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 lobbyMay 15th, 2014
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Brussels, Belgium; Chisinau, Moldova; Eilat, Israel; Kraków, Poland; Long Beach, CA; New Hope, PA; São Paulo, Brazil; Springfield, IL.
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Minneapolis, MN; New York, NY; Poughkeepsie, NY.
Other Events This Weekend: Harvey Milk Day Events, various cities and dates; Bearcelona, Barcelona, Spain; Brighton Heroes Run, Brighton, UK; Bear Watch, Galveston, TX; Saints and Sinners Literary Festival, New Orleans, LA.
TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:
From the Advocate, May 24, 1972, page 11.
San Francisco’s South of Market (SOMA) has been the center of the city’s leather scene since the 1960s, when the famous Tool Box opened in 1961. The Barracks opened in 1972 as a combination hotel/bar/bathhouse, with emphasis on the latter and each room set up to cater to a different fetish fantasy. By the late 1970s Folsom’s Miracle Mile, as that stretch of Folsom Street came to be known, featured nearly thirty bars, clubs, and retail shops within walking distance of each other. One magazine described the Barracks this way: “The Folsom Barracks created a world standard as to what baths could be in terms of hotness, honesty, outstanding music and general outrageousness.” The Barracks closed in 1981 for renovation, but was destroyed in a fire that was described as the worst since the 1906 earthquake.
Jefferson Withers
TODAY IN HISTORY:
“Writhing Bedfellows”: 1826. Few intimate letters between men survive from the early nineteenth century, which makes this one so remarkable. Back when the nation was young, Jefferson Withers, 22, wrote to his dear friend, James Hammond, 18, a letter which is both frank and playful — even “campy”:
Dear Jim:
I got your Letter this morning about 8 o’clock, from the hands of the Bearer . . . I was sick as the Devil, when the Gentleman entered the Room, and have been so during most of the day. About 1 o’clock I swallowed a huge mass of Epsom Salts — and it will not be hard to imagine that I have been at dirty work since. I feel partially relieved — enough to write a hasty dull letter.
I feel some inclination to learn whether you yet sleep in your Shirt-tail, and whether you yet have the extravagant delight of poking and punching a writhing Bedfellow with your long fleshen pole — the exquisite touches of which I have often had the honor of feeling? Let me say unto thee that unless thou changest former habits in this particular, thou wilt be represented by every future Chum as a nuisance. And, I pronounce it, with good reason too. Sir, you roughen the downy Slumbers of your Bedfellow — by such hostile — furious lunges as you are in the habit of making at him — when he is least prepared for defence against the crushing force of a Battering Ram. Without reformation my imagination depicts some awful results for which you will be held accountable — and therefore it is, that I earnestly recommend it. Indeed it is encouraging an assault and battery propensity, which needs correction — & uncorrected threatens devastation, horror & bloodshed, etc. …
[The letter goes on for two more pages on unrelated matters, then signs off–]
With great respect I am the old
Stud,
Jeff.
James Henry Hammond
Withers would later become a judge in South Carolina and delegate to the conferences that established a provisional government for the Confederacy. He also served as a Congressman for the Confederacy from South Carolina. Hammond became a Congressman, Senator and Governor of South Carolina, and one of the South’s more important advocate for slavery as a Christian institution, as a blessing and a moral good. the greatest of all the great blessings which a kind Providence has bestowed upon our glorious region.” Slavery was also, according to Hammond, “is not only not a sin but especially commanded by God through Moses and approved by Christ through His Apostles.” Hammond’s personal diaries revealed he made sexual advances on his three teenage nieces, and he detailed his sexual relationship with a slave who bore him several children, and his sexual exploitation of her twelve year old daughter who bore several more children. Neither Withers nor Hammond, from the standpoint of American history, come across as admirable people, yet Hammond has become a modern-day hero for David Barton and others who promote the “Christian Nation” view of American history.
But all of that came later. Meanwhile back in 1826, Hammond replied to Wither’s letter on June 3, although that letter is now lost. But Withers followed with another letter the following September (see Sep 24.)
[Source: Martin Duberman. “‘Writhing Bedfellows’: 1826.” Journal of Homosexuality 6, no. 1 (1981): 85-101. Available online here.]
Homosexual Drives As Menstrual Cycles: 1950. This was a time when Congress was preoccupied with two color-coded scares: The Red Menace of imaginary communists hiding in every cupboard and The Pink Menace of homosexuals working in federal offices. Congressman Arthur L. Miller (R-Nebr) was particularly incensed over the latter. He was also a doctor and a surgeon, which made this speech during a committee hearing particularly strange:
Some of these people are dangerous. They will go to any limit. These homosexuals have strong emotions. They are not to be trusted and when blackmail threatens they are a dangerous group. … It is found that the cycle of these individuals’ homosexual desires follow the cycle closely patterned to the menstrual period of women. There may be three or four days in each month that this homosexual’s instincts break down and drive the individual into abnormal fields of sexual practice.
Episcopal Church Allows Ordination of Gay Deacons: 1996. An Episcopal Church court threw out a heresy charge and ruled that an Bishop Walter C. Righter, did not violate the church’s core doctrine when he ordained openly gay Barry Stopfel as a deacon, the rank below that of a priest, in the Dioceses of Newark in 1990.
Phyllis Lyon and and Del Marton
California State Supreme Court Strikes Down Ban on Same-Sex Marriages: 2008. In a 4-3 decision, the California State Supreme Court ruled:
“[T]he language of section 300 limiting the designation of marriage to a union “between a man and a woman” is unconstitutional and must be stricken from the statute, and that the remaining statutory language must be understood as making the designation of marriage available both to opposite-sex and same-sex couples. In addition, because the limitation of marriage to opposite-sex couples imposed by section 308.5 can have no constitutionally permissible effect in light of the constitutional conclusions set forth in this opinion, that provision cannot stand.”
The decision took effect on June 16, 2008, when gay rights pioneers Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin’s 55-year relationship was solemnized by the first official same-sex wedding in San Francisco. But two weeks earlier, California’s Secretary of State reported that marriage equality opponents had turned in enough signatures to place a proposed amendment banning same-sex marriages on the November ballot. Prop 8 passed, but was later declared unconstitutional in Federal Court. That decision is now working its way through the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, where a three-judge panel has upheld the lower court’s ruling but narrowed its reasoning. The case was then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to rule on the merits because the appellants lacked standing. That sent the case all the way back to the Federal District Court which declared Prop 8 unconstitutional in the first place, making that original decision the one that stuck.
Jasper Johns’s “Map,” 1961 (Click to enlarge.)
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Jasper Johns: 1930. He probably best known for his 1955 painting Flag, which is, just as its name implies, simply a painting of an American Flag. His focus on the mundane as subjects have led some to consider him a pop artist with an abstract impressionist streak, but it’s probably more accurate to see him as a ne0-Dadaist. Flag exemplifies that movement by taking an object or a popular image imbued with intense meaning and removing it from its context and thereby reducing it to a simple abstract design. Map (1961) does the same thing. It’s an ordinary map of the United States portrayed in an abstract impressionist style which reduces the iconic image to a series of color splotches and shapes. Flags, maps, stenciled words and numbers — all of these mundane yet symbolic images were subjects for Johns’s paintings.
Jasper Johns receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Johns was born in South Carolina and studied for three semesters at the University of South Carolina before moving to New York to study briefly at the Parson’s School of Design in 1949. After a stint in the military during the Korean War, Johns returned to New York where he met Robert Rauschenberg and they became lovers for eight years. It was through his connection with Rauschenberg that Johns was discovered by the art world. When prominent gallery owner visited Rauschenberg’s studio in 1958 and saw Johns’s work, he offered Johns a show on the spot. At that debut show, the Museum of Modern Art anointed Johns as a major figure in the art world by purchasing three of his paintings. By the 1980s, John’s paintings fetched higher prices than any other living artist in history. In 2011, Johns was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama, making him the first painter to receive the award since 1977.
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?
May 14th, 2014
U.S. Magistrate Judge Candy W. Dale, who yesterday ruled that Idaho’s state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage violates the U.S. Constitution, has denied a request by Gov. Butch Otter (stop that, you guys!) to stay the ruling pending a planned appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden and Gov. Otter are expected to file an emergency motion with the Ninth Circuit asking for a stay pending an appeal. Otter and Wasden are optimistic they can get a stay somewhere:
In the request to Dale, Otter’s attorneys said they were convinced that if the judge wouldn’t issue a stay, the 9th Circuit or Supreme Court would.
“That conviction is based on the fact that the Ninth Circuit granted such a stay in the California same-sex marriage’ case, the Sixth district did the same in the Michigan same-sex marriage case, and the United States Supreme Court did the same in the Utah same-sex marriage case,” Otter’s attorneys wrote.
If the Ninth Circuit denies their motion for a stay and the U.S. Supreme Court doesn’t intervene, then same-sex marriages will become legal in Idaho at 9:00 a.m. Friday.
After the ruling, the Idaho Republican Party issued a statement reaffirming the organization’s stance against same-sex marriage, and contending that the Tenth Amendment gives states the power to regulate and define marriage.
“The disintegration of marriage will lead to the disintegration of our society,” Idaho GOP Chairman Barry Peterson said in a prepared statement.
May 14th, 2014
But it looks like same-sex marriages in Arkansas will come to an end anyway, at least temporarily. From the Arkansas Times blog:
The Arkansas Supreme Court has denied an request for an emergency stay of Judge Chris Piazza’s order overturning the ban on same-sex marriage. The court also dismissed as premature an appeal of Piazza’s ruling because it wasn’t a final order.
Marriage equality remains the law of the land in Arkansas, but the court injected a wrinkle that will give counties cover to continue to refuse marriage licenses to same-sex couples. And that wrinkle has prompted Pulaski Clerk Larry Crane to say that, for the time being, his office likely will cease issuing licenses to same-sex couples.
The court noted that Piazza’s ruling didn’t mention a statute that prohibits clerks from issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples. It remains in effect. Action will now shift to Piazza’s court to pursue final orders, injunctive relief and a cleanup on the omitted statute.
Said Jack Wagoner, attorney for the plaintffs:
We’ll fix that tomorrow and be back here again…. How can you find something unconstitutional but not affect a statute that would require the clerks to do something unconstitutional?
Right now, this is throwing everything into chaos. The Carroll County (Eureka Springs) Clerk, which issued fifteen same-sex marriage licenses last Saturday, had already stopped issuing licenses by Monday after the local prosecutor issued a statement saying, “there was a law left on the books prohibiting a county clerk from issuing a marriage license to persons of the same gender. This law was not addressed by Judge Piazza, and because of this, we advised the county clerk to stop selling marriage licenses to persons of the same gender.” Marion and Saline Counties reversed course and stopped issuing licenses yesterday. Washington County has indicated that it may also halt the issuing of licenses to same-sex couples.
Once the trial court fixes its order and enters a final judgment, I think you can expect that some counties will honor the ruling and some won’t, and the state will be back again before the Arkansas Supreme Court for another go at a stay and appeal.
You can read the Arkansas Supreme Court’s statement here (PDF: 237KB/7 pages).
May 14th, 2014
The National Organization for Marriage’s delaying tactic seeking to intervene in the marriage ban trial in Oregon has been slapped down. (Oregon Live)
After a nearly hourlong hearing, McShane ruled that the National Organization for Marriage was unreasonably late in filing its request to intervene. He also said that the group couldn’t simply seek to intervene in the place of Rosenblum to defend the law. “The attorney general is answerable to voters,” the judge said. “NOM is not.”
In addition, McShane said the Washington, D.C.-based group didn’t make its case that it should be allowed to intervene on behalf of three anonymous Oregon members of NOM: a county clerk who issues marriage licenses, a wedding provider and a voter who supported the 2004 constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.
McShane said he understood the group’s concerns that its members might face harassment if they were named in the case. But he said Eastman’s group made no attempt to provide confidential information to the judge that would allow him to assess any harm to their members if gays and lesbians are allowed to marry in Oregon.
NOM is appealing.
However, at this point it seems likely that Judge McShane will simply rule on the matter and not wait for NOM to be told by every court in the land that they don’t have standing to represent imaginary people.
If he rules quickly enough, the organizers of the petition to bring the ban back to the voters will stop their campaign.
May 14th, 2014
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Brussels, Belgium; Chisinau, Moldova; Eilat, Israel; Kraków, Poland; Long Beach, CA; New Hope, PA; São Paulo, Brazil; Springfield, IL.
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Minneapolis, MN; New York, NY; Poughkeepsie, NY.
Other Events This Weekend: Harvey Milk Day Events, various cities and dates; Bearcelona, Barcelona, Spain; Brighton Heroes Run, Brighton, UK; Bear Watch, Galveston, TX; Saints and Sinners Literary Festival, New Orleans, LA.
TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:
From the Advocate, May 13, 1982, page 38.
I don’t have any information about the Ruins of Indianapolis, except that it was, for a while, a popular Indianapolis dance bar. Later, the address was home to a lesbian dive bar called Ten, which apparently closed sometime in the past year or so. The entire building is now vacant and boarded up.
P.M. Pierre Trudeau: “There’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation, and what’s done in private between adults doesn’t concern the Criminal Code.”
TODAY IN HISTORY:
45 YEARS AGO: Canada’s Parliament Votes to Decriminalize Homosexuality: 1969. In 1967, Justice Minister Pierre Trudeau introduced a large omnibus bill, The Criminal Amendment Act of 1968, in the 27th Canadian Parliament, which, if passed, would have had far-ranging effects on Canadian Law. The bill proposed, among other things,to allow provinces and the federal government to set up lotteries, expand laws on gun possession, impose penalties on drinking and driving, regulate misleading advertising, allow abortions and contraception, and decriminalize homosexuality. In 1968 when Prime Minister Lester Pearson announced he was stepping down as Prime Minister and head of the Liberal party, Trudeau sought the party’s leadership and won. After elections that summer, Trudeau became Prime Minister and John Turner became Trudeau’s Justice Minister. Turner re-introduced the massive omnibus bill into the 28th Parliament and described it as “the most important and all-embracing reform of the criminal and penal law ever attempted at one time in this country.”
The most controversial elements of the bill, the provisions legalizing abortion and same-sex relationships, drew the sharpest criticism from the opposition. The government fought back amendments from Conservative and Creditiste party members to leave the homosexuality sanctions intact. MP Marcel Lambert (PC-Edmonton West) asked, “If it is right to remove the legal sanction from acts of homosexuality between consenting adults … and from certain acts between husband and wife, why do we not remove a whole gamut of offenses, including attempted suicide and other acts involving an individual only and not other human?” MP Andrew Fortin (Creditiste-Lotbiniere) claimed that homosexuality “like tuberculosis,” could be brought under control with proper treatment. MP Rene Matte (Criditiste-Champlain) found the whole debate an abomination, saying it was “almost scandalous to see representatives of the people being obliged to discuss these questions.” England had decriminalized homosexuality two years earlier, but Matte declared, “we’re not obliged to follow the decadence of England.”
Justice Minister Turner countered that the removal of homosexuality from the criminal code would merely lift “the taint or stigma of the law,” and repeated the government’s position that “areas of private conscience, private behavior had better be left to private judgment,” and added that a law that was not enforceable was not a good law. Trudeau also rose to defend the provisions, telling reporters that “there’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation, and what’s done in private between adults doesn’t concern the Criminal Code.” After the acrimonious debate finally came to a close, the criminal code amendments dealing with abortions and homosexuality cleared the House of Commons late on Wednesday night, May 13, 1969, in a 149-55 vote.
You can see the CBC’s archival newsclips of Trudeau speaking to reporters about decriminalizing homosexuality and other provisions of the omnibus bill here.
A diagram from 1971 of a system to deliver electric shock aversion therapy to gay men. (Click to enlarge.)
“Shock Doc” Protested at APA: 1970. Gay advocates had long observed that the APA’s labeling of homosexuality a mental disorder served as a handy excuse to enforce widespread discrimination and legal sanctions against LGBT people in all areas of life. What’s more, psychiatry’s attempts to cure homosexuality were often physically torturous, with electric shock aversion therapy a not uncommon method. One of the stars of aversion therapy, an Australian psychiatrist by the name of Nathaniel McConaghy, was in San Francisco Francisco to read a paper American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting, and gay advocates saw it as a perfect opportunity to confront the organization. As McConaghy coolly described the methods he used — his patients’ penises were wired to measurement devices and they were shown porn; once twinge of arousal and they were delivered powerful electric shocks — gay advocates in the crowd began shouting “vicious!” and “torture!” and “where did you take your residency, Auschwitz?”
When the moderator announced the next session, the gay advocates exploded and demanded to be heard. The moderator refused, and the meeting broke down into shouts and recriminations. Conference chairman Dr. John Brady told the protesters to restrain themselves, whereupon one demonstrator shouted back, “We’ve restrained ourselves for 5,000 years!” Another psychiatrist shouted back, “It won’t hurt to restrain yourselves for another half-hour. Another physician reportedly called for the police to shoot the protesters. Most psychiatrists left the room, but some stayed and the conversations that ensued over the next three years finally led to the APA’s delisting of homosexuality as a mental disorder.
In 1981, McConaghy was still unapologetic about his treatment of gay people. In an article he published in the journal Behavior Research and Therapy, he was still presenting the results of his electric shock experiments on gay men. He defended his work as ethical and continued to voice resentment over the interruption of his presentation eleven years earlier. By the mid 1980’s he abandoned aversion therapy, but he kept trying to cure an illness that no longer existed.
Somehow, his colleagues’ esteem for him remained intact. After he died in 2005, the Archives of Sexual Behavior published a memorial lauding him as a pioneer in behavioral therapy who “inspired many to pursue truth and beauty through his example.” The memorial was notable for three things: 1) it briefly mentioned his attempts to cure gay men and painted his response to the “near riot” of 1970 as heroic (“He remained a fearless champion of the application of scientific methods to the study of human sexuality.”), 2) the memorial neglected to mention his use of electric shock therapy, and 3) the memorial was unsigned.
40 YEARS AGO: First LGBT Civil Rights Bill Introduced in Congress: 1974. Rep. Bella Abzug, the Democratic Congresswoman for Manhattan and part of the Bronx, was a civil rights attorney before she entered Congress, where she became an outspoken supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment and opponent of the war in Vietnam. Her stands earned her the nickname “Battling Bella,” along with a position on President Richard Nixon’s famed “Enemies List.” On this date in 1974, Rep. Abzug introduced the first federal gay rights bill, the Equality Act of 1974. The bill, which would have banned discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations, went nowhere then, and similar efforts to ban discrimination have come to naught in the 39 years since then.
The proposed Equality Act of 1974 can be viewed here.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Magnus Hirschfeld: 1868-1935. Sometimes known as “The Einstein of Sex,” German-born Magnus Hirschfeld was the most prominent advocate of gay emancipation in his day. In 1897, Hirschfeld co-founded the Wissenschaftlich-humanitäre Komitee (Scientific-Humanitarian Committee), whose first project was to repeal Germanys infamous Paragraph 175, which criminalized homosexuality between men (women were unmentioned in the anti-gay code). While the committee managed to gather signatures of some 6,000 Germans calling for repeal, the committee failed in its goal. In 1919, Hirschfeld founded the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Science), and he became widely recognized as a prolific writer and speaker on sexual minority issues. He also figured in film history, when he made a cameo appearance in the 1919 film Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others, see May 28), the first film to portray a homosexual love story in a sympathetic light.
While Germany’s Wiemar Republic saw homosexuality becoming somewhat accepted in Berlin, extreme right-wing forces reacted with violence. In 1920, Hirschfeld was attacked and severely wounded in Munich after a conference, and in 1921 his skull was fractured in another attack. From 1929, Nazis repeatedly disrupted his lectures. In 1930, Hirschfeld began a lecture tour of the United States, which was expanded to a world-wide tour. By the time he returned to Europe in 1932, conditions in Germany had become so dangerous that he decided not to return to Berlin. On May 6, 1933, the Nazis attacked and destroyed the Institute for Sexual Science, and on May 10, they burned its library and files, the largest of its kind in the world. Hirschfeld wandered Europe before settling in Nice, France in 1934. He died there in 1935, with his death coming also on this very same date in history.
Julian Eltinge: 1881-1941. He was, perhaps, America’s first famous drag queen. One story has it that he first donned women’s clothing at the age of ten for an appearance in Boston. Another one suggests that his mother helped him to dress in drag at a very young age to perform in the saloons in Butte, Montana, and that his father nearly beat him to death when he found out. Eltinge himself claimed that he learned to perform drag as a member of Harvard’s Hasting Pudding Club, but in fact he never attended school there.
At any rate, we do know that he was performing drag onstage and touring Vaudeville after the turn of the century, and unlike most female impersonators at the time, he didn’t place farcical caricatures of women for laughs. He sought to create the full illusion of actually being a woman. He toured Vaudeville under the his last name “”Eltinge,” which gave no hint of his gender. He sang, he danced, he recited soliloquies, and at the end of his act, he stepped forward on stage, and in a dramatic gesture emulated later in the 1982 film Victor/Victoria, he reached up and removed his wig to the surprise of his often unsuspecting audience. He arrived on Broadway in 1907 at the Alhambra Theater, and through the next decade he was reputed to be the highest paid stage actor. He started appearing in films in 1914, and by 1920, had one of the most lavish mansions in Southern California, where he lived with his mother.
Eltinge countered rumors of his homosexuality offstage by presenting a unrelentingly masculine presence in public. He smoked cigars, was an amateur boxer, got into bar fights, and had long engagements with women. Funny though, he never married. “I am not gay,” he protested, “I just like pearls.” But by the 1930;s, his heyday was over. He gained weight and started drinking as his career took a nose-dive. He was reduced to performing in a Hollywood nightclub catering to a gay clientele, but local laws intended to contain the “homosexual menace” banned dressing in drag. Eltinge had to perform in a tuxedo alongside mannequins dressed in his outfits. He’d point to them while enacting his characters. He died in 1941, reportedly of a brain hemorrhage, although some suspect suicide. His will, dated October 13, 1938, stated “I declare that I am a bachelor” and left everything to his mother.
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?
May 13th, 2014
As Timothy already mentioned, U.S. Magistrate Judge Candy Dale has ruled Idaho’s ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional. Judge Dale’s order goes into effect on Friday, May 16 at 9:00 a.m. Her 57-page ruling his here (PDF: 235KB/57 pages). You know it’s going to be a good one when she leads off with this on the front cover:
I. INTRODUCTION
It is precisely because the issue raised by this case touches the heart of what makes individuals what they are that we should be especially sensitive to the rights of those whose choices upset the majority.
— The Honorable Harry Blackmun 1
————-
1 Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186, 211 (1986) (Blackmun, J., dissenting), overruled by Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003).
She gets right to the heart of one of the main arguments put forward by marriage equality opponents. “This case asks a basic and enduring question about the essence of American government: Whether the will of the majority, based as it often is on sincere beliefs and democratic consensus, may trump the rights of a minority.”
Although 17 states legally recognize same-sex marriages, Idaho is one of many states that has chosen the opposite course. Like courts presiding over similar cases across the country, the Court must examine whether Idaho’s chosen course is constitutional. Significantly, the Supreme Court of the United States recently held that the federal government cannot constitutionally define marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman. United States v. Windsor, 133 S. Ct. 2675 (2013). Writing for the majority in Windsor, Justice Kennedy reasoned the “purpose and effect” of the federal man-woman marriage definition was “to disparage and injure” legally married same-sex couples in derogation of the liberty, due process, and equal protection guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Id. at 2696. Here, the Court considers a related but distinct question: Do Idaho’s Marriage Laws deny Plaintiffs the due process or equal protection guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution?
After careful consideration, the Court finds Idaho’s Marriage Laws unconstitutional. This conclusion reaffirms a longstanding maxim underlying our system of government—a state’s broad authority to regulate matters of state concern does not include the power to violate an individual’s protected constitutional rights. See, e.g., id. at 2691 (“State laws defining and regulating marriage, of course, must respect the constitutional rights of persons. . . .”). Idaho’s Marriage Laws deny its gay and lesbian citizens the fundamental right to marry and relegate their families to a stigmatized, second-class status without sufficient reason for doing so. These laws do not withstand any applicable level of constitutional scrutiny.
Judge Dale later went further on the question of scrutiny:
With respect to Plaintiffs’ due process claim, Idaho’s Marriage Laws are subject to strict scrutiny because they infringe upon Plaintiffs’ fundamental right to marry. Under the Equal Protection Clause, Idaho’s Marriage Laws are subject to heightened scrutiny because they intentionally discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. The Court finds that Idaho’s Marriage Laws do not survive any applicable level of constitutional scrutiny and therefore violate the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Her acceptance of heightened scrutiny was based on the analysis made by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in the SmithKline case, which “establishes a broadly applicable equal protection principle” for gay people. The Ninth Circuit, in turn, based their decision to apply heightened scrutiny on last summer’s Windsor decision striking down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act. She wrote:
Apart from SmithKline, Plaintiffs also contend Idaho’s Marriage Laws are subject to heightened scrutiny because classifications based on sexual orientation are constitutionally suspect. The Court need not dissect this argument because the Supreme Court has accepted it by implication. If homosexuals are not a suspect or quasi-suspect class, the Supreme Court would have applied rational basis scrutiny in Windsor. But, as recognized in SmithKline, the Supreme Court applied heightened scrutiny. Indeed, the Supreme Court affirmed the Second Circuit without questioning (or even discussing) the lower court’s express holding… The Second Circuit’s holding was both approved and essential to the scrutiny the Supreme Court applied in Windsor. Had the Supreme Court disagreed with the Second Circuit, it would not have applied heightened scrutiny. It is not necessary to repeat the Second Circuit’s analysis, for that analysis is implicit in both Windsor and SmithKline.
Because Idaho’s Marriage Laws impermissibly infringe on Plaintiffs’ fundamental right to marry, the Laws are subject to strict due process and equal protection scrutiny. But SmithKline directs the Court to apply heightened equal protection scrutiny to laws that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. Idaho’s Marriage Laws do not withstand this heightened scrutiny.
Judge Dale spent considerable effort to review the place that marriage has in the constellation of civil and human rights, as well as prior court rulings that specifically addressed the rights that gays and lesbians are entitled to under the law:
More recently, the Supreme Court confirmed that gay and lesbian individuals do not forfeit their constitutional liberties simply because of their sexual orientation. Lawrence, 539 U.S. 558. The Court observed that “our laws and tradition afford constitutional protection to personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education.” Id. at 574. Emphasizing that these are personal rights, the Court concluded “[p]ersons in a homosexual relationship may seek autonomy for these purposes, just as heterosexual persons do.” Id. (emphasis added). And, less than one year ago, the Supreme Court struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act’s man-woman definition of marriage because it amounted to unconstitutional “interference with the equal dignity of same-sex marriages” recognized by some states. Windsor, 133 S. Ct. at 2693. The message of these cases is unmistakable—all individuals have a fundamental right to marry
…Finally, and most critically, the Supreme Court’s marriage cases demonstrate that the right to marry is an individual right, belonging to all. See Lawrence, 539 U.S. at 574. If every individual enjoys a constitutional right to marry, what is the substance of that right for gay or lesbian individuals who cannot marry their partners of choice? Traditional man-woman marriage is no answer, as this would suggest that gays and lesbians can switch off their sexual orientation and choose to be content with the universe of opposite-sex partners approved by the State. Defendants offer no other answer.
In their effort to avoid the question, Defendants commit the same analytical mistake as the majority in Bowers v. Hardwick, the decision that declined to “announce a fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy.” 478 U.S. 186, 191 (1986), overruled by Lawrence, 539 U.S. at 577. The crucial mistake in Bowers was that the majority narrowed and thus “fail[ed] to appreciate the extent of the liberty at stake.” Lawrence, 539 U.S. at 567. For that reason, the Supreme Court in Lawrence concluded “Bowers was not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today.” Id. at 577. Lawrence instructs not only that gay and lesbian individuals enjoy the same fundamental rights to make intimate personal choices as heterosexual individuals enjoy, but that judicial attempts to parse those rights out of existence will be met with a harsh rebuke.
She dispensed with the “what’s best for children” argument raised by the defendants:
The best that can be said for Defendants’ position is that some social scientists quibble with the prevailing consensus that the children of same-sex parents, on average, fare no better or worse than the children of opposite-sex parents. (Id. ¶¶ 35-41.) But the Court need not—even if it could at the summary judgment stage—resolve this sociological debate. The parties’ debate over the scientific literature distracts from the essential inquiry into the logical link between child welfare and Idaho’s wholesale prohibition of same-sex marriage. That link is faulty for at least four reasons.
First, civil marriage in Idaho is and has long been a designedly consent-based institution. The law speaks of marriage as a “civil contract . . . to which the consent of parties capable of making it is necessary.” Idaho Code 32-201. True, “throughout human history and across many cultures, marriage has been viewed as an exclusively opposite-sex institution and as one inextricably linked to procreation and biological kinship.” Windsor, 133 S. Ct. at 2718 (Alito, J., dissenting). But Idaho law is wholly indifferent to whether a heterosexual couple wants to marry because they share this vision or simply seek a tax break. That such a crass objective would be sufficient to obtain a marriage license does not mean marriage is a cheap convenience. Instead, it means that the value of marriage derives from a place beyond the law’s reach. Important as the child-centered vision of marriage is, Idaho’s consent-based marriage regime does not require heterosexual couples to accept or follow this norm….
Second, Idaho does not condition marriage licenses or marital benefits on heterosexual couples’ ability or desire to have children. No heterosexual couple would be denied the right to marry for failure to demonstrate the intent to procreate…
Third, Idaho does not withhold marriage licenses from heterosexual couples who might be, or are, non-optimal parents. Under Idaho law, everyone from multiple divorcees, “dead-beat dads,” see Zablocki, 434 U.S. 374, to prison inmates, see Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78 (1987), may marry, as long as they marry someone of the opposite sex. …
Finally, and most importantly, the Governor’s child welfare rationales disregard the welfare of children with same-sex parents. It is undisputed that “poverty and social isolation [are] associated with maladjustment [in children], and adequate resources support[] healthy adjustment.” (Lamb Dec., Dkt. 47 ¶ 18.c.) It is also clear that “[m]arriage can yield important benefits for children and families, including state and federal legal protections, economic resources, family stability, and social legitimacy. These benefits are equally advantageous for children and adolescents in families headed by same-sex and different-sex couples.” (Id. ¶ 48.). …. In this most glaring regard, Idaho’s Marriage Laws fail to advance the State’s interest because they withhold legal, financial, and social benefits from the very group they purportedly protect—children.
And finally, she addressed the “religious liberty” question:
Finally, Governor Otter argues that Idaho’s Marriage Laws should be upheld because they serve the related goals of supporting religious liberty, avoiding the potential for religion-centered conflicts, and affirming a prevailing social consensus on marriage. …
The Governor’s argument concerning religious liberty is myopic. No doubt many faiths around the world and in Idaho have longstanding traditions of man-woman marriage rooted in scripture. But not all religions share the view that opposite-sex marriage is a theological imperative. In fact, some of the Plaintiffs actively worship in faiths that recognize and support their unions. (S. Watsen Dec. ¶ 13, Dkt. 51.) To the extent Governor Otter argues that Idaho has a legitimate interest in validating a particular religious view of marriage, that argument blithely disregards the religious liberty of congregations active in Idaho. “By recognizing the right to marry a partner of the same sex, the State allows these groups the freedom to practice their religious beliefs without mandating that other groups must adopt similar practices.” Kitchen v. Herbert, 961 F.Supp.2d 1181, 1214 (D. Utah 2013).
Likewise, a desire to protect or maintain a particular social consensus does not withstand constitutional scrutiny. “A citizen’s constitutional rights can hardly be infringed simply because a majority of the people choose that it be.” Lucas v. Forty-Fourth Gen. Assembly of Colo., 377 U.S. 713, 736-37 (1964). … Rather, the dispositive principle in this case is that “fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.” W. Va. Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 638 (1943). The Supreme Court has endorsed this principle again and again. …
This principle resonates today, as 10 federal courts across the country have in recent months reached similar conclusions on the very issues present in this case. Considering many of the same arguments and much of the same law, each of these courts concluded that state laws prohibiting or refusing to recognize same-sex marriage fail to rationally advance legitimate state interests. This judicial consensus was forged from each court’s independent analysis of Supreme Court cases extending from Loving through Romer, Lawrence, and Windsor. The logic of these precedents virtually compels the conclusion that same-sex and opposite-sex couples deserve equal dignity when they seek the benefits and responsibilities of civil marriage. Because Idaho’s Marriage Laws do not withstand any applicable form of constitutional scrutiny, the Court finds they violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Judge Dale ended with this observation:
The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees of due process and equal protection lie at the core of our constitutional system. While the Supreme Court has not expressly decided the issues of this case, it has over the decades marked the path that leads to today’s decision. “[T]he history of our Constitution . . . is the story of the extension of constitutional rights and protections to people once ignored or excluded.” United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515, 557 (1996). Slow as the march toward equality may seem, it is never in vain.
May 13th, 2014
U.S. Magistrate Judge Candy Dale has ruled Idaho’s ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional.
In her 57-page decision, Dale stated, “Idaho’s Marriage Laws withhold from them a profound and personal choice, one that most can take for granted. By doing so, Idaho’s Marriage Laws deny same-sex couples the economic, practical, emotional, and spiritual benefits of marriage, relegating each couple to a stigmatized, second-class status. Plaintiffs suffer these injuries not because they are unqualified to marry, start a family, or grow old together, but because of who they are and whom they love.”
And Idaho makes… ummm, I have no idea what number this one is.
Update: You can read some choice excerpts from Judge Dale’s smack-down opinion here.
May 13th, 2014
Dean Nelson
Today the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments for and against overturning Judge Arenda L. Wright Allen ruling that Virginia’s gay marriage ban was in violation of the US Constitution (the Olson-Boies case). There were, as expected, protesters on either side.
The anti-gay side made some interesting remarks.
Dean Nelson, chairman of the Frederick Douglass Foundation, told the crowd, “Things have gotten so bad that even when you’re watching ESPN on Mother’s Day we have the kisses of homosexuals forced down our throats.”
Sometimes it’s just too easy.
May 13th, 2014
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Virginia Marriage Challenge Goes to the Fourth Circuit: Richmond, VA. In February, a federal judge ruled that Virginia’s ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional in one of two lawsuits filed in Virginia seeking marriage equality for sam-sex couples. The couples in that first case, Bostic v. Schaefer (previously Bostic v. Rainey), were represented by Ted Olson and David Boies, of Prop 8 fame. A second case brought by the ACLU and Lambda Legal, Harris v. Rainey, has been put on hold while the first case goes before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which will hear oral arguments today. While the court will hear the Bostic v. Schaefer case, it has granted the ACLU’s and Lambda Legal’s request to join in oral arguments with Olson and Boies, over the California pair’s objections. Oral arguments are scheduled to begin at 9:30 E.D.T.
Arkansas Supreme Court.
Arkansas Supremes To Consider Marriage Stay Request: Little Rock, AK. Nearly three hundred same-sex couples have managed to get marriage licenses in five Arkansas counties by the close of business yesterday, with more expected to line up today. Those marriages have been taking place in Carroll County (Eureka Springs), Marion County (Yellville), Pulaski County (Little Rock), Saline County (Benton), and Washington County (Fayetteville). Later yesterday, Carroll County stopped issuing licenses after the local prosecutor issued a statement saying, “there was a law left on the books prohibiting a county clerk from issuing a marriage license to persons of the same gender. This law was not addressed by Judge Piazza, and because of this, we advised the county clerk to stop selling marriage licenses to persons of the same gender.”
Meanwhile, lawyers for the state Attorney General’s office requested yesterday that the state Supreme Court issue a stay against Pulaski County Circuit Court Judge Christopher Piazza’s late Friday ruling striking down the state’s same-sex marriage ban as unconstitutional. The Supreme Court set a deadline of noon today C.D.T. for the plaintiffs to respond. The Arkansas Times says, “It is unclear how quickly the Supreme Court will rule. It normally issues opinions on Thursdays, but in extraordinary cases sometimes issues them immediately.”
TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:
From Wilde Side, September 1, 1976, page 21.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
“Cambio de Sexo” Premieres: 1977. Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s death in 1975 brought a new permissiveness in Spanish film-making, and Catalonia-born director Vicente Aranda probed the limits in what was acceptable in a still-conservative society. Cambio de Sexo (“Change of Sex”), which debuted on May 13, 1977 to critical acclaim, starred Victoria Abril as José Maria, a shy, introverted teenager living in the outskirts of Barcelona. Bullied and harassed by his schoolmates, José is expelled from his school. His father tries everything to “cure” him of his effeminate mannerisms, including, in a pivotal scene, taking him to a strip club in Barcelona. But unbeknownst to his father, one of the acts in the strip club is a pre-operative transgender. The father, clueless to the situation and determined to see his son lose his virginity, insists that José goes home with the stripper. Let’s just say the entire experience is revelatory as José understands that he was actually meant to be a girl. But the movie is more than just a story of the teen’s metamorphosis into a young woman. The transgender theme served as a reflection of the larger social changes which were just beginning to overtake Spain.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Bea Arthur: 1922-2009. After serving thirty months in the Marine Corps as one of the first members of the Women’s Reserve. Her enlistment officer wrote that she was “officious — but probably a good worker — if she had her own way!” That would have described just about every one of the characters she would portray on television. After working on and off Broadway, she landed the breakout part as Maude Findlay on Norman Lear’s groundbreaking sit-com All in the Family. The Maude character was Edith Bunker’s cousin who was the polar opposite of bigoted Archie Bunker. That 1971 episode led to her own spin-off in 1972, Maude. As the theme-song said, she was “uncompromisin’, enterprisin’, anything but tranquilizing.” The series tackled women’s liberation, menopause, drug and alcohol addiction, and spousal abuse. In one memorable two-part episode which aired two months before Roe v Wade, Maude decided to terminate a late-life pregnancy with an abortion. Maude ended in 1978.
After a few other roles in television and the movies, she landed the role of Dorothy Zbornak in the hit series Golden Girls. Between Maude and Golden Girls, Arthur became an LGBT icon. The Advocate in 1999 asked her why she thought that was. “You play strong, honest people,” she said, “and gays buy it because it’s real and it’s slightly anti-establishment.” She was certainly real. Also she was on Broadway in Mame, so there’s that, too. Arthur died in 2009, after a battle with cancer. Three days later, the lights of Broadway dimmed for one minute in her honor.
Armistead Maupin: 1944. He was born in Washington, D.C. but grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. He began working as a newspaper reported in Charleston, S.C. before he moved to San Francisco in 1971 to work for the Associated Press, In 1976, he released the first installment of his Tales of the City
Alan Ball: 1957. Screenwriter, director, actor and producer Alan Ball was born in Atlanta George and graduated from Florida State University with a degree in theater arts. He has written two films, American Beauty
Ball not only has to contend with critics, but in 2011 he and his partner, actor Peter Macdissi, got tangled in a legal tussle with their neighbor, Quentin Tarantino, who filed a lawsuit claiming that the pair’s collection of exotic birds constantly emit “blood-curdling” and “pterodactyl-like screams” each day which have disrupted Tarantino’s work as a writer. That lawsuit between neighbors was quietly buried six feet under.
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?
May 12th, 2014
Among the piles of press that surrounded the selection of Michael Sam during this past weekend’s NFL draft selection, I found this little gem regarding the decision of ESPN to air Sam’s reaction and his kiss with his boyfriend. (Sun Times)
When [ESPN Producer Seth] Markman’s wife explained to their 7-year-old son that dad was busy working on something that was controversial, Sam’s kiss on TV, the boy replied: “Is it because they’re not married?”
May 12th, 2014
Austrian bearded drag queen Conchita Wurst won the 59th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday with a James Bond-inspired entry that had unleashed a wave of protests in eastern Europe before the competition.
The power ballad, “Rise Like a Phoenix,” helped Wurst — the alter ego of 25-year-old Thomas Neuwirth — secure Austria’s second victory in the competition with 290 points. The country also won in 1966.
“This is dedicated to everyone who believes in a future of peace and freedom,” a tearful Wurst said as she accepted the trophy from Denmark’s Emmelie de Forrest, who won the contest last year. “We are unity.”
Russia has been a participant in the European Song Contest since 2000. They won in 2008, which gave then the right to host it in 2009. But today, one Russian pol is spitting bullets over Wurst’s win:
Wurst’s victory prompted an outpouring of anti-gay anger from Russian politicians and stars with deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin tweeting that the result “showed supporters of European integration their European future: a bearded girl”.
Nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky told Rossiya-1 state television: “There’s no limit to our outrage. It’s the end of Europe. It has turned wild. They don’t have men and women any more. They have ‘it’.
“Fifty years ago the Soviet army occupied Austria. We made a mistake in freeing Austria. We should have stayed.”
Russian reaction wasn’t universally negative though:
Flamboyant pop star Filipp Kirkorov, producer of Russia’s Eurovision entry this year, even suggested Wurst’s victory should make Russians reconsider homophobic views.
“Maybe this is a kind of protest against some of our views in Russia. Maybe we should have a think. Maybe we shouldn’t have such a categorical attitude to people of different sexual orientations,” he told Rossiya-1 television.
“In a way it probably is a challenge from Europe to us, but let’s respect the winner. People don’t judge a winner.”
May 12th, 2014
Last Saturday, the court house in Eureka Springs was the only place in Arkansas where same-sex couples could marry following Friday’s decision by an Arkansas judge declaring the state’s ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. This morning, marriages are taking place at the Pulaski County Court House in Little Rock:
The first Little Rock license went to Shelly Butler, 51, and Susan Barr, 48, of Dallas, who have been together since they met at Southern Arkansas University in 1985.
“When we heard the news in Arkansas, we had to jump in the car to get here,” Butler said shortly before receiving the license. “I’m just excited to marry my best friend of almost 30 years, finally.”
The second couple to receive a license was Thomas Baldwin, 37, and Devin Rudeseal, 24. The Bryant couple quickly married in the courthouse, and Rudeseal planned to take a final at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock later Monday morning.
Most counties in Arkansas will not be issuing licenses, relying on legal guidance that — if the counties were not defendants in the case (only six were) — and absent a direct order to cease discriminatory practices, the state ban remains in place in those counties. At least one county that IS a defendant — Lonoke — apparently has announced it will not issue licenses.
Washington County, one of the defendants, also began issuing licenses to same-sex couples. Justice of the Peace Eva Madison posted a Facebook photo after she signed the first such license in Washington County.
Washington County’s seat is in Fayetteville, in the northwest corner of the state and not far from Eureka Springs. It’s the state’s third largest city and home to the University of Arkansas. Conversely, Benton County (Bentonville), which is immediately to the north of Washington County and is home to Wal-Mart’s headquarters, has announced that it would not be issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The same goes for Faulkner County (Conway), just north of Little Rock.
May 12th, 2014
TODAY’S AGENDA:
More Marriages In Arkansas: Some Counties, Not Others. Last Friday, Pulaski County (Little Rock) Circuit Court Judge Christopher Piazza ruled that same-sex marriage ban violates the U.S. Constitution. His decision came late in the day, after the state’s county clerk offices had already closed for the weekend — except for Carroll County in the northwest corner of the state, which is the only county to have Saturday hours, perhaps because Eureka Springs, the county seat, is a very popular wedding destination for that part of the country. Anyway, since Judge Piazza didn’t issue a stay to accompany his ruling, fifteen same-sex couples managed to get hitched before the office closed at 1:00 p.m. Saturday afternoon.
The state’s Attorney General’s announced that it plans to appeal and ask for a stay, which could come at any time in the next few days, but it hasn’t happened yet (as of this writing, which is midnight Central Time Monday morning). On Saturday, county clerks held a conference call with the Association of Arkansas Counties to try to figure out what to do when their offices open this morning. You can read the details of that conference call here. But the upshot is that when clerks’ offices open across the state, some will issue licenses, some will refuse to do so because they weren’t named defendants in the lawsuit, some will blame the software for not being ready to process licenses for same-sex couples or the lack of updated forms (although they somehow managed to work that out in Eureka Springs), and some might drag out typewriters and do it by hand. Who knows? It’s anybody’s guess.
TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:
From the Columbia Daily Spectator, May 9, 1967, page 3.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
Time Magazine Reports on the First Gay Students Group: 1967. “Equal rights” was a common catchphrase on college campuses in 1967 as students across the country became politically engaged in issues of racial equality and women’s rights. Time magazine reported on another group that had formed to protest discrimination and injustice when Columbia University recognized the Student Homophile League, making the campus the first major university in the country to offer recognition to a gay students group. Getting the group officially recognized was a challenge; in 1967, no gay or lesbians students felt that it was safe to come out:
The University Committee on Student Organizations at first denied the league recognition, since it refused to name its organizers. The dozen interested students then shrewdly enlisted eight officers of other campus organizations, all presumably heterosexual, to sign as sponsors, under a university rule that their names need not be made public. The committee then decided that it had no legal reason not to grant the group official status.
While declining to identify himself or other members by name (“We would be losing jobs for the rest of our lives”), the league’s chairman insists the group is educational, not social, and “plans no mixers with Harvard.” So far, Columbia students seem little interested in joining. Shrugged Sophomore Elliot Stern: “As long as they don’t bother the rest of us, it’s O.K.” The league’s biggest problem will probably be its self-imposed secrecy. As some students asked: How do you treat them equally when you don’t know who they are?
[Source: “Students: Equality for your fellow man.” Time (May 12, 1967). Available online with subscription here.]
California Decriminalizes Homosexuality: 1975. Efforts to repeal California’s Sodomy law began in 1969 when San Francisco Assemblyman Willie Brown introduced what became known as the Brown Bill into the lower House. He reintroduced the bill every year until its passage in 1975. That year, the bill advanced through the House only to run into trouble in the Senate. The vote stood at a 20-20 tie when Senate Majority Leader George Moscone (who later became mayor of San Francisco) locked the chamber’s doors until Lt. Gov. Mervyn Dymallyin could fly in from Denver to deliver the tie-breaking vote. Gov. Jerry Brown signed the bill into law when it finally reached his desk.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
80 YEARS AGO: Bruce Voeller: 1934-1994. Where to begin? He was a tireless gay rights advocate who co-founded the National Gay Task Force in 1973 and served as its director until 1978. He was a talented biologist, having studied biochemistry, developmental biology and genetics. That put him on the front lines as a researcher for a new disease that others started calling Gay-Related Immune Disorder (GRID), a name that he challenged for its medical inaccuracy. It is Voeller who is credited for giving the new disease the more accurate name of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).
Voeller had married Dr. Kytja Scott Voeller, whom he met in grad school. Together they had three children. He came out in 1964 when he was 29, and the resulting divorce was messy. Voeller had to fight all the way up to the Supreme Court to gain child visitation rights. By then, he was heavily involved in the resurgent gay rights movement. He was among the founders of the Gay Activists Alliance in 1969 and served as its third president. But where the GAA was more interested in street activism, he sought to bring gay activism into the mainstream of political discourse. In 1973, he left the GAA and founded NGTF (later, NGLTF), and built it into a nation advocacy organization. As NGTF director, he attended a historic White House meeting in 1977 with thirteen other LGBT advocates to raise awareness about discriminatory laws and policies.
In 1978, Voeller left he NGTF and established the Mariposa Education and Research Foundation to conduct human sexuality research. Among his concerns was that books, papers, and other ephemera on the LGBT movement was easily lost or destroyed, posing a danger that LGBT history itself would vanish. So he created a network of volunteers to search for and gather as much as possible, and that extensive collection was donated to the Cornell University Library in 1988. With the advent of AIDS, Voeller returned to his biologist’s roots and the Foundation shifted its focus to reducing the risks of sexually transmitted diseases. His 1989 study warned that mineral oil lubricants caused rapid deterioration of latex condoms, leading to a shift to water-based sexual lubricants. He pioneered the use of nonoxynol-9 as a spermacide and topical virus-transmission preventative,, and he studied the reliability of various brands of condoms in disease prevention. The results of that study even appeared in Consumer Reports, making the information widely available and accessible to the public. He was conducting studies on viral leakage for the (then) recently approved “female” condom when he passed away in 1994 of an AIDS-related illness.
Jared Polis: 1975. Polis earned his fortune when he founded American Information Systems, an Internet access, web hosting and application service provider. He also co-founded an online greeting card company and an online florist. After selling those companies during the height of the dot-com bubble, he used his wealth to found the Jared Polis Foundation in 2000, with the mission to “create opportunities for success through education and access to technology.” The foundation has refurbished and donated more than 3,500 computers each year to schools and other non-profits. He also founded two charter schools for at-risk students, and another school for older immigrant youths. He founded another school in Denver to serve youth who are homeless or living in unstable conditions.
When he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives for Colorado’s Second District in 2008, he was the first openly gay man to be elected as a freshmen (all the other gay Representatives came out while already in office). He is also the first openly gay parent in Congress. As Congressman, he has been a tireless advocate for LGBT equality. In 2011, he launched the Fearless Campaign, dedicated to “empowering our political leaders with the moral courage it takes to vote fearlessly on the politically charged issues of today, regardless of the perceived political risk.”
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?
May 12th, 2014
Michael Sam celebrated his getting drafted by the St. Louis Rams by smashing some cake into his boyfriend’s face before going in for another kiss.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoKeP-n6z8gMay 11th, 2014
Mom and me.
Call Your Mother. Today is Mother’s Day. Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Darwin, NT; Kraków, Poland; New Hope, PA; São Paulo, Brazil; Tallahassee, FL.
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Buffalo, NY; Des Moines, IA.
Other Events This Weekend: Purple Party, Dallas, TX; BeachBear Weekend, Ft. Lauderdale, FL; Houston Splash, Houston, TX; Big Horn Rodeo, Las Vegas, NV; Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Miami, FL.
TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:
From Parleé (a gay bar guide for Long Island and New York City), July 1975, page 22.
“Daisy’s don’t tell, and neither do we”: From an era when discretion was an important selling point.
THIS MONTH IN HISTORY:
Frank Kameny Declares “We Are the True Authorities on Homosexuality”: 1965. That was a bold declaration to make in 1965. It’s almost impossible to overstate how much deference that was accorded the mental health profession a half century ago. Psychiatrists — by virtue of their degrees, university affiliations, books and lectures — were the recognized authorities on everything touching on the human condition. When psychiatrists declared someone mentally sick, they more or less had the last word on the matter. Many — though certainly not all — gay activists went along with those pronouncements. If a doctor said someone was sick, they reasoned, then who else had the standing and the credentials to say differently?
This led to some strange arguments in the pages of ONE magazine, the Mattachine Review, and the Daughters of Bilitis’ newsletter, The Ladder. Those who deferred to the psychiatric profession’s belief that gay people were sick developed arguments for why gays and lesbians deserved equal rights (or at the very least, “understanding”) either despite or because of their sickness. Others argued that gay people weren’t sick — and they, too, could count on a number of psychiatrists and psychologists who agreed with them — and they called for even more psychological research which, they reasoned, would prove them right and somehow open the door to “understanding” on the part of the public. While the two sides disagreed over whether gay people were sick, they both agreed on one thing: that psychiatry would ultimately settle the question, and when it did everyone else would fall in line. Early gay activists were so beholden to that belief that almost all of the early gay rights organizations included the sponsorship or promotion of research as part of their mission statements.
In 1965, gay rights pioneer Frank Kameny (see May 21) upended the very foundation on which those arguments rested. In an essay published in Daughters of Bilitis’s The Ladder, Kameny went to the heart of the mental health profession’s exalted reputation by declaring that their pronouncements were not based on science, but prejudice. His declaration of independence from the psychiatric profession was part of a broader shift taking place that year in the gay rights movement, when activists shifted from putting forward “reasonable” discussions on whether gay people deserved equal treatment to staging public protests demanding that America treat gay Americans as full citizens (see Apr 17, Apr 18, Apr 25, May 29, Jun 26, Jul 4, Jul 31, Aug 28, Sep 19,). Kameny’s declaration so clearly crystallizes the debate as it appeared in 1965 that I decided to present it here in full:
Does Research Into Homosexuality Matter?
By Dr. Franklin E. Kameny.
(Franklin E. Kameny, Ph.D., is a physicist and astronomer in private industry. He is founder and former president, and is currently on the Executive Board, of the Mattachine Society of Washington which recently adopted this resolution: “The Mattachine Society of Washington takes the position that in the absence of valid evidence to the contrary, homosexuality is not a sickness, disturbance, or pathology in any sense, but is merely a preference, orientation, or propensity, on par with, and not different in kind from, heterosexuality.”)
PART I: ON SOME ASPECTS OF MILITANCY IN THE HOMOPHILE MOVEMENT
As little as two years ago, “militancy” was something of a dirty word in the homophile movement. Long inculcation in attitudes of cringing meekness had taken its toll among homosexuals, combined with a feeling, still widely prevalent, that reasonable, logical, gentlemanly and ladylike persuation (sic) and presentation of reasonable, logical argument, could not fail to win over those who would deny us our equality and our right to be homosexual and to live as homosexuals without disadvantage. There was — and is — a feeling that given any fair chance to undertake dialogue with such opponents, we would be able to impress them with the basic rightness of our position and bring them into agreement with it.
Unfortunately, by this approach alone we will not prevail, because most people operate not rationally but emotionally on questions of sex in general, and homosexuality in particular, just as they do on racial questions.
It is thus necessary for us to adopt a strongly positive approach, a militant one. It is for us to take the initiative, the offensive — not the defensive — in matters affecting us. It is time that we began to move from endless talk (directed, in the last analysis, by us to ourselves) to firm, vigorous action.
We ARE right; those who oppose us are both factually and morally wrong. We are the true authorities on homosexuality, whether we are accepted as such or not. We must DEMAND our rights, boldly, not beg cringingly for mere privileges, and not be satisfied with crumbs tossed to us. I have been deeply gratified to note in the past year a growing spirit of militancy on the part of an increasing number of members of the homophile organizations.
We would be foolish not to recognize what the Negro rights movement has shown us is sadly so: that mere persuasion, information and education are not going to gain for us in actual practice the rights and equality which are ours in principle.
I have been pleased to see a trend away from weak, wishy-washy compromise positions in our movement, toward ones of strong affirmation of what it is that we believe and want, followed by a drive to take whatever action is needed to obtain our rights. I do not of course favor uncontrolled, unplanned, ill-considered lashing out. Due and careful consideration must always be given to tact and tactics. Within the bounds dictated by such considerations, however, we must be prepared to take firm, positive, definite action — action initiated by us, not merely responding to the initiatives of others. The homophile movement increasingly is adopting this philosophy.
PART II: ON THE HOMOPHILE MOVEMENT AND HOMOSEXUALITY AS A DISEASE
Among the topics to which we are led by the preceding, is that of our approach to the question of homosexuality as a sickness. This is one of the most important issues — probably THE most important single issue — facing our movement today.
It is a question upon which, by rationalization after rationalization, members of the homophile movement have backed away from taking a position. It is a question upon which a clear, definite, unambiguous, no-nonsense stand MUST be taken, must be taken promptly, and must be taken by US, publicly.
There are some who say that WE will not be accepted as authorities, regardless of what we say, or how we say it, or what evidence we present, and that therefore we must take no positions on these matters but must wait for the accepted authorities to come around to our position — if they do. This makes of us a mere passive battlefield across which conflicting “authorities” fight their intellectual battles. I, for one, am not prepared to play a passive role in such controversy, letting others dispose of me as they see fit. I intend to play an active role in the determination of my own fate.
As a scientist by training and by profession, I feel fully and formally competent to judge good and poor scientific work when I see them — and fully qualified to express my conclusions.
In looking over the literature alleging homosexuality as a sickness, one sees, first, abysmally poor sampling technique, leading to clearly biased, atypical samplings, which are then taken as representative of the entire homosexual community. Obviously all persons coming to a psychiatrist’s office are going to have problems of one sort or another, are going to be disturbed or maladjusted or pathological, in some sense, or they wouldn’t be there. To characterize ALL homosexuals as sick, on the basis of such a sampling — as Bieber, Bergler, and others have done — is clearly invalid, and is bad science.
Dr. Daniel Cappon, in his recent appalling book TOWARD AN UNDERSTANDING OF HOMOSEXUALITY (perhaps better named “Away from an Understanding of Homosexuality” or “Toward a Misunderstanding of Homosexuality”) acknowledges at least this non-representative sampling and actually shows some faint signs of suggesting that perhaps there are two classes of homosexuals: patients and non-patients.
Notwithstanding Dr. Bieber’s cavalier dismissal of it, Dr. Evelyn Hooker’s work involving non-clinical homosexual subjects, with its very careful sampling technique and its conclusions of non-sickness, still remains convincing.
One sees secondly, in the literature alleging homosexuality as sickness, a violation of basic laws of logic by the drawing of “conclusions” which were inserted as assumptions. Dr. Bieber does this (and by implication, attributes it to his entire profession) in his statement: “All psychoanalytic theories ASSUME that homosexuality is psychopathological.” Dr. Cappon says: “…homosexuality, BY DEFINITION, is not healthy…” (Emphasis supplied in both quotations.) Obviously, if one assumes homosexuality as pathological or defines it as unhealthy at the outset, one will discover that homosexuals are sick. The “conclusions,” however, can carry no weight outside the self-contained, rather useless logical structure erected upon the assumption or definition. The assumptions must be proven; the definitions must be validated. They have not been.
I am able to speak as a professional scientist when I say that we search in vain for any evidence, acceptable under proper scientific standards, that homosexuality is a sickness or disorder, or that homosexuals per se are disturbed.
On the basis of a disguised moralistic judgement (sometimes not at all disguised, as with Dr. Cappon), mixed both with a teleological approach to sexual matters, and with a classification as sickness of any departure from conformity to the statistical societal norms (on this basis, Dr. Cappon seems to come close to defining left-handedness as sickness), homosexuality has been DEFINED as pathological. We have been defined into sickness.
In logic, the entire burden of proof in this matter rests with those who would call us sick. We do not have to prove health. They have not shouldered their burden or proof of sickness; therefore we are not sick. These are things which it is our duty to point out, and, having pointed them out, to take strong public positions on them.
Then there are those who say that the label appended really doesn’t matter. Let the homosexual be defined as sick, they say, but just get it granted that even if sick, he can function effectively and should therefore be judged only on his individual record and qualifications, and it is that state of being-judged-as-an-individual, regardless of labels, toward which we must work. This unfortunately is a woefully impractical, unrealistic, ivory-tower approach. Homosexuality is looked upon as a psychological question. If it is sickness or disease or illness, it becomes then a mental illness. Properly or improperly, people ARE prejudiced against the mentally ill. Rightly or wrongly, employers will NOT hire them. Morally or immorally, the mentally ill are NOT judged as individuals, but are made pariahs. If we allow the label of sickness to stand, we will then have two battles to fight — that to combat prejudice against homosexuals per se, and that to combat prejudice against the mentally ill — and we will be pariahs and outcasts twice over. One such battle is quite enough.
Finally, as a matter of adopting a unified, coherent, self-consistent philosophy, we MUST argue from a positive position of health. We cannot declare our equality and ask for acceptance and for judgement as whole persons, from a position of sickness. More than that, we argue for our RIGHT to be homosexuals, to remain homosexuals, and to live as homosexuals. In my view and by my moral standards, such an argument is immoral if we are not prepared, at the same time, to take a positive position that homosexuality is not pathological. If homosexuality indeed IS a sickness, then we have no right to remain homosexuals; we have the moral obligation to seek cure, and that only.
When we tell the various arms of organized society that part of our basic position is the request for acceptance as homosexuals, freed from constant pressure for conversion to heterosexuality, we are met with the argument of sickness. This occurred recently at a meeting between Washington Mattachine members and eleven representatives of all three major faiths, at which we asked for such acceptance of the homosexual into the religious community. Our entire position, our entire raison d’etre for such meetings, falls to the ground unless we are prepared to couple our requests with an affirmative, definitive assertion of health — as we in Washington did in that instance.
I feel, therefore, that in the light of fact and logic, the question of sickness is a settled one and will remain so until and unless valid evidence can be brought forth to demonstrate pathology. Further, I feel that for purposes of strategy, we must say this and say it clearly and with no possible room for equivocation or ambiguity.
PART III: ON RESEARCH AND THE HOMOPHILE MOVEMENT
Movements tend to get themselves tied up with certain ideas and concepts, which in time assume the status of revealed and revered truth and cease being subjected to continuing, searching re-examination in the light of changed conditions. As an habitual skeptic, heretic, and iconoclast, I wish here to examine critically if briefly the value and importance to the homophile movement of research into homosexuality, of our commitment to it, and of the role, if any, which such research should play in the movement and in the activities of the homophile organizations.
I recognize that, with the deference granted to science in our culture, it is very respectable and self-reassuring and impressive to call one’s group a research organization or to say that the group’s purpose is research. However, at the outset one fact should be faced directly. For all their pledges of allegiance to the value of research, for all their designation of themselves as research organizations, for all their much-vaunted support and sponsorship of research, NO American homophile organization that I know of has thus far done any effective or meaningful research, has sponsored any research, has supported or participated in any truly significant research. (With the single exception of Dr. Evelyn Hooker’s study, and while I grant that to be a major and important exception, the participation involved nothing more than supplying candidates for experimentation.) The homophile movement’s loss from its failure to contribute to research has been not from that failure, but from the diversion into talking (“maundering” might be a better term) about research — diversion of effort, time, and energy better expended elsewhere.
For purposes of this discussion, we can divide the objectives of relevant research into two loosely delineated classes: research into the origins and causes of homosexuality, and research into collateral aspects of the homosexual and his life and his community.
Almost always, when the homosexual speaks of research on homosexuality, he means the former class in one aspect or another: “What is the nature of homosexuality?” “What are its causes?” “Why am I a homosexual?” “Is homosexuality a sickness?” “Can the homosexual be changed?” Objectionably, “How can homosexuality be prevented?” etc.
A consideration of the rationale behind the homosexual’s interest in such questions will quickly show that they are symptomatic of a thinly-veiled defensive feeling of inferiority, of uncertainty, of inequality, of insecurity — and most important, of lack of comfortable self-acceptance.
I have never heard of a single instance of a heterosexual, whatever problems he may have been facing, inquiring about the nature and origins of heterosexuality, or asking why he was a heterosexual, or considering these matters important, I fail to see why we should make similar inquiry in regard to homosexuality or consider the answers to these questions as being of any great moment to us. The Negro is not engrossed in questions about the origins of his skin color, nor the Jew in questions of the possibility of his conversion to Christianity.
Such questions are of academic, intellectual, scientific interest, but they nor NOT — or ought not to be — burning ones for the homophile movement. Despite oft-made statements to the contrary, there is NO great need for research into homosexuality, and our movement is in no important way dependent upon such research or upon its findings.
If we start out — I do, on the basis presented in Part II above — with the premises (1) that the homosexual and his homosexuality are fully and unqualifiedly on par with, and the equal of, the heterosexual and his heterosexuality; and (2) (since others have raised the question) that homosexuality is not an illness -then all these questions recede into unimportance.
We start off with the fact of the homosexual and his homosexuality and his right to remain as he is, and proceed to do all that is possible to make for him -as a homosexual (similarly, in other contexts, as a Negro and as a Jew) -as happy a life, useful to self and to society, as is possible.
Research in these areas therefore is not, in any fundamental sense, particularly needed or particularly important. There is no driving or compelling urgency for us to concern ourselves with it. Those who do allege sickness have created THEIR need for THEIR research; let THEM do it.
In the collateral areas mentioned, well planned and executed research on carefully chosen projects can be of importance, particularly where it will serve to dispel modern folklore. Evelyn Hooker’s research (referred to above) showing no difference outside their homosexuality itself, in its narrowest, denotive sense, between homosexuals and heterosexuals, is one case in point. A study in the Netherlands by a Dr. Tolsma, which showed that the seduction of young boys by homosexuals had no effect upon their adult sexual orientation, is another. The study now under way by the Mattachine Society of Washington to obtain the first meaningful information on the actual susceptibility of homosexuals to blackmail, will probably be a third.
These are all useful projects. Dr. Hooker’s has turned out to be one of our major bulwarks against the barrage of propaganda currently being loosed against us by the agents of organized psychiatry. (However, as I pointed out above, this is a bulwark not needed, in strict logic.) I shall in fact probably be using the .results of all three of these collateral research projects from time to time in my presentations of our case. But these studies are not of the vital importance which could properly lead many of our homophile groups to characterize themselves as research organizations (only one of these projects actually involved a homophile organization to any significant degree) or to divert into research resources better expended elsewhere.
Research does not play the important role in our movement which much lip-service attributes to it. It plays a very useful and occasionally valuable supporting role, but not more than that.
More important than the preceding, however, is the matter of this emphasis upon research, in terms of the evolution of our movement. In the earlier days of the modern homophile movement, allegiance to the alleged importance of research was reasonable. As the philosophy of the movement has formed, crystallized, and matured, and more important, as our society itself has changed — and it has changed enormously in the past fifteen years and even in the past two — the directions and emphases in our movement have changed too. As indicated in Part I of this article, the mainstream has shifted toward a more activist mode of operation.
Continued placing of primary or strong emphasis within our movement upon research w1ll only result in the movement’s loss of the lead which it is taking in the shaping, formation, and formulation of society’s attitudes and policies toward homosexuality and the homosexual.
Thus, while as a scientist I w1ll never derogate the value of research for its own sake in order to provide additional knowledge, as an active member of the homophile movement my position must be quite different. It is time for us to move away from the comfortingly detached respectability of research into the often less pleasant rough-and-tumble of political and social activism.
[Source: Franklin E. Kameny. “Does Research Into Homosexuality Matter?” The Ladder 9, no. 8 (May 1965): 14-20.]
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Valentino: 1932. The Italian designer set the fashion bar in the 1960s, when he became a favorite designer for such celebrities and taste-makers as Elizabeth Taylor, Sophia Loren, Jane Fonda, Audrey Hepburn, Cate Blanchett, and Princess Margaret, many of whom were also his personal friends. Jackie Kennedy wore Valentino when she married Aristotle Onassis in 1968, and in a testament to his enduring style, he was the most-worn designer at the 2007 Oscars. It’s likely he would have repeated that achievement in 2008 if he hadn’t chosen to retire that year.
Valentino and his partner, Giancarlo Giammetti, have been the ultimate power couple in the fashion world for more than 50 years, with Giammetti serving as his business partner from very nearly the time they first met in 1960. In the documentary film Valentino: The Last Emperor
Fr. Mychal Judge: 1933-2001. He was born Robert Emmett Judge, to recent Irish immigrants in Brooklyn. His father died when he was only six, and young Robert took to shining shoes at Penn Station to help the family make ends meet. His shoe shine stand was near the Church of St. Francis of Assisi, and while the sandal-wearing friars weren’t didn’t make for lucrative customers, they did become his closest friends.
He was particularly attracted to the Friars’ embrace of poverty. “I realized that I didn’t care for material things… I knew then that I wanted to be a friar.” He spent his freshman year at the St. Frances Preparatory School in Brooklyn and, at the age of fifteen, he began the process of entering the Order of Friars Minor. He began studying for the priesthood in 1954 at St. Joseph’s Seraphic Seminary. He became a novitiate in 1954, and received his habit and professed his first vows the following year. As was customary when professing first vows as a Franciscan, he was given a new name: Fallon Michael, which he later changed to the Gaelic Mychal. He professed his solemn vows in 1958, and was ordained a priest in 1961.
Fr. Mychal then embarked on a satisfying vocation as a simple Franciscan parish priest, with assignments in New Jersey and New York. In the early 1970s, he later said that he became an alcoholic, although nobody knew it at the time. His drinking never interfered with his work, but by 1978 he decided it was time to get a handle on it and enter Alcoholics Anonymous. He attended an AA group composed mainly of gay people. He acknowledged his own homosexuality, while also remaining true to his vow of celibacy, and joined Dignity, the Catholic LGBT group.
He ministered to the homeless, the hungry, recovering alcoholics, immigrants and others who were alienated either by the church or society. When AIDS came along, he ministered to those who were dying, many of them alone and abandoned. His friend, Fr. Michael Duffy, remembered one patient who no one would go near. “”Mychal said to me, ‘You know, no one touches this man. He must be so lonely.’ So he’d go visit him and hold his hand. He told me that even once he bent over and kissed him on the forehead because he felt so bad that no one would come near him.” He also celebrated funeral Masses for those whose own priests were reluctant to do so.
In 1992, he became a chaplain for the New York Fire Department. Whenever a call went out, Fr. Mychal exchanged his brown Franciscan’s habit for firefighting gear and respond to the call. His final call was on September 11, 2001, when two hijacked airliners crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Mychal’s unit was called to Tower One. He immediately began administering Last Rites to some of the bodies lying the streets, and provided aid and prayers from inside the lobby of the North Tower. When the South Tower collapsed, Fr. Mychal was killed, while still in prayer, by flying debris. Fellow firemen and a civilian carried his body out of the North Tower lobby, took him to St. Peter’s Catholic Church and laid him before the altar. Moments later, the North Tower collapsed. Fr. Mychal is officially listed as victim 0001 of the September 11 attacks.
There is a push to have Fr. Mychal declared a saint, although the New York Archdiocese and the Franciscan leadership have been cool to the idea. Several books have been written about this remarkable man, including Father Mychal Judge: An Authentic American Hero
50 YEARS AGO: Billy Bean: 1964. The former outfielder and left-handed hitter for the Detroit Tigers, Los Angeles Dodgers, and San Diego Padres made headlines in 1999 when he became only the second baseball player to publicly come out, three years after his retirement. It was a long struggle to get there. As a closeted pro athlete, he struggled to juggle his secret and his career. He divorced his wife in 1993 and secretly moved in with his first lover. When his lover died of AIDS, Bean didn’t attend the funeral because he was too frightened that his secret would be revealed. “Why was it so impossible to think that a baseball player could grieve for a man?” he later reflected. “That was a terrible, terrible decision I made.”
His 2003 book, Going the Other Way: Lessons from a Life In and Out of Major League Baseball
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