gay in 1989 would have been taken as an accusation rather than a mere description), but the subtext was unmistakable. And while Atwater was protesting the memo’s innocence, other Republicans cheered the memo and sought more personal assaults on Democratic leaders.
GOP Chairman Lee Atwater
Republican minority Whip Newt Gingrich (R-GA) even spent several days calling dozens of reporters trying to get the rumor into print. one of those reporters, Lars-Erik Nelson of the New York Daily News, finally went public on June 5, saying that one of Gingrich’s top aides called him saying The Washington Post was going to run the story, saying “we hear it’s little boys.” The Post confirmed that they had been contacted but refused to run it. When Rep. Frank learned of the memo, he blasted GOP leaders for circulating it and threatened to expose closeted Republicans.
Soon, other Republicans began disassociating themselves from the memo, including President George Bush, whose White House Chief John Sununu told reporters that both he and Bush had reprimanded Atwater. “The President was very upset,” Sununu said. “I was upset. It went too far. It was wrong. The innuendo was wrong. It’s wrong not because it damages our relationship with the Democrats. It’s wrong because it’s wrong. It’s a terrible thing to happen at this time. It was not appropriate or fair.” Sen. Bob Dole (R-KS) called the memorandum “garbage” and House Minority Leader robert Michel (R-IL) also denounced it.
Goodin took the fall, resigning on the same day that Bush rebuked Atwater. Atwater also tried to remove his fingerprints. “I think it was bad taste and bad judgment,” Atwater said. “I told Mark that. I play hardball politics, but I don’t cross the line. This memo crossed the line.” With Goodin’s departure, Bush stood behind the GOP chairman. “Lee Atwater is doing a great job,” he said during a meeting with state party chairmen a week later. Dole quickly fell in line: “The president has spoken and Lee Atwater is staying.”
Atwater didn’t stay GOP chairman for long. The following year, he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer, and died a year later in 1991. During that interval, he converted to Catholicism and personally apologized to many of the politicians who he had personally attacked over the years. One of those receiving an apology was Tom Turnipseed, who Atwater mercilessly attacked during a 1980 Congressional campaign in South Carolina. Atwatter planted a story that Turnipseed “has had psychotic treatment.” When Turnipseed’s campaign demanded an apology, Atwater said he wouldn’t respond to someone who had “got hooked up to jumper cables.” A decade later as Atwater was confronting his own mortality, he wrote to Turnipseed. “It is very important to me that I let you know that out of everything that has happened in my career, one of the low points remains the so-called ‘jumper cable’ episode,” he wrote. “My illness has taught me something about the nature of humanity, love, brotherhood and relationships that I never understood, and probably never would have. So, from that standpoint, there is some truth and good in everything.”
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
► John Maynard Keynes: 1883-1946. The British economist has had a profound influence on macroeconomics and government economic policy. His ideas now carry his name — Keynesian economics — which argued that free markets didn’t always provide the best solutions in times of economic turmoil. He argued that counter cyclic spending during economic downturns could provide vital demand to keep businesses and industries afloat in times of lower employment levels. He advocated economic stimulus policies to keep people employed. “With men and plants unemployed, it is ridiculous to say that we cannot afford these new developments,” he wrote in 1928 of the need for spending on public works. “It is precisely with these plants and these men that we shall afford them.”
Keynes’s economic policies weren’t the only thing revolutionary about him in the early twentieth century. He was also very open about his sexuality. Between 1901 and 1915, he kept separate diaries where he tabulated his sexual encounters in a kind of a code that has baffled historians and biographers since then. He was a member of the Bloomsbury Group, a group of English writers, artists and philosophers which included E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Lytton Stratchy, and the artist Duncan Grant, who is said to have been Keynes’s great love. Stratchy was also a lover, but he must have gotten a glimpse at Keynes’s diary: Stratchy was put off by Keynes’s manner of “treat[ing] his love affairs statistically.” Keynes eventually married the Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova, and their marriage did appear to have been a satisfactory one.
► Federico GarcÃa Lorca: 1898-1936. Born in a small town to the west of Granada, GarcÃa Lorca abandoned law studies at the University of Grenada to pursue literature and theater. When he staged his first play, El Maleficio de la Mariposa (The Butterfly’s Evil Spell, 1920, about an impossible love between a cockroach and a butterfly), it was laughed off the stage, which encouraged GarcÃa Lorca to instead turn his energies to poetry and fiction. His poetry collections included Impresiones y Paisajes (Impressions and Landscapes, 1918), Libro de Poemas (Book of Poems, 1921), Canciones (Songs, 1927) and Romancero Gitano (Gypsy Ballads, 1928). GarcÃa Lorca became a fixture in Spain’s avant-guarde as a member of Generación del 27, an influential group of authors and poets who came of age between 1923 and 1927. Others influenced by GarcÃa Lorca (and who, in turn, influenced him) included the surreal painters Salvador Dali and Óscar DomÃnguez, and filmmaker Luis Buñuel.
In 1929, GarcÃa Lorca traveled to New York to study English at Columbia University, but he spent his time writing instead of studying. The result was another poetry collection, Poeta en Nueva York (A poet in New York), was published posthumously in 1942). Influenced by the Wall Street crash of 1929 which GarcÃa Lorca had witnessed while there, Poeta en Nueva York condemned materialistic values and explored alienation, isolation, and the oppression of the African-American community he encountered there. When he returned to Spain in 1930, his iconoclastic art and left-leaning politics found instant favor in the newly established Spanish Republic. He was appointed director of a university student theatre company and was paid by the Ministry of Education to bring modern performances to remote rural areas free of charge. “The theatre is a school of weeping and of laughter,” he wrote, “a free forum, where men can question norms that are outmoded or mistaken and explain with living example the eternal norms of the human heart.”
When civil war broke out in 1936 between the Republic and rebellious Nationalists led by General Francisco Franco, GarcÃa Lorca’s habit of “questioning norms” may have marked him as the Nationalists’ enemy, although contemporaries note that he maintained friendships on both sides of the battle lines. GarcÃa Lorca’s sexual orientation, also, wouldn’t help matters. On August 18, 1936, his brother-in-law, mayor Manuel Fernández-Montesinos, was shot, and GarcÃa Lorca was arrested that same afternoon. Controversy still surrounds the details of GarcÃa Lorca death — who shot him and why — but it is believed that he was shot with three others outside of Granada on August 19. One executioner is reputed to have said, “I fired two bullets into his ass for being a queer.” A year later, an article appeared in a Nationalist newspaper lionizing GarcÃa Lorca, calling him “the finest poet of Imperial Spain,” but Franco placed a general ban on his work until 1953 when a censored Obras Completas (Complete Works) was published.
► Suze Orman: 1951. She started out with a B.A. in social work and worked as a waitress in Berkeley before becoming a financial adviser for Merrill Lynch. In 1983, she moved to Prudential Bache Securities, where she became vice-president of investments. Four years later, she quit to found her own financial firm. Not bad for someone without an MBA. In 2007, she began appearing on television. After she gave away a million copies of her e-book, Women and Money, following an appearance on Oprah, she began hosting her own financial advice program, The Suze Orman Show, which airs on weekends on CNBC. She is also a regular columnist for Oprah Winfrey’s O magazine, and she continues to appear occasionally on Oprah’s OWN network. In 2010, Orman married Kathy Travis, a co-producer of on The Suze Orman Show.
► 40 YEARS AGO: Chad Allen: 1974. I didn’t know this until I was reading up for this write-up: one of Chad’s early major roles was on the television series St. Elsewhere, where he played the autistic son of Dr. Westphall from 1983, to 1988. He also appeared in Our House and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. In 1996, he was outed by the supermarket tabloid The Globe, which published photos of him kissing another man in a hot tub. When he was cast to play the role of real-life Christian missionary Nate Saint in the 2006 docudrama End of the Spear
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