Box Turtle Bulletin

The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, April 29

TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:

From the Advocate, March 15, 1972, page 35.

 
San Francisco’s Polk Street in the 1960s had been lined with rather conventional bars and restaurants, but as the gay bars began to move in, the businesses which had been there catering to the straight crowd saw their business dry up. In 1970, a restaurant at 1695 Polk remodeled and re-opened as On the Q.T., with a name that gave a nod to the dual life that many gay people were living at the time. It began as a piano bar/cabaret and fine restaurant. It remained there until 1979, when it closed, moved to 1312 Polk Street, re-opened as QT II, and became one of San Francisco’s better known hustler bars.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
The San Francisco Streetcar Murder: 1961. It was late on a Friday night, actually shortly after midnight on Saturday morning, when William P. Hall, 27, was waiting near his San Francisco home for a streetcar on the J line at 19th and Church Street alongside Dolores Park. He was on his way to a dinner date with a theater manager at a North Beach pizza parlor when a car pulled up and three youths, Larry Magee 16, of 116 Tiffany Avenue, Robert Hall, 17 (and no relation to William Hall), and William Castillo, 17, both of 680 Castro Street, piled out. “Are you a queer?”, one of them asked. Hall replied “What if I asked you that question?” And that’s when the trouble really began.

Hall was a well-liked teacher in Marin County, but that night he was accosted by four young men “looking to roll a queer,” as they later admitted. They beat him mercilessly until his was unconscious, took his wallet containing $2.85, and left him lying on the trolley tracks. They then went piled back to the car, driven by Michael Kilkenny, 16, of 710 Castro Street, (and who police later said was the mastermind of the whole idea) and fled the scene. They then went looking in Buena Vista Park for other homosexuals to roll that night, although they later told police they didn’t find any. Car trouble finally ended the spree for the night.

A few minutes after they left Hall on the J line, a streetcar came along and was unable to stop in time before Hall was “ground to death beneath the wheels,” according to one news report. The motorman first told police that he thought he might have seen Hall feebly waving his arms as the streetcar approached, but later he said he wasn’t sure if Hall had moved. Firemen worked for nearly an hour to jack the streetcar up, but Hall died from his injuries before he could be freed.

About a week later, an anonymous tip led police to arrest the four youths, who, according to a San Francisco News-Call-Bulletin report, were quite proud of what they did:

“They said they considered Hall’s death justifiable homicide,” said Inspector Robert McLellan, who with Inspector William Guthrie helped crack the baffling case. “They seem to regard the beating up of whomever they consider sex deviates as a civic duty.”

The officers made clear Hall certainly was not in that unfortunate category.

“This is the first time we ever took anything,” one youth said, admitting the beating they gave Hall was not the first they had administered. “Most of the time, one of these guys comes up and says something suggestive. Then we jump him.” This boy said he knew of as many as 50 youths in his neighborhood who have taken part in similar attacks.

A later news report added:

“I know one fellow,” volunteered Magee, “who has 28 or 29 queers to his credit. They’re all over the city. This is becoming a homosexual town. They’re even coming into the Mission District. You can’t even go out to Dolores Park any more.”

And what qualifies a teenager to diagnose anyone as a sex deviate?

“Well,” Magee replied, “we ask ’em.”

All four teens had juvenile police records which included battery, burglary, disturbing the peace, and auto theft. Kilkenny’s father defending his son as “very studious” and “an upright young man.” But Castillo’s father was more forthcoming. “He’s a bum,” he said, tearfully, while blaming Kilkenny for being a bad influence. On September 8, all four teens were found guilty of first degree murder and robbery, charges which carried automatic life sentences.

[Sources: “‘Queer Hunting’ Among Teenagers.” Mattachine Review 7, no. 6 (June 1961): 6-15.

Del McIntire (pseudonym). “Tangents.” ONE 9, no. 7 (July 1961): 17-19.

“Four Youths Guilty in Streetcar Slaying.” Mattachine Review 7, no. 10 (October 1961): 24.]

“I Am Proud Of My Gay Son”: 1972. Frustration had been growing in New York City’s gay community over the lack of news coverage of the gay rights movement since the Stonewall rebellion nearly three years before. When journalists and politicians gathered for the Fiftieth Annual Inner Circle dinner and comedy roast at the New York Hilton, members of the Gay Activists Alliance saw a perfect opportunity for a protest. But when they entered the ballroom during the intermission to distribute leaflets and briefly take the stage, they were thrown out. A fight ensued in the hallway, where, according to several city officials who witnessed the melee, Michael Maye, president of the city’s Uniformed Firefighters Association, threw twenty-one year old Morty Manford down an escalator, then kicked and stopped him. (Despite the numerous witnesses, Maye was later acquitted of the assault.)

Manford’s parents were outraged by the attack, and in April 29, Jeanne Manford’s letter appeared in the New York Post announcing her unquestioned support for her son:

A Fair Chance

I would like to commend The Post for its coverage last week of the tragic incident that took place at the Inner Circle dinner, when hoodlums who work for our city were allowed to beat up the young men of the Gay Activists Alliance and walk away while our police stood by watching. It might be that these “men” have themselves some deep rooted sexual problems or they would not have become so enraged as to commit violence in beatings.

I am proud of my son, Morty Manford, and the hard work he has been doing in urging homosexuals to accept their feelings and not let the bigots and sick people take advantage of them in the ways they have done in the past and are continuing to do.

I hope that your honest and forthright coverage of the incident has made many of the gays who have been fearful gain courage to come out and join the bandwagon. They are working for a fair chance at employment and dignity and to become a vocal and respected minority. It is a fight for recognition such as all minority groups must wage and needs support from outsiders as well as participants in the movements.

Jeanne Manford

Two months later, Jeanne would walk alongside her son during the New York City Gay Pride Parade, carrying a hand-lettered sign that read, “Parents of Gays United in Support of Our Children.” She later recalled that as they walked along the parade route spectators cheered and “young people were hugging me, kissing me, screaming, asking if I would talk to their parents. Very few of them were out to their parents for fear of rejection.” That when Jeanne and her husband, Jules, got the idea of starting a local support group for parents of gays and lesbians. That support group grew to become the internationally-renowned Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), with 350 chapters more than 200,000 members in the U.S. Jeane Manford passed away in 2013 at the age of 92.

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AFA is “being trampled” in Mississippi

The American Family Association is no longer able to live out the dictates of their Christian faith and conscience. They are being persecuted terribly and it’s ever so sad.

You see, some people in the state are selling goods and services to gay people. Knowingly. And not even giving them a dirty look.

Oh the misery.

It all started when the state legislature passed a bill (much like the Arizona bill that was vetoed) which says that “Government should not substantially burden religious exercise without compelling justification”. And while those words are probably not something I’d disagree with, the unspoken intention of the bill was to block any local ordinances that prohibit discrimination against gay people.

And as there are no such provisions anywhere is Mississippi, it was just the Mississippi Legislature reconfirming to the world that it’s comprised of a bunch of back-woods, redneck, gay-hating yahoos.

Well, this seemed a bit mean to some businesses, so they decided to come up with a way of telling gay customers that they were welcome in their stores. A couple of gay business owners and a “straight, white, Southern, Christian conservative male” Republican up the street designed a sticker that a shopkeeper could put in their window.

Which is all sorts of bullying and silencing of the rights of those who don’t want gay people to be able to buy goods and services. Or something. (AFA’s OneNewsNow)

Buddy Smith, executive vice president of Tupelo-based American Family Association, offers his take on the sticker campaign.

“It’s not really a buying campaign, but it’s a bully campaign,” he says, “and it’s being carried out by radical homosexual activists who intend to trample the freedom of Christians to live according to the dictates of scripture.

“They don’t want to hear that homosexuality is sinful behavior – and they wish to silence Christians and the church who dare to believe this truth.”

And what is one to do about those who break the Scriptural dictates prohibiting selling stuff to gay people?

Smith offers a word of caution for those who do business with facilities posting the decal supporting homosexual activism. “If you do that, you are agreeing with these businesses that Christians no longer have the freedom to live out the dictates of their Christian faith and conscience,” he tells OneNewsNow.

Kidding aside, this is hysterical in pretty much every meaning of the word. Please please, AFA, keep saying stuff like this.

Advocating for rights within the Utah GOP

The former executive director of the Utah Republican Party was at the state party convention this weekend advocating for gay rights. (Salt Lake Tribune)

Along with his wife Megan, DuBois attended Saturday’s state GOP Convention wearing a big Equality Utah sticker. The couple, who were not delegates, were there to mingle with old friends, some of whom did a double take when DuBois urged them to support legislation to ban housing and workplace discrimination against the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. Such bills have received little traction in the conservative, Republican-dominated Utah Legislature.

His message was simple and blunt.

“I’m not scared of gay people,” said DuBois, who left his party post last year. “You can be a really good Republican and support people who don’t fit the same mold as you.”

Let’s hope they’re very persuasive.

UCC sues North Carolina over marriage freedom

A strong component of the organized opposition to marriage equality lies in a desire to impose religious conformity. Although expressed as “religious freedom”, it’s quite the opposite. Opponents are not content with having the state stay out of their religious sacraments and ceremonies; rather, they desire that the state step in and declare that only their religious marriages are respected and those of other positions or faiths be denied.

Now the United Church of Christ is fighting back. (Charlotte Post)

The General Synod of the United Church of Christ filed a lawsuit today in U.S. District Court in Charlotte, contending state law that defines marriage as a union between a man and woman restrict its ministers from performing their religious duties is unconstitutional.

North Carolina prohibits couples of the same gender from obtaining a marriage license and makes it a crime for ministers to officiate a marriage ceremony without determining whether a couple has a license. UCC attorneys say the law limits ministers’ choices, violates the principle of “free exercise of religion” and restricts the freedoms of religion and expressive association guaranteed in the First Amendment. The church seeks a preliminary injunction that would allow ministers the choice of performing a religious marriage.

Although UCC is taking the lead, other individual places of worship have added their name to the lawsuit. (Charlotte Observer)

The Charlotte-area clergy members who have joined them include Allison of Holy Covenant; Robin Tanner, pastor of Piedmont Unitarian Universalist Church; Rabbi Jonathan Freirich of Temple Beth El; Nancy Kraft, pastor of Holy Trinity Lutheran, and Nathan King, senior pastor at Trinity Reformed UCC in Concord.

They are joined by Asheville ministers Joe Hoffman of First Congregational UCC and Mark Ward of the city’s Unitarian Universalist Congregation; along with Nancy Petty, pastor of Pullen Memorial Baptist in Raleigh.

I commend the denomination for this latest step in their long history of supporting the gay community. And I think that this may effectively illustrate for some that their insistence at imposing their own religious creeds into state law impose a burden not just on gay people but also on communities of faith.

The Daily Agenda for Monday, April 28

TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:

From the Advocate, April 14, 1983, page 67.

 
Uncle Charlie’s began in two Manhattan locations in the mid 1970s: Uncle Charlie’s North was at 1049 Lexington Avenue near 75th street in the Upper East Side, and Uncle Charlie’s South was at 581 3rd Avenue at 38th Street in the Murray Hill neighborhood. The north location eventually closed (it is now a specialty stationary story), and South was joined by Uncle Charlie’s restaurant across the street and down a block at 542 3rd Avenue. Uncle Charlie’s Downtown opened on Greenwich Avenue at around 1980. I don’t know when Uncle Charlie’s South or the restaurant closed, but South today is home to a sushi bar, and the restaurant location became a Mediterranean bar and restaurant. Uncle Charlie’s Downtown closed in 1997 and became an Irish pub. Uncle Charlie’s is still around (although I’m not quite sure of its provenance) as a gay piano bar.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Gay Bar Bombed in Greenwich Village: 1990. A home-made pipe bomb exploded shortly after midnight early Saturday morning at Uncle Charlie’s Downtown Bar, a popular video-bar in Greenwich Village. Damage to the building was described as minor, but at least three patrons were injured. Frizzell Green, said he was in the bar when the blast went off in a trash can, about five or six feet away from him. At first, police investigators told reporters that they didn’t consider the bombing to be bias-related. Gay rights activists disagreed, and organized a march on Saturday evening. Three to five hundred people gathered at Uncle Charlie’s and walked the ten blocks to the Sixth Precinct, blocking traffic and chanting “Hey, hey, ho, ho! Homophobia has got to go!”

The bombing went unsolved for five years, until February 1995 when Federal prosecutors charged El Sayyid A. Nosair with the attack. Nosair, one of the leaders of a fundamentalist Islamic terrorist group, was already serving a prison sentence for assault and possession of an illegal firearm in connection with the murder of radical Jewish Rabbi Meir Kahane. Bizarrely, the jury acquitted him of murder, leaving the judge in December 1991 to sentence Nosair to 7â…“ to 22 years in prison, the maximum allowed by law. So when Federal officials charged him again in 1995 for bombing the gay bar and conspiring to blow up other New York landmarks including the World Trade Center, he was found guilty of seditious conspiracy with other defendants, including the blind sheik, Omar Abdel Rahman, and sentenced to life imprisonment. At last report, Nosair was serving his sentence at the federal Supermax facility in Florence, Colorado.

TODAY’s BIRTHDAY:
Ryan Skipper: 1981-2007. Ryan would be celebrating his thirty-third birthday if Joseph Beardon and William Brown, Jr., hadn’t stabbed him more than 20 times, slit his throat, stole his car, left his body on a dark rural road in Wahneta, Florida, and bragged to friends that they killed him because he was “a faggot” on March 14, 2007. Jurors in Beardon and Brown’s trial were visibly shaken when they saw the autopsy photos. The coroner testified that it was the cut to the throat that killed him. The cut was 3.5 inches deep, tearing through skin, tissue, muscles and, more fatally, an artery. Ryan quickly bled to death within minutes. Bearden and Brown tried to clean the car so they could sell it. But it was too badly soaked with blood to be cleaned and they didn’t have a copy of the car’s title to sell it, so they abandoned it on a dock on Lake Pansy in Winter Haven and set it on fire. The flames only caused minor damage, and investigators were able to retrieve both of their fingerprints from the car.

Prosecutors had sought the death penalty for Bearden, but jurors found him guilty of second-degree murder instead of first-degree murder as charged. He was also found guilty of theft of a motor vehicle, accessory after the fact, tampering with evidence, and dealing in stolen property. He was sentenced to life in prison. A few months later, Brown was found guilty of first degree murder, robbery, arson, and tampering with evidence. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the first degree murder conviction, another life term for the armed robbery with a deadly weapon, fifteen years for arson, and a five for tampering with evidence.

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The Daily Agenda for Sunday, April 27

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Philadelphia, PA (Black Pride); Potsdam, Germany; Tokyo, Japan.

Other Events This Weekend: Rodeo in the Rock, Little Rock, AR; AIDS Walk, Miami, FL; Side By Side International LGBT Film Festival, Moscow, Russia; White Party, Palm Springs, CA.

TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:

From Northwest Gay Review, June, 1974, page 2.

 
According to Outhistory.org:

In the early 1960s, the Golden Horseshoe became Seattle’s first regular-hours bar where men could dance openly with men. In exchange for this “privilege,” the owners had to pay the police $50 per week, plus $15 a night for a cop to monitor the door on Fridays and Saturdays. Police pay-offs were common in this time period, a means of fending off harassment and keeping the bars open. In the late ’60s, a group of bar owners joined forces with the FBI to expose the pay-off system; scores of Seattle police were dismissed and some were sent to prison.

At one time, Seattle’s Pioneer Square neighborhood was the center of gay nightlife before it all moved to Capitol Hill. More recently, the Golden Horseshoe’s former location housed an art gallery.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
“A Closer Union Than That Of Most Marriages”: 1892. Mary Grew was the daughter of the Baptist preacher Henry Grew of Boston, who, after moving to Hartford, co-founded the Hartford Female Seminary and the Hartford Peace Society, which became a part of the larger New England Anti-Slavery Society. The elder Mary followed her father in his abolitionist footsteps. In 1840, she accompanied her father to the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London. But the convention’s most severe debates centered not on slavery, but whether women should be permitted to participate in the conference. The elder Grew sided with the conference organizers who demanded that women be excluded. Mary’s exclusion, which was supported by her own father, opened her eyes to the need to join the cause of women’s suffrage.

Grew dedicated her life to feminism and abolitionism, the latter cause shifting to civil rights for African-Americans following the civil war. Her lifelong companion, Margaret Burleigh, also joined Grew in both causes. They shared a home and bed together until Burleigh’s death in December, 1891. The following April, Grew responded to a sympathy note from fellow suffragist Isabel Howland, herself involved in a relationship with another woman. That may explain Grew’s opening lines in her thank you note:

Your words respecting my beloved friend touch me deeply. Evidently you understood her fine character; & you comprehend & appreciate, as few persons do, the nature of the relation which existed, which exists, between her & myself. Her only surviving niece, Miss Ella Jones, also does. To me it seems to have been a closer union than that of most marriages. We know that there have been other such between two men, & also between two women. And why should there not be. Love is spiritual, only passion is sexual. …

Why do we speak of those who have “gone up higher,” as though they were of the past? They live more really, more fully, than ever before; & they love us with a firmer, tenderer, nobler love. …

And I have the comfort & confident hope that my time on earth is nearing its end; for I am eighty-seven years old. I try to wait patiently. I do not feel wholly separated from her who was so large a part of my life.

[Source: Jonathan Ned Katz. Gay/Lesbian Almanac: A New Documentary (New York: Harper & Row, 1983): 230-231.]

Eisenhower Signs Executive Order Banning Gays from Federal Employment: 1953. By the time Dwight D. Eisenhower began his first term as president, an anti-gay witch hunt had been going on steadily for three years. When Undersecretary of State John Peurifoy, testifying before the US Senate Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Department, revealed that 91 employees “in the shady category” had resigned since 1947 (see Feb 28). Republican Senators took that admission to allege that President Harry Truman’s administration’s employment of “sexual deviants with police records” was recklessly endangering the country’s national security. The Republican Party’s national chairman sent a warning to 7,000 party members that, “Perhaps as dangerous as the actual Communists are the sexual perverts who have infiltrated our government in recent years.” (See Apr 18).

So when Eisenhower took office, he was keen to demonstrate that he wouldn’t be soft on the pansies. Three months after taking office, he signed Executive Order 10450 mandating that all federal employees who were determined to be guilty of “sexual perversion,” among other offenses, be fired. As The Los Angeles Time described it, the “tough new loyalty-security program (is) designed to rid the government of homosexuals, alcoholics and ‘blabbermouths,’ as well as employees deemed subversive and disloyal. The Executive Order deemed all of those categories “security risks,” regardless of whether they were actually disloyal or not. It didn’t matter how low or innocuous their position was; their mere presence in a government office was deemed a threat. ONE magazine, the first national gay magazine in the U.S., worried about the order’s far-reaching consequences:

Every item in the new standards can be used to hound and harry not only every homosexual in government and in basic industry, but all his friends, acquaintances, and associates, be they homosexual, homosexually inclined, bi-sexual, or heterosexual. Further, every name breathed as fact or as rumor, whether they be National Security employees or not, goes into the National Security files for cross-referencing to Armed Services Files and the local records of the Communities in which they live, towards another day of total mobilization, or a National Registration Act, whichever is first.

For the homosexual, to be loyal is not enough. The homosexual is required to be 100% anti-homosexual as well. He must agree, by taking a loyalty oath, to subvert the Constitution of the United States (which is not his to subvert) and testify against himself. Then, as a homosexual, he must testify against his own decency and integrity thereby making possible acts of aggression against every person he has ever known. Then, having destroyed himself as a person not only to the community but to his own conscience, he is to be tossed aside as a basic security risk by one or all of the five standards of the Security Program.

The homosexual’s life is no longer a private matter to himself. It has become political by Presidential order.

More than 640 federal employees would lose their job because of allegations of homosexuality over the next year and a half. Unknown numbers of others resigned quietly. State and local governments and government contractors followed suit, tossing countless more innocent Americans out of their jobs.

Unintended consequences are funny things though. In 1957, a young astronomer by the name of Dr. Franklin Kameny was fired from the Army Map service because of his homosexuality (see Dec 20). After all of his court appeals were denied, he founded the Washington, D.C. Mattachine Society. In 1965, Kameny and Daughters of Billitis organizer Barbara Gittings (see Jul 31) organized demonstrations in front of the White House (see Apr 17, May 29), the Civil Service Commission (see Jun 26), Philadelphia’s Independence Hall (see Jul 4), and the Pentagon (see Jul 31), all to demand an end to the federal employment ban. This demand remained a key component of the whole gay rights movement from the 1950’s through the 1970’s.

The Civil Service ban on gays and lesbians would continue for the next two decades. In 1973, a federal judge ruled that a person’s sexual orientation alone had no bearing on an individual’s ability to perform his or her job, and it could not be the sole reason for termination from federal employment. But even with that ruling, the U.S. Civil Service Commission held out until 1975 before finally notifying Kameny that they had changed their policies and were now allowing gay people to work in federal jobs (see Jul 3).

[Additional source: Anonymous (“R. Noone”) “You are a public enemy.” ONE 1, no. 5 (May 1953): 5-7.]

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).

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The Daily Agenda for Saturday, April 26

The mighty Rio Grande

 
I’ve been absent since a week ago Tuesday, on vacation to visit my inlaws, Chris’s parents, in Abilene, Texas. When we travel to Abilene from Tucson, we generally avoid the Interstates as much as possible, preferring to travel the back roads and more scenic drives. This time, our route took us through Alamogordo, Ruidoso and Roswell, New Mexico, and then through Brownsfield, Post, Snyder and Sweetwater, Texas before picking up I-20 for the last short leg to Abilene. I don’t know, I just find this kind of traveling far more relaxing and interesting than the mind-numbing conformity of the Interstates.

Another advantage (and disadvantage) of traveling that way is the spotty cellular and Wi-Fi coverage along those routes. Which means that much of the trip was blessedly free of Facebooking, Tweeting, emailing, and blogging. And it was also irritatingly void of those things at the same time. That online disconnect continued when we arrived at Chris’s parents house because their broadband internet is wired directly to their lone desktop computer and they see no need for Wi-Fi. Cell coverage was fine, but by then I was actually beginning to enjoy the disconnect. Not that we were completely disconnected — we still had CNN on TV to keep us informed on all of the late breaking developments. (The plane is still missing! The ferry is still sinking!) But Chris’s parents had just screened in their back porch, and it was just more enjoyable to hang out there with the parents and Chris’s brother, drink a few beers, crack a few jokes at each other’s expense, and play a few rounds of cards.

We stayed through the weekend and left Monday morning for our own little adventure to west Texas. San Angelo, Rankin, and Chris’s hometown of Ft. Stockton, and then down to Marathon, Alpine, and Marfa, where we holed up at the beautiful and historic El Paisano Hotel. That’s the hotel James Dean, Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor stayed in while filming Giant. I missed grabbing the James Dean room by mere minutes. Oh well. Our room overlooking the courtyard was great, and the food and drinks at the bar were a welcome diversion. Good thing, too, because the Internet there was all caterwobbly, blazing for about two minutes then dead for six, then awesome for about a minute and a half and so on. So my disconnect continued, but by then I didn’t care. The next day, we took as spin back through Alpine, Lajitas, and Presidio, to take in the beautiful Big Bend country, Elena Canyon, and the Rio Grande valley, then back up through Marfa to Ft. Davis to walk around the grounds of the historic fort.

The courtyard at El Paisano. Our room is center right, above the fluttering Texas flag.

 
But our real adventure began late Tuesday night, back in Marfa. I left the hotel to go a few blocks to a convenience store to pick up some snacks for Wednesday’s eight hour drive back to Tucson. Got the stuff, got in the car, reversed out of the space, went out of the parking lot, turned right onto the highway, and that’s when the transmission promptly blew up. On a three year old Ford with only 55,000 miles on it. No forward, no reverse. Just a terrible noise like rocks in a tin can and a vaguely burning smell. Shit. Fuck. All that and more. I pushed the car to the side of the road, screamed and cussed some more like a crazy person, trudged back to the hotel, and told Chris what happened. I called Ford on the phone. They arranged for a tow truck to meet us Wednesday morning for the 89-mile tow back to the nearest Ford dealership in Ft. Stockton.

What a Ford transmission looks like after only 55,000 miles. I once had a 1974 AMC Hornet that was more reliable than this.

 
Mike from Barbee’s Wrecker Service met us that morning, and his cheerfulness and chattiness kept our minds off the drama (and off the broken air-conditioner in his cab) for the two hour tow. He told us about his wife, his kids, his speeding tickets, his 73 guns, his octogenarian neighbor rancher who called and wants Mike to help him break a horse, his mother-in-law’s golf cart which he — okay she doesn’t know this yet, so don’t say anything — which he souped up with a Honda engine and off-road tires. Right after he finished his modifications, he took it out for a spin and promptly got a speeding ticket. Mike knows a shortcut, the Old Alpine Highway. Have you heard of it? Of course, says Chris, we used to go parking on that road. Mike veers off onto a washboard gravel road, and Chris’s memories come flooding back. And now the two of them are swapping Ft. Stockton tales, about tornados, Rooney park, rollover accidents, the abandoned onion barns and stockyard by the railroad tracks. And there I am, sandwiched between them watching the dilapidated plastic dashboard bounce about three inches whenever the truck hits a mild rut.

We get to Ft. Stockton, to a rather small dealership with, I don’t know, maybe five guys total working there. Bad news, says the Stockton Ford guy. They’re a really small operation and it’ll probably take about three weeks to fix the car. And guess what? Ft. Stockton’s so small it doesn’t have a rental car agency. But I gotta be back in Tucson for work now. I can’t sit around for three weeks waiting for a car to be fixed. So I call up Ford on the phone again and explain the situation. Their solution? They want to tow me to the next closest Ford dealership, which is 73 miles away in Kermit. “Where’s Kermit?” I ask. Stockton Ford guy rolls his eyes and mouths to me, “They’re smaller than Ft. Stockton.” Obviously, that won’t work. What about Odessa? Ford on the phone says their policy is to only tow to the nearest Ford dealership, and that’s Kermit, only 73 miles away. Odessa is 87 miles. It’s Kermit or nothing, Ford on the phone insists. That stupid, I say. There’s no point in going to Kermit when they can’t do anything more than Ft. Stockton. Finally Ford on the phone works it out where they pay for 73 of the miles to Odessa if I pick up the remaining 14. Whatever. Fine. Two more hours in a hot, dusty tow truck with the ever cheerful Mike keeping our minds off our misery — the old Coleman Hotel fire, his father’s pancreatic cancer, buddies coming back from Iraq, a former co-worker who escaped from the Zetas, what do you think of that Obamacare, you guys been together for eleven years? That’s awesome, man! — and we make it to Odessa, where I can rent a car from Enterprise, say thank you and goodbye to Mike, and begin the journey home seven hours later and a hundred miles further away from where we planned to start off.

We don’t make it to Tucson Wednesday night as planned, obviously. And since we need to make up time, it’s now Interstate all the way. I call in to work and tell them I’ll need another day.  We decide to push on to El Paso that night and get a room there. No doing. All the hotels are full. (Seriously!!! El Paso! I know, right?) Another hour later, we finally get the last room in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Hot, sweaty, hungry, tired, and we’re bitching at each other. There’s no Mike keeping us entertained and distracted anymore. We grab a burrito, shower and go to bed.

We sleep in late the next morning because now we’ve got all day to make a four-hour drive to Tucson so what’s the rush, right? A nice leisurely breakfast, check out, and we’re loading the trunk when Chris points to the front of the car and says, “Tire’s flat.” Damn, sure enough. Luckily, there’s exactly one Enterprise office in Las Cruces. We air up the tire and make it to Enterprise. Unluckily, they already rented out their cars for the day and our tire’s getting very low again. So Enterprise guy directs us to a busy tire shop about a mile away, where tire guy removes two nails, patches up the tire, and sends us on our way about three hours later.

We got back home to Tucson later that evening, almost exactly 24 hours after we originally planned. And now we can look forward to another unplanned trip back to Odessa to return the rental car and pick up our car in another couple of weeks.

So that was how I spent my spring vacation. I’m somewhat sorry I was so out of touch, but not really. Everyone should go on disconnect from time to time. But I’m back now. Anything happen while I was gone?

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Philadelphia, PA (Black Pride); Potsdam, Germany; Tokyo, Japan.

Other Events This Weekend: Hill Country Ride for AIDS, Austin, TX; AIDS Walk, Kansas City, MO; Rodeo in the Rock, Little Rock, AR; AIDS Walk, Miami, FL; Side By Side International LGBT Film Festival, Moscow, Russia; White Party, Palm Springs, CA; Splash, South Padre Island, TX.

TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:

From The Advocate, May 3, 1979, page 23.

 
Mary’s opened in 1972 as a gay bar in Houston’s Montrose area, at around the time Montrose was just beginning to develop its identity as a gayborhood. It quickly established a rather wild reputation: “[T]he bar was known for having it’s own set of rules, one of which made it ‘illegal’ to wear underwear. And newcomers who violated the rule would have their underwear stripped from them and thrown to the rafters, past the trapeze that was normally manned by a naked bartender or patron.” As the years wore on, the bar also became something of a community center: “On a Friday night you could experience your favorite fetish out back, and on Monday you could attend a rally to support AIDS funding.” The bar changed ownership in 2003, and experienced a long, slow decline. It’s iconic outside mural was painted over in 2006, and the bar finally closed in 2009. The building now houses the Blacksmith coffee shop.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
State Department Continues Homosexual Purge: 1950. Two months earlier, Deputy Undersecretary of State John E. Peurifoy revealed in testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee that the State Department had gotten rid of 91 employees accused of being homosexual (see Feb 28). After that news exploded onto newspaper editorial pages across the country (see Mar 23, for example), Peurifoy was appointed ambassador to Greece and Carlisle H. Humelsine took over his post at the State Department. In testimony made public on April 26, 1950, Humelsine told the House Appropriations Committee that the State Department’s purge was continuing, with the number forced out rising to 148 since 1947 and eleven more under investigation.

“There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind and there is no doubt as far as the State Department is concerned, that a homosexual is a security risk,” Humelsine told the panel. “We treat homosexuals as security risks. We are not attempting to run a campaign of going after people because of the fact that they have an illness. I think homosexuality is a type of illness. A homosexual, in my opinion, is just as sick as a person who has a cancer or some other disease. But it is absolutely apparent to us that these people are also security risks and we want them off our rolls. And we are going to get them off our rolls.”

Australian Judge Sentences Nine for Homosexuality: 1950. And The Advertiser was there to record all of the details, including the names and addresses of the eight men who pleaded guilty to various charges of “homosexual offences.” Two were sentenced to twelve months for “unnatural offence with each other,” another got eight months for “unnatural office with another man,” and five got four months for “gross indecency with another man.” A ninth man was ordered to pay a ” two year bond of £25 with two £25 sureties, not to associate with homosexuals or persons of bad character.”

On passing sentence, the judge remarked, “It must have come as a shock to the citizens of Adelaide to learn that there were centres of homosexuality in this city. Such practices have always been regarded as abhorrent to public decency and have been treated in the Criminal Law Consolidation Act as serious crimes. Whatever psychology may say about this class of offender, my duty is to carry out the law and to impose sentences which will act as a deterrent to others, who are minded to commit homosexual crimes. …In the majority of the cases,  the sentences will be light. They will not however be taken as precedents for the future. If, after the warning of the present sentences, the offences are found to recur much heavier penalties will ensue.”

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Alaska Supremes: tax discrimination against gay couples is unconstitutional

Alaska is one of the three (and soon to be two) states in which there is not a current court challenge to anti-gay marriage bans. However, in a tax matter, the Alaska Supreme Court has just ruled that the state cannot discriminate against same-sex couples. (ACLU)

The Alaska Supreme Court ruled today that the state unconstitutionally discriminates against same-sex couples by denying them equal access to a property tax exemption for senior citizens and disabled veterans.

The rules were challenged by the ACLU of Alaska, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Davis Wright Tremaine LLP on behalf of three couples who were denied full access to a $150,000 property tax exemption that Alaska makes available to opposite-sex married couples. Because same-sex couples cannot legally marry in Alaska, the state treated them as roommates rather than as families and let them get the exemption for only half of the value of their homes.

In 1998 Alaska amended its state constitution to ban same-sex marriage. As it seems unlikely that the state Supreme Court invalidated that constitutional provision, it will be interesting to see how this ruling is administered. It would seem that, in application, the court ruled that same-sex couples must be treated as though married.

The Daily Agenda for Friday, April 25

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Philadelphia, PA (Black Pride); Potsdam, Germany; Tokyo, Japan.

Other Events This Weekend: Hill Country Ride for AIDS, Austin, TX; AIDS Walk, Kansas City, MO; Rodeo in the Rock, Little Rock, AR; AIDS Walk, Miami, FL; Side By Side International LGBT Film Festival, Moscow, Russia; White Party, Palm Springs, CA; Splash, South Padre Island, TX.

TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:

From Drum magazine, November 1964, page 31. Drum was published by The Janus Society, a Philadelphia gay rights group.

Named for the nearby Forrest Theater, the restaurant and bar was bought in 1944 by Barney Zeeman, a pianist and former dance band leader in the 1920s and 1930s. By the 1960s, the Forrest began advertising itself in gay magazines and travel guides.  Zeeman died in 1976, and the Forrest continued to operate as a gay bar in various incarnations through the early 1980s. The location is now a leather bar known as the Bike Stop.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Miami Police Reveals It Keeps Tabs on 3,000 Homosexuals: 1962. Florida Gov. C. Farris Bryant convened a conference in Miami for area law enforcement officers to discuss the “serious and growing problem of homosexuality and other sexual perversions in the state.” The governor’s spokesman, Vernon Williams, addressed the conference, saying “The governor feels a diligent effort is required on the part of all agencies to curb the growth of homosexuality. But it s not our intention to start a witch hunt.” Williams had no need to announce a new witch hunt, as authorities in Miami and much of Florida had waged a rather long-standing campaign against gay people for much of the prior decade. Williams pointed to those campaigns and said that homosexuals were found “in the ranks of university professors, Sunday school teachers, and Scout leaders, among other professions.”

Williams wasn’t the only one discussing the results of various witch hunts. Closer to home, Dade County sheriff Thomas Kelly told the gathering that Metro police maintained a list of 3,000 local persons “suspected of being practicing homosexuals.” He told the gathering that the list was comprised of people “from 8 to 80,” and that they “tend to stay in groups and had many contacts throughout the county. … I feel that these people are sick.”

Gay Protesters Arrested At Philadelphia’s Dewey’s Malt Stand: 1965. Dewey’s was a chain of malt and sandwich shops with as many as eighteen locations sprinkled throughout Philadelphia. Many of them were open twenty-four hours a day, and the one on the 200 block of 13th Street known throughout Philly as the “fag Dewey’s” was popular with the LGBT crowd, especially after the bars closed. But “a large number of homosexuals and persons wearing non-conformist clothing” began to filter into the 17th Street Dewey’s management decided to keep the undesirables out of that location. On April 25, two teen boys and one teen girl were refused service. But instead of getting up and walking out, they remained seated and refused to leave. They were arrested along with Clark Polak, a gay rights leader and publisher of Philly’s gay magazine Drum, and all of them were charged with disorderly conduct.

The Janus Society, an early Philadelphia gay rights group, had joined with several other east cost gay activist groups to form the East Cost Homophile Organization (ECHO), which, in a 1964 conference, agreed to engage in more direct actions, including protests, to confront provocations against the gay community. That agreement had already spawned two planned protests in April: the first ever pickets for gay rights in Washington D.C. at the White House (see April 17) and in New York at the United Nations (see April 18). The Dewey’s sit-in was the perfect opportunity to put ECHO’s new-found commitment to direct action to work in Philadelphia by organizing a five-day protest and leafleting campaign. Over 1,500 pieces of literature were distributed in front of the malt stand while gay rights leaders negotiated with the restaurant’s management. On May 7, protesters staged another sit-in. Management called police, but this time police decided that they had no authority to force the protesters to leave. After an hour, management gave in and agreed to “an immediate cessation to all indiscriminate denials of service.” It is believed to be the first documented instance of a sit-in in support of LGBT rights.

St. Paul Voters Overturn Gay Rights Ordinance: 1978. In 1977, a proposed state anti-discrimination law failed to pass the Minnesota legislature. That defeat, which occurred just three weeks before voters in Dade County, Florida voted down a similar measure that had been approved by the Miami-Metro government, emboldened anti-gay activists at St. Paul’s Temple Baptist Church to turn their attention to that city’s three-year-old gay rights ordinance. Pastor Richard Angwin, in launching the petition drive to put the ordinance’s repeal on the ballot, stated frankly, “I don’t want to live in a community that gives respect to homosexuals.”

Anita Bryant, fresh off her victory in Miami-Dade, joined the fray along with her husband, Robert Green. A week before the vote, Anita Bryant failed to show up at a rally, telling some reporters that she didn’t feel well. Some suspect that the pie-throwing incident in Des Moines the previous fall may have unnerved her when she changed her story, saying that she was afraid she’d be assassinated. Local gay rights activist Jack Baker (see Mar 10) scoffed at the idea. “We’d be silly to shoot her,” he said. “She’s the best thing that ever hit the gay community.” Green showed up in her place and urged the crowd of 10,000 to stand against the forces of “moral breakdown of this nation,” saying “the devil is really working overtime.” Turnout was heavy for the special election, and St. Paul voters voted to repeal the the gay rights ordinance, 54,090 to 31,690. Soon after the election results were announced, over a thousand marchers demonstrated through the streets of St. Paul.

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The Daily Agenda for Thursday, April 24

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Philadelphia, PA (Black Pride); Potsdam, Germany; Tokyo, Japan.

Other Events This Weekend: Hill Country Ride for AIDS, Austin, TX; AIDS Walk, Kansas City, MO; Rodeo in the Rock, Little Rock, AR; AIDS Walk, Miami, FL; Side By Side International LGBT Film Festival, Moscow, Russia; White Party, Palm Springs, CA; Splash, South Padre Island, TX.

TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:

From The Weekly News (Miami, FL), October 21, 1987, page 21.

 
The Old Plantation was one of a dozen gay bars operated by Frank Caven and Charley Hott, two entrepreneurs from Dallas, Texas, who operated gay bars and night clubs from El Paso to Tampa. Three of the clubs — in Dallas, Houston and Tampa — carried the Old Plantation name and logo. The Tampa location opened in 1978 and remained there until the late 1980s, when it became Village Station, which in turned closed down in the early 2000s.

University of South Florida president John S. Allen.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
University of South Florida President Denies Hiring Homosexuals: 1963. Dr. John Allen, who became University of South Florida’s first president when it was established in 1957, strongly denied charges that the school “harbored homosexuals” on its faculty. He also denied that the Tampa-based school was “soft on communism,” was anti-religious, or that controversial writings by “‘beatnik” authors were typical of the literature found in the school’s reading program.

All of those charges were levied against USF and other Florida state colleges and institutions by the Johns Committee, Florida’s homegrown version of the McCarthy Red and Lavender Scares from a decade earlier. Named for its first chairman, state Senator and former acting Governor Charley Johns, the Johns committee was established in 1956 to investigate so-called communist links to the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In 1957, the Florida legislature broadened the committee’s mandate to investigate gays in the state’s colleges and universities, and reiterated that mandate again in 1961. Florida’s leaders of higher education proved eager to demonstrate that Florida’s sons and daughters were safe in their institutions, with many throwing their campuses open to heavy-handed investigators calling individual students and teachers out of class for interrogations.

The results of those investigations were made public in a report in 1963, in which Johns claimed credit for “flush(ing) 71 homosexual public school teachers and 30 homosexual deans and professors of universities,” with an additional sixty-three cases against teachers still pending. Dr. Allen responded, quite forcefully, that his school was certainly not infested with homosexuals. The committee, he pointed out, established only one clear case of a gay teacher among the entire 500 person-staff, which was only “one-fifth of one per cent,” as he put it. That person resigned immediately. Charges had been levied against two others which could not be supported, and reports indicated that they “later left the university for other reasons.”

The Johns Committee, already facing calls for its dismantlement, was in the midst of a legislative budget battle to fund its continued work for another year. Committee supporters triumphed in the state Senate three weeks later, allocating $155,ooo (nearly $1.2 million in today’s dollars) “to finance an even greater study of communism and homosexualism” over the next two years. That budget was more than double the $75,000 the committee was seeking. But the Johns Committee would finally overreach barely a year later with its publication of the famous “Purple Pamphlet,” which was denounced as “pornographic” by politicians across the state (see Mar 17). In response to the outcry, the Legislature finally pulled the committee’s funding in 1965.

[Sources: “Johns Offers to Step Out, Lauds Probe.” Lakeland (Fla) Ledger (April 19, 1963): 1. Available online via Google Newspaper Archive here.

“Johns Committee Charges Denied by College Head.” Sarasota Herald-Tribune (April 25, 1963) 4. Available online via Google Newspaper Archives here.

“Study Communism, Homosexualism: Senate Allots $155,000 To Legislative Probers.” Ocala (Fla) Star-Banner (May 10, 1963): 3. Available online via Google Newspaper Archives here.]

New Orleans Police Institutes Massive Gay Roundup: 1981. In a 1982 article published in the Columbia Journalism Review, Randsell Pierson wrote a very informative piece wondering aloud, “Can the Straight Press get the gay story right?” Pierson had interviewed several closeted gay reporters at the New Orleans Times-Picayune who all said that they feared pitching gay-related stories to their editors for fear of being identified as gay. That silence, Pierson said, helped to explain why homosexuality was still illegal in 25 states and the District of Columbia. Lapses in coverage of gay issues was surprising, and among the many examples that Pierson offered up was this one:

Over a period of three days on the weekend of April 24, 1981, New Orleans police rounded up and jailed more than 100 gay men and women in a series of raids in the French Quarter. Those arrested were charged with “obstructing sidewalks” in front of gay bars. The arrests prompted a vigorous political response from the local gay community, which charged that the police were trying to drive gays out of the French Quarter. A protest meeting attended by 700 gays helped to persuade Mayor Ernest Morial and Police Chief Henry Morris to promise to investigate charges of police harassment. All charges against the arrested gays were subsequently dropped.

Two of the city’s three television stations — WDSU (NBC) and WVUE )ABC) — followed the breaking story and sent film crews to the protest meeting held on the Tuesday following the weekend arrests. The Times-Picayine/States-Item waited five days after the first arrests to report on the story. The account, buried in section 5, said nothing about the protest meeting, which would seem to have been the logical peg, and failed to include in its tally the arrests a group of thirty-nine gay men picked up the previous Sunday. Reporter Allan Katz, who wrote the story, says: “They wanted somebody to do something in a hurry. You would think that because the story was four days old before they assigned it to a reporter they didn’t consider it a major story. About the only time in my experience we really try to relate to gay news is when something really controversial comes up.” Apparently, the arrest of more than 100 men and women in a city not under martial law was not considered “really controversial.”

[Source: Randsell Pierson.”Uptight on Gay News: Can the Straight Press Get the Gay Story Straight? Is Anyone Even Trying?” Chapter 59 in Larry Gross & James D. Woods (eds.) The Columbia Reader on Lesbians & Gay Men in Media, Society, and Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999): 368-376.]

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The Daily Agenda for Wednesday, April 23

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Philadelphia, PA (Black Pride); Potsdam, Germany; Tokyo, Japan.

Other Events This Weekend: Hill Country Ride for AIDS, Austin, TX; AIDS Walk, Kansas City, MO; Rodeo in the Rock, Little Rock, AR; AIDS Walk, Miami, FL; Side By Side International LGBT Film Festival, Moscow, Russia; White Party, Palm Springs, CA; Splash, South Padre Island, TX.

TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:

From GAY, August 17, 1970, page 15.

 
Atlantic City was a significant gay destination in the 1970s before the new round of casinos began to arrive in 1978. The M&M Lounge was part of the New York Avenue strip of gay bars and resorts. Over time, the M&M became a full service resort with a full service hotel, disco, piano bar, cabaret theatre, and a bathhouse. The location today is nothing but a parking lot.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Hate Crimes Statistics Act Signed Into Law: 1990. Following strong support from the Administration and Congress, President George H.W. Bush signed the Hate Crimes Statistics Act into law in a ceremony at the Old Executive Office Building which, for the first time, included LGBT advocates, along with representatives from the ACLU, NAACP, and other groups that had criticized Bush’s record on civil rights. The LGBT representatives were invited only after agreeing not to turn the signing ceremony into an opportunity to protest the Bush administration’s AIDS policies. The law, which requires the Justice Department to institute a program to systematically collect hate crime statistics based on race, religion, ethnic background and/or sexual orientation, was the first federal law to specifically identify gays, lesbians and bisexuals. The Justice Department and FBI have been issuing annual Hate Crime reports since 1992. All reports from 1995 on are available on the web.

Sen. Rick Santorum’s “Man On Dog” Interview: 2003. In an interview printed in USA Today, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) was in the midst of blaming the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandals on liberals and the “right to privacy lifestyle” (which Santorum made abundantly clear that he did not accept), when he cast his eye toward the pending U.S. Supreme Court case Lawrence v. Texas which would strike down sodomy laws later that summer. Santorum defended sodomy laws and launched his most infamous polemic against gay families:

AP: OK, without being too gory or graphic, so if somebody is homosexual, you would argue that they should not have sex?

SANTORUM: We have laws in states, like the one at the Supreme Court right now, that has sodomy laws and they were there for a purpose. Because, again, I would argue, they undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family. And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does. It all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn’t exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution, this right that was created, it was created in Griswold — Griswold was the contraceptive case — and abortion. And now we’re just extending it out. And the further you extend it out, the more you — this freedom actually intervenes and affects the family. You say, well, it’s my individual freedom. Yes, but it destroys the basic unit of our society because it condones behavior that’s antithetical to strong healthy families. Whether it’s polygamy, whether it’s adultery, where it’s sodomy, all of those things, are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family.

Every society in the history of man has upheld the institution of marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. Why? Because society is based on one thing: that society is based on the future of the society. And that’s what? Children. Monogamous relationships. In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing. And when you destroy that you have a dramatic impact on the quality —

AP: I’m sorry, I didn’t think I was going to talk about “man on dog” with a United States Senator, it’s sort of freaking me out.

The AP reporter wasn’t the only one freaking out. Dan Savage wrote a New York Times op-ed calling Santorum out for his blatant bigotry. Noting that Sen. Trent Lott had lost his post as Senate majority leader over remarks praising staunch segregationist Sen. Stromm Thurmond’s (R-SC) 1948 presidential bid, Santorum was assured of escaping this outrage with no sanctions. “Unlike the former majority leader, Mr. Santorum didn’t slip up and say something in plain English that every good Republican knows must only be said in code. Unlike Republican appeals to racist voters, Republican appeals to homophobic voters are overt.”

Dan Savage, spreading the, er, word at the 15th Annual Webby Awards on June 13, 2011.

But a month later, Santorum’s comments were largely forgotten, except among the LGBT community. Lamenting that “the Santorum scandal didn’t have legs,” a 23-year-old reader of Dan Savage’s “Savage Love” column suggested holding a contest to “‘include’ (Santorum) in our sex lives–by naming a gay sex act after him.” Savage agreed, and invited readers to send in their suggestions. By June, the votes were counted, and a definition was promulgated:

Hey, everybody: We have a winner. Savage Love readers, by a wide margin, want Sen. Rick Santorum’s name to stand for… THAT FROTHY MIXTURE OF LUBE AND FECAL MATTER THAT IS SOMETIMES THE BYPRODUCT OF ANAL SEX! It was a landslide for that frothy mixture; the runner-up, farting in the face of someone who’s rimming you, came in a distant second. So congratulations to WUTSAP, who nominated that frothy mixture, and a big thank you to the thousands who voted.

The definition was created, but it still wasn’t obvious that Santorum’s name would be equated with the aforementioned byproduct. Four months after Santorum’s infamous comments and two months after the definition was created, the neologism was still struggling to catch on. It wasn’t until the end of the year when a new web site was created that SpreadingSantorum ended up becoming the most successful Google bomb in history. And with that, a callow comment which almost faded into history has become the name by which Santorum will be known for the rest of his life.

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Oregon to have hearing tomorrow without NOM

From Oregon United for Marriage:

Judge Michael McShane denied the National Organization for Marriage’s attempt to delay tomorrow’s scheduled oral arguments in federal lawsuit challenging Oregon’s marriage ban.

Previously, no party had stepped up to defend the ban. But this morning, the D.C.-based NOM filed a motion requesting to intervene in the case, simultaneously urging the judge to delay Wednesday’s oral arguments as he considers the last-minute motion.

With Judge McShane’s ruling today, oral arguments will proceed as scheduled tomorrow afternoon at the Federal Courthouse in Eugene. However, the judge will consider NOM’s motion to intervene in the case and has scheduled oral arguments on that issue for May 14th. If the motion to intervene is accepted, Judge McShane would then schedule a second briefing schedule on summary judgement or move the case to trial.

Sorry NOM, your delaying tactic didn’t work today.

Freedom to Marry, Freedom to Dissent: Why We Must Have Both

Following Brendan Eich’s resignation, several members of our community jointly drafted a statement expressing their concern with some of the language used and attitudes expressed during the campaign in opposition to his appointment as Mozilla CEO. The contributors at Box Turtle Bulletin have reviewed the statement and have added our names as signatories.

The last few years have brought an astonishing moral and political transformation in the American debate over same-sex marriage and gay equality. This has been a triumph not only for LGBT Americans but for the American idea. But the breakthrough has brought with it rapidly rising expectations among some supporters of gay marriage that the debate should now be over. As one advocate recently put it, “It would be enough for me if those people who are so ignorant or intransigent as to still be anti-gay in 2014 would simply shut up.”

The signatories of this statement are grateful to our friends and allies for their enthusiasm. But we are concerned that recent events, including the resignation of the CEO of Mozilla under pressure because of an anti-same-sex- marriage donation he made in 2008, signal an eagerness by some supporters of same-sex marriage to punish rather than to criticize or to persuade those who disagree. We reject that deeply illiberal impulse, which is both wrong in principle and poor as politics.

We support same-sex marriage; many of us have worked for it, in some cases for a large portion of our professional and personal lives. We affirm our unwavering commitment to civic and legal equality, including marriage equality. At the same time, we also affirm our unwavering commitment to the values of the open society and to vigorous public debate—the values that have brought us to the brink of victory.

The full statement is included below, and a signable version is hosted at iPetitions.

Read the rest of this entry »

Pennsylvania marriage ban may not get trial

The ACLU, which is challenging Pennsylvania’s ban on same-sex marriage, and Governor Tom Corbett (R), who is defending the ban, have both called on Judge John E. Jones III to not schedule a trial. (ACLU)

A trial became unnecessary after the commonwealth stated that it will not call any experts to counter the plaintiffs’ argument that there is no rational reason why lesbian and gay couples are excluded from marriage, nor does it plan to dispute the specific harms caused to the plaintiffs by the marriage ban. All legal papers in the case will be filed by May 12, meaning a ruling could come at any time after that date.

Both sides have presented written briefs and asked the judge for summary judgment.

Corbett’s defense of the ban has been tortured and troublesome.

On July 24, 2013, the county clerk in Montgomery County began issuing marriage licenses. And after the state Attorney General Kathleen Kane (D) said that she was not defending the ban, Corbett took nearly a week before he announced that he would do so.

Then when his legal team filed a brief comparing same sex marriage to a union between 12 year olds, Corbett refuted the comparison and apologized. And then he provided a comparison of his own, marriage between siblings. And then found himself apologizing again.

Since that time, Corbett has tried to keep his defense of the ban mostly about “because it’s my job to defend the law” and has come out in support of a non-discrimination bill.

The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, April 22

TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:

From GPU News, December 1974, page 28.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
State Department Fires One Homosexual Every Two Days On Average: 1953. In testimony before a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee hearing, Undersecretary of State Donald B. Lourie testified that the State Department was firing upwards of five employees a week on grounds that they were security risks. Of those, he said, about one every two days were fired on grounds of homosexuality. Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-WI), who had been leading a three year Red and Lavender Scare campaigned, commended Lourie and Scott McLeod, department security chief, for “doing a good job.” He added, “I think it’s unfortunate that the public doesn’t know what a painstaking job of housecleaning is being done.” Sen. Allen Ellender (D-LA) asked why the State Department seemed to have so many more homosexuals on its payroll than other departments. Lourie replied that maybe they wanted “to get away from home” and go abroad to countries where homosexuality is “condoned.” Lourie didn’t explain which countries in 1953 condoned homosexuality.

“Conquering AIDS” Op-Ed in the New York Times: 1983. The epidemic was coming on its two year anniversary, and as of April 13, 1983, 1,339 people had been diagnosed with AIDS, with 505 known deaths recorded. Nearly half of them were in New York City. Dr. Kevin M. Cahill, director of the tropical disease center at Lenox Hill Hospital, became alarmed at the lack of action, both on the part of federal officials as well as New York’s City Hall under Mayor Ed Koch. Cahill attributed that lack of urgency to “politicians (who) handled the epidemic with unaccustomed wariness. Almost without exception, public leaders evaded the epidemic issue, avoiding even the usual expressions of compassion and concern. The victims’ sexual orientation apparently made involvement risky, and the politicians directed their courage and energies elsewhere.” Cahill wondered why the medical community was “strangely absent” as the disaster escalated:

When a fatal infection struck down veterans attending an American Legion convention, health professionals across America joined in the search for a solution. When women using tampons became ill with toxic-shock syndrome, medical centers immediately focused their enormous talents on that problem. But when the victims were drug addicts and poor Haitian refugees and homosexual men, no major research programs were announced. Until it became clear that the disease could spread to the general population through blood transfusions, organized medicine seemed part of a conspiracy of silence.

Cahill applauded the “many instances of individual courage” by physicians, nurses and technicians who took up the fight with “a quiet dignity and decency that deserves special respect.”

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
John Waters: 1946. The auteur of such film classics as Pink Flamingos (1972), Female Trouble (1974), Desperate Living (1977), Polyester (1981), and Hairspray (1988) grew up in the Baltimore suburb of Lutherville, the son of respectable upper-middle class Catholics and the product of a private education at Baltimore’s Calvert School, Calvert Hall College High School, and Boys’ Latin School of Maryland. He got his first 8mm camera from his grandmother for his sixteenth birthday. After quickly abandoning a short stay at NYU, Waters returned to Baltimore and began making low budget films with his childhood friend Glenn Milstead (later known as Divine, see Oct 19), Mink Stole, Cookie Mueller, Edith Massey, and several others that made up his company, the Dreamlanders. His influences included such figures as Walt Disney, B-movie producer Edward D. Wood, Jr., Frederico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Andy Warhol.  His campy films with outlandish characters pushed the envelope of propriety and taste, out-exploiting exploitation films, out-trashing trashy films, and sailing under the budgets of Drive-in “B” movie fair.

His Trash Trilogy — Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, and Desperate Living became art house favorites and set him up for his first mainstream crossover hit, Polyester, starring Divine, former teen heartthrob Tab Hunter (see Jul 11) and Ricki Lake. From then on, his films became somewhat less controversial — Divine would never again be seen eating dog shit — but they remained the same off-beat celebrations of the bizarre and outrageous as his earlier work. Only now, he could attract bigger name actors like Johnny Depp (Cry Baby, 1990), Kathleen Turner and Sam Waterston (Serial Mom, 1994), Melanie Griffith (Cecil B. Demented, 2000), and Tracy Ullman and Johnny Knoxville (A Dirty Shame, 2004). In 2003, Hairspray was adapted as a hit Broadway musical which won eight Tonys, eight Drama Desk Awards, and four Laurence Olivier Awards. That Broadway musical was then adapted for the 2007 film remake, starring Michelle Pfeiffer Christopher Walken, Zac Efron, Queen Latifah, with John Travolta in drag for Divine’s role as Edna Turnblad.

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