Box Turtle Bulletin

Indian Supreme Court to reconsider sodomy ruling

In December, a two-judge panel of India’s Supreme Court ruled that the country’s Colonial Era law against sodomy, Section 377, was constitutionally permissible. The ruling was issued on the day one of the judges retired.

The government of India, along with many organizations, requested that the Court revisit that decision. Tomorrow they will decide whether to do so: (TimesofIndia)

The Supreme Court will tomorrow take up petitions filed by Centre and rights activists seeking review of its verdict declaring gay sex an offence punishable up to life imprisonment.

A bench of justices H L Dattu and S J Mukhopadhaya will take up the petition in chamber to decide whether the verdict needs to be re-looked or not.

Indiana House amends marriage ban bill

The Indiana House of Representatives has voted to amend the anti-gay marriage ban to remove the second sentence:

Only a marriage between one (1) man and one (1) woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Indiana. A legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals shall not be valid or recognized.

The vote to amend passed by a healthy majority, 52 to 43.

The House has not yet voted on the bill itself. But if it does pass both the House and Senate as amended, it cannot go before the voters until the next legislative session passes identical language. This means that the bill cannot go before voters on the November ballot.

UPDATE: 23 of the state’s 69 Republican reps and 29 of 31 Democratic reps voted to strip the second sentence.

Judge Sets Oral Arguments for Virginia Marriage Ban Challenge for Thursday

After Virginia Attorney General, Mark Herring, announced last week that he believed that Virginia’s state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage violated the U.S. Constitution and that he would not defend it, Federal District Judge Arenda L. Wright asked the parties in a lawsuit challenging the state’s ban whether the court should proceed for oral arguments. The deadline for replies was noon today.

The plaintiffs, who are represented by Ted Olson and David Boies of Prop 8 fame, urged the court to issue its judgement based on the briefs already filed. But the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is defending the ban on behalf of the defendant Norfolk Circuit Court Clerk George Schaefer, have asked for a hearing. The Judge has now issued orders reaffirming that oral arguments will proceed as scheduled.

Indiana House to vote today on marriage ban

The Indiana House of Representatives will vote around 1:30 today on HJR-3, a bill to place before the voters a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.

Only a marriage between one (1) man and one (1) woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Indiana. A legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals shall not be valid or recognized.

But though Republicans hold a 69 to 31 advantage, the vote’s passage is not a foregone conclusion. (IndyStar)

In an Indianapolis Star poll of all 100 members of the Indiana House, 38 said they planned to vote in favor of House Joint Resolution 3, the proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, while 38 said they would vote no. Another 13 members said they were undecided going into the weekend; 11 declined to give a response. That leaves the outcome uncertain, with 51 votes needed to pass or defeat the amendment.

It seems that the biggest deterrent to supporting the bill is the second sentence, which includes a ban on civil unions or any other form of couple recognition. While Indiana’s voters might oppose equality, this hard stance might be too far for some legislators and could threaten the success of voter ratification in the fall. The bill is also strongly opposed by the business community, which sees it as hostile to recruiting efforts.

The solution for some legislators may be to amend HJR-3 to remove the second sentence. As a bill has to pass two consecutive sessions with identical language, this would effectively table the decision for another two years.

A teary-eyed Grammys

Even had my pastor at the Hollywood United Methodist Church not told the congregation this morning to watch this year’s Grammy Awards because it would have a moment that would reflect our congregation’s values of equality, I had heard enough in advance to know that there would be a recognition of marriage in the show this year. And indeed, when Macklemore and Ryan Lewis sang Same Love, their marriage equality anthem, I was prepared for couples to exchange rings.

So when Queen Latifah officiated marriage for a variety of couples, with vocals from Madonna, I was prepared for a celebration of love (though I will admit that I was surprised that the first couple shown included my long-time friend Yawie).

Yet even so, I was composed. It was a nice touch, but that song was not even nominated for Record of the Year.

But tears came to my eyes watching Sir Paul McCartney stand and raise his fist in the air to agree with Daft Punk’s spokesman who, in their acceptance speech for the night’s highest honor, gave tribute to Macklemore and Ryan’s message:

You know I just got a message from the robots [Daft Punk’s public image] and what they wanted me to say is that as elegant and as classy as the Grammys has ever been is that moment when we saw those wonderful marriages! And same love is as fantastic … and it was the height of fairness and love and the power of love for all people at any time any combination … is what they wanted me to say.

To take their moment in the spotlight to celebrate equality as expressed by someone else’s song was a moment of true generosity and an expression of integrity that few other artists could ever hope to emulate.

The Daily Agenda for Monday, January 27

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Will a Federal Judge Declare Virginia’s Marriage Equality Ban Unconstitutional? Last week, Virginia’s new Attorney General, Mark Herring, announced that he believed that Virginia’s state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage violated the U.S. Constitution and that he would not defend it. With that, Federal Judge Arenda L. Wright of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Norfolk, asked the parties in a lawsuit challenging the state’s marriage ban to submit briefs on whether they believed the court should continue to oral arguments, which had been scheduled for January 30. Judge Wrights order also asks whether, in light of the Attorney General’s position, whether other parties have standing to join the case as defendants. Lawyers for the plaintiffs submitted their brief on Friday, with briefs from lawyers representing the defendant, Norfolk Circuit Court Clerk George Schaefer, due today at noon. The sudden notice and tight deadline suggest that Judge Wright may be ready to rule on the amendment’s constitutionality fairly quickly.

TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:

From The Los Angeles Advocate, October 1968, page 15.

 
In the 1960s, there were a small handful of Mission Beach bars catering to the gay crowd, with the Doll Room being popular with lesbians. The Doll Room’s location was particularly prominent, being just across the street from Belmont Park with its iconic Giant Dipper roller coaster. The beach area was relatively bohemian then, with one stretch near the park known locally as “the pansy patch.” But as the tourist trade rose through the 1970s, the rents went up and many of these businesses were pushed out. The address is now home to Marcy’s Mexican restaurant.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Rep. Dick Armey Calls Barney Frank “Barney Fag”: 1995. It’s not easy being the biggest ‘mo in the House. In an interview with a group of radio broadcasters, House majority leader Rep. Dick Armey (R-TX), he discussed the acrimonious atmosphere in the House of Representatives, which was then under the leadership of Newt Gingrich. “Newt’s a very patient fellow and able to handle a harangue going on around him better than I,” Armey said. “I like peace and quiet, and I don’t have to listen to Barney Fag — Barney Frank — haranguing in my ear because I made a few bucks off a book I worked on.”

Armey apologized to Frank when word of his remarks got out, first in person and then again on the House floor. But not without a harangue: “I take this exception especially in light of the fact that I went to the press that had the tape and explained to them in the best humor I could that I had simply mispronounced a name and did not need any psychoanalysis about my subliminal or about my Freudian predilections.” He also castigated House Democrats for focusing on what he called a “mispronunciation.” Frank wasn’t inclined to accept the apology. “I don’t think it was on the tip of his tongue, but I do believe it was in the back of his mind,” said Frank. “There are a lot of ways to mispronounce my name. That is the least common.”

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Alan Cumming: 1965. Well let’s see. He was the M.C. in the 1993 London staging of Cabaret, the evil Boris Grishenko in Golden Eye, and he had roles in Eyes Wide Shut, the Spy Kids franchise, X2, and Gray Matters, among others. He earned two Emmy nominations for his guest role as Eli Gold in The Good Wife, and he won produced the Independent Spirit Award-winning Sweet Land. Where the Scottish actor once described himself as a “frolicky pansexual sex symbol for the new millennium,” he now simply says he’s bisexual. On January 7, 2012, he married his husband Grant Shaffer in New York, on the fifth anniversary of their 2007 civil partnership in London.

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?

The Daily Agenda for Sunday, January 26

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Events This Weekend: Midsumma, Melbourne, VIC; BeefDip, Puerto Vallarta, JAL; Winter Rendezvous Ski Week, Stowe, VT; GayWhistler Winter Pride, Whistler, BC.

TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:

From ONE, February 1953, page 23.

When this ad appeared in ONE’s second issue in February, 1953, Long Beach’s Rendezvous Club earned the distinction of being the first business to advertise in the first nationally distributed gay magazine.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
FBI Launches Investigation Against ONE Magazine: 1956. Since its debut in January of 1952 as North America’s first nationally distributed gay publication, ONE magazine, had been testing the boundaries of acceptability simply by daring to publish something positive and supportive about homosexuality. In 1954, ONE ran afoul of the U.S. Post Office (ironically, with its October issue with the cover reading, “You Can’t Print It!”), which confiscated much of that month’s mailing and claimed it violated the 1873 Comstock Act, which prohibited sending “obscene, lewd, and/or lascivious” material through the mail. ONE sued and it would eventually lead to the first positive gay rights ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court when the court reversed lower court rulings declaring the magazine obscene (see Jan 13).

But that ruling was still two years away when ONE again caught the attention of federal authorities when an article in the November 1955 issue by “David L. Freeman” asked, “How Much Do We Know About the Homosexual Male?” The author sketched a broad outline of gay culture, which he said ranged from the “Revolutionaries” on the far left and the “Tories” on the right. “The Revolutionaries,” he wrote, “can be found swishing down Hollywood Boulevard or Constitution Avenue. They have rejected society, because society has rejected them. …The Revolutionaries can also be found (if their orientation is intel1ectual) among the ranks of the social workers, the labor leaders, the left-wing political or religious organizations.” As for the “Tories”:

The Tories are the elegant ones who have decided to express their social hostility by being more correct than the foremost representatives of the dominant (and dominating) culture. They work for TIME magazine or the NEW YORKER. They are in the diplomatic service; they occupy key positions with oil companies or the FBI (it’s true!).

FBI Assistant Director’s handwritten note on the bottom: “I think we should take this crowd on and make them ‘put up or shut up’.” Hoover added: “I concur.” (Click to enlarge.)

That last charge — that there are gay people in “key positions” in the FBI hit a very raw nerve that reached all the way up to the director’s office. A memo from the Los Angeles field office, dated January 26, 1956, described the article in the November issue and quoted the sentence about occupying “key positions” in the FBI. The memo incorrectly identified ONE as a publication of the Mattachine Society (it was independent), which the FBI had investigated in 1953. After concluding that there “was no internal security interest,” the FBI closed that investigation at the end of that year. The memo concluded, “In view of the nature of this publication, it is believed ‘One’ should not be dignified by a reply to the completely baseless and unfounded writings as noted above.”

Clyde Tolson, the FBI’s Associate Director and J. Edgar Hoover’s right hand man (and closeted lover), disagreed, writing on the bottom of the memo, “I think we should take this crowd on and make them ‘put up or shut up’.” Hoover added his agreement: “I concur.” Clyde’s line — to “put up or shut up” — would re-appear in documents throughout the rest of the FBI’s investigation of ONE, beginning with Hoover’s order issued to Los Angeles the very next day:

Bureau has received anonymously a copy of November 1956, issue of this magazine containing an article “how much do we know about the homosexual male?” by Freeman, Circulation Manager.

Article indicated that “The Tories” composed one of the three main groups of homosexual society, and the article continued, “They work for TIME magazine or the NEW YORKER. They work for TIME magazine or the NEW YORKER. They are in the diplomatic service; they occupy key positions with oil companies or the FBI (it’s true!).”

On the basis information available, [redacted] not identifiable Bufiles. You are instructed to have two mature and experienced Agents contact [redacted] in the immediate future and tell him the Bureau will not countenance such baseless charges appearing in this magazine and for him to either “put hup or shut up.” Suair-tel results of your contact to reach the Bureau by February 1956.

HOOVER

A week later, two FBI agents carried out Hoover’s order and visited ONE’s office on February 2. There, they found Dorr Legg (who went by “William Lambert”, see Dec 15), and sent this report back to Washington along with their recommendation.

FBI memo reporting on an interview with ONE’s William Lambert (Dorr Legg), with Tolson’s handwritten note ordering a further investigation. (Click to enlarge.)

Los Angeles Airtel February 2, 1956, sets forth results of interview with William Lambert, Chairman of the Board of “One.” This interview shows that Lambert is strictly no good, and he left the impression with interviewing Agents that he had either edited or written the article appearing in the November, 1955, issue of this magazine alleging that homosexuals occupied key positions in the FBI.

Lambert was advised in no uncertain terms that the Bureau would not tolerate such baseless statements appearing in this magazine and for him either to put up or shut up. Lambert one point said, “Our attorney ([redacted, but most certainly ONE’s attorney Eric Julber] of Beverly Hills) had approved everything that goes into the magazine.” Los Angeles files on [redacted] of Beverly Hills, California, reflects he has appeared on platform with Communist Party members, and he has written editorials for a college paper defending the American Youth for Democracy (AYD). The AYD has been designated by the Attorney General pursuant to Executive Order 104501. In addition [redacted] was in contact with [redacted] of the Soviet Vice-Consulate in Los Angeles in 1946, and he told him he should see [redacted] later and an automobile registered to [redacted] was observed parked in the vicinity of a CP meeting being held in Los Angeles in 1948.

In view of the unsavory nature of this entire crowd, it is believed we should not contact [redacted] as it is not beyond the realm of possibility that this outfit, through [redacted], would endeavor to embarrass the Bureau. In any interview with [redacted] we do not have the element of surprise, and, of course, we would necessarily be taking a chance of the interview being recorded. It is noted Lambert had apparently considered taping the interview had with him, however the Agents were circumspect and it is not believed the interview was recorded.

The memo recommended that “no further action be taken.” But Tolson intervened again, in a handwritten note on the bottom of the memo: “I don’t agree. I think we should open an investigation on [redacted] and get a line on Lambert.”

For the next five months, the FBI set out investigating ONE and everyone associated with it. The first roadblock they ran into was untangling everyone’s pseudonyms. Later memos revealed more details about the Agents’ interview with Lambert, including the fact that Lambert refused to identify the article’s stated author, “David Freemen.” (His real name was Chuck Rowland, one of the Mattachine Foundation’s founders, see Aug 24). By the end of February, Hoover grew impatient with the investigation’s slow pace. In a memo to the head of the Los Angeles office dated March 2, Hoover complained:

Investigation conducted by your office this far as failed to develop the information desired by the bureau. You are instructed to immediately take necessary positive investigative steps to further identify William Lambert and especially [list of names redacted] as well as other persons connected with this publication as set forth in Bulet. to your office 2-15-56.

You are instructed to afford this matter your personal attention, coordinate all the investigations, and you should submit the results to the Bureau, Attention Crime Records Section, no later than March 22, 1956.

Hoover

ONE’s FBI file grew to over 100 pages, in addition to every back issue of ONE the agents could get a hold of. Over time, agents were able to collect information on Lambert and Julber using “confidential techniques,” including surreptitious photographs, riffling through insurance and voting records, and talking with neighbors. They were also finally able to identify Rowland as the article’s author, while noting that he “is an expelled Communist Party member and still exhibits much CP thinking, which is reflected in his writings.” They also noted that Rowland had resigned from ONE in February, and they couldn’t find much damaging information that could be used against the others. Agents then considered whether they could get ONE shut down for mailing “pornographic materials” across state lines, but decided that they were restrained from doing so while ONE’s case against the Post Office was still on appeal. With no further information available, the FBI finally agreed to place ONE on “pending inactive status” until ONE’s appeals were exhausted.

[Sources: “David F. Freeman” (Chuck Rowland) “How much do we know about the homosexual male?” ONE 3, no 11 (November 1955): 4-6.

Declassified FBI files of ONE magazine and the Mattachine Society. Available online from the FBI’s “Vault” page here (PDF: 5.2MB/97 pages) and here (PDF: 2.6MB/97 pages)] The main page for the Mattachine Society’s files is here.]

Government Payments to Maggie Gallagher, Other Columnists Revealed: 2005. Howard Kurtz revealed in a Washington Post story that the Bush Administration had paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to two columnists in a “pay-to-sway” scandal to promote the administration’s policies. In one case, it was revealed that the U.S. Department of Education paid columnist Armstrong Williams $241,000 to promote and talk up the No Child Left Behind Initiative and to encourage other journalists and columnists to write favorable articles on the law. It was also revealed that Maggie Gallagher had accepted $41,500 to promote the Bush Administration’s marriage initiative, which called for abstinence education and premarital counseling. Gallagher responded in a rather creative way: first by defending her role in the contract (“I’m a marriage expert. I get paid to write, edit, research and educate on marriage. If a scholar or expert gets paid to do some work for the government, should he or she disclose that if he writes a paper, essay or op-ed on the same or similar subject? If this is the ethical standard, it is an entirely new standard.”), then by acknowledging that she should have disclosed the contract when she later wrote about the Bush marriage initiative. “But the real truth is that it never occurred to me. … I would have, if I had remembered it. My apologies to my readers.” Nice work if you can get it.

Armstrong was dropped by from syndication by the Tribune Company. Gallagher continued writing for Town Hall as though nothing had happened. She went on to found the National Organization for Marriage in 2007 and remained its president until 2010. She also founded Culture War Victory Fund in 2011. Last year, she announced the retirement of her syndicated column.

David Kato Murdered: 2011. It seems like yesterday, it seems like a lifetime ago. But it was three years ago today when Ugandan LGBT advocate David Kato was brutally murdered in his home. The murder took place almost four months after his photo appeared on the front page of a local tabloid as one of Uganda’s “top homos” with the tag, “Hang Them!” And the murder took place less than a month after a Ugandan Court issued a permanent ruling baring that tabloid from outing gay people on its pages. The police, before they even had a suspect, were quick to deny that homophobia had anything to do with his murder, and they maintained that position after they settled on a suspect and obtained a “confession.” To seal the deal, the alleged murderer was quickly found guilty and sentenced — in proceedings so rushed that his own lawyer didn’t know he was appearing in court. But LGBT advocates in Uganda know the real score and aren’t buying the government line. On this anniversary, it’s important to pause and remember that there are martyrs for gay rights: Harvey Milk, David Kato, and many others, known and unknown.

In honor of Kato’s memory, the David Kato Vision and Voice Award has been established to recognize those who demonstrate “courage and outstanding leadership in advocating for the sexual rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people, particularly in environments where these individuals face continued rejection, marginalization, isolation and persecution.” It is awarded annually on December 10, Human Rights Day.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Ellen DeGeneres: 1958. She made her own bit of history in 1997 during the fourth season of her sitcom, Ellen, when she came out publicly as a lesbian on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Her character soon came out on her sitcom, and that coming out episode was one of the highest rated episodes of her series. That episode won her her first Emmy, but the show’s popularity dropped soon afterward and was cancelled. Ellen withdrew from television and returned to her roots in stand-up comedy (and taking on a voice-acting stint for the 2003 film Finding Nemo) before re-establishing herself as a popular talk show host on Emmy-winning The Ellen DeGeneres Show, where she often talks about her wife, Portia de Rossi. Her show is very popular with housewives and not a few gay men, with her popularity undoubtedly helped along with segments like these:

In 2008 at the age of fifty, Degeneres became the spokesperson for Cover Girl cosmetics. In 2012, she became the spokesperson for J.C. Penney, much to the consternation of the American Family Association, whose astroturf front organization One Million Moms is all kinds of upset because her mere presence is an affront to their manufactured moms. In 2012, Degeneres was honored with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor by the by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

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?

The Daily Agenda for Saturday, January 25

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Events This Weekend: Midsumma, Melbourne, VIC; BeefDip, Puerto Vallarta, JAL; Winter Rendezvous Ski Week, Stowe, VT; GayWhistler Winter Pride, Whistler, BC.

TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:

From The Advocate, January 8, 1981, page 7.

Newport Station was one of the most popular discos in Orange County in the late 1970s, and was still going strong when this ad appeared in 1981. It has since gone the way of just about every other gay bar in OC.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Alice Mitchell Kills Freda Ward: 1892. Freda Ward was the socialite daughter of a wealthy planter and merchant. Alice Mitchell was the daughter of a retired furniture dealer. Both were well known about town, daughters of two of the best families of Memphis, Tennessee. Alice would later say that as far as she could remember, she had an “extraordinary love” for Freda. The letters the exchanged revealed, as one newspaper put it, “that Alice loved Freda as man loves woman, and Freda loved Alice as woman regards man.” According to one newspaper account,

“Twice Alice went to visit Freda’s family, during which time the two girls, as witnesses attested, showed ‘disgusting tenderness’ for each other. They were seen to swing together in a hammock by the hour, hugging and kissing each other — they hugged and kissed ad nauseum”.

Alice was ashamed of doing this in public, but Freda upbraided her for this.” Their relationship grew. Alice proposed marriage, but it appears that Freda either refused the offer or was prevented from accepting it by her family. As Freda was about to leave Memphis to board a steamboat to her family’s home town in Arkansas, Alice waylaid her and killed her on the streets of Memphis. As she later explained:

“I was in love with Freda. I could not live without her. Long ago we made a compact that if we were ever separated we should ill each other. When I found that Josie had forbidden Freda to have nothing more to do with me, I saw nothing else to do but to kill her. I took father’s razor, but told no one what I was going to do.

Newspapers around the country followed every detail of the case and trial. And since this occurred at about the time psychologists and medical professionals were beginning to understand homosexuality and lesbianism as something other than simply criminal acts, the Mitchell-Ward case was dissected in the nation’s medical journals as well. The Memphis Medical Monthly carried an extensive report of the trial in which Mitchell was judged insane.

Other medical journals weighed in on the exact nature of her insanity. It was a common nineteenth century belief that insanity was the result of “degeneracy,” which was a body of beliefs that held that human beings, through the natural course of evolution, would naturally produce children who “de-generated” some of their parent’s characteristics in an imperfect form — think of a xerox copy of a xerox copy. With ordinary evolution, these inferior copies would be disadvantaged and their genes would die out. But Degeneracy theory held that the advances and “luxuries” of modern society protected these lesser individuals and allowed them to bear further de-generated offspring. Degeneracy didn’t always yield blemished children: geniuses were also held as examples of a kind of positive “de-generation” (because they deviated from the norm), and evidence of their degeneracy was often found in various personality quirks or eccentricities.

Yet it was an extraordinarily short trip from “de-generation” to degeneracy, and the Mitchell-Ward case become, literally, a textbook example. Even two decades later, as in the following passage from 1914 by Douglas C. McMurtrie from the American Journal of Urology. Citing other psychologists and sexologists who observed that “congenital sexual inversion is widespread in America, homosexual women being frequently found in societies and clubs,” McMurtrie then recalled the still talked-about Mitchell-Ward case from two decades earlier, plancing great importance on Mitchell’s mother’s mental state:

One of the most widely known cases of violent crimes due to sexual inversion in the female occurred in Memphis, Tenn., approximately in 1891, though the exact date is unknown to me. The facts were typical of sexually inverted affection and are of considerable interest. They have been reported by Comstock. [Here, he quotes a brief account of the crime by T. Griswold Comstock for the New York Medical Times in 1893]

… In accounting for the deed, Comstock, while diagnosing Alice Mitchell as a sexual “pervert,” considers her insane. It appears that her mother in her first confinement had child-bed fever and puerperal insanity, and was confined in an asylum, and that before the birth of Alice she was deranged, and this aberration continued until some time after labor. Although no actual determination was made of Alice’s mental state it was decided she was insane.

This may have been the case. In the light of present knowledge regarding this sexual anomaly, however, it may be said that no more insanity might have been involved in this crime of homosexual jealousy than is involved in analogous crimes of heterosexual jealousy which come constantly before the courts.

A full account of the case of Alice Mitchell giving the facts as proved in court and the various testimony of the medical witnesses is given in the Memphis Medical Monthly. The article also contains a report of the direct examination of the defendant. It is noteworthy that in none of the medical evidence was there any mention of there having been a sexual condition chiefly accountable for the crime.

In fact, if there is anything noteworthy about this affair, it is the fact that it wasn’t the nature of the love interest which proved to be the mark of Mitchell’s insanity during her trial, even though the lesbian aspects of their relationship were very widely reported. (Indeed, it was the main reason the case was such a sensation in the popular press.) Instead, she was judged insane because her mother was judged insane. She was the unfortunate degenerated offspring of a degenerated mother, and Mitchell’s degeneracy was seen as a more generalized sort which had little to do with her sexuality. The homosexuality of gay men, on the other hand, was often regarded as degeneracy sui generis, with one Texas physician in 1893 advocating castration for those judged to be afflicted with this “trait” so that it could not be passed on to future generations — to “nip it in the bud,” so to speak.

Degeneracy theory, which provided a theoretical basis for eugenics, would eventually die with the worst excesses of the eugenics movement. People with physical, mental, emotional or other anomalies — whether those anomalies were in the direction of weakness or strength — would soon lose the tag of “degenerate.” Everyone except for gay people. For them, the last remnant of this discarded theory would live on as the name commonly used against them — degenerates — until well into the late twentieth century. And in some circles, still today.

[Sources: Jonathan Katz. Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1976): pp 53-58.

Douglas C. McMurtrie. “Notes on the psychology of sex.” American Journal of Urology 10, no. 9 (September 1914): 432-436. Available online via Google Books here.

F. E. Daniel “Castration of sexual perverts.” Texas Medical Journal 9, no. 6 (December 1893): 255-271

“Murder In Cold Blood: Memphis Startled by a Most Sickening Tragedy.” The Day (New London, CT., January 26, 1892): 1. Available online via Google News Archive here.

“An Odor of Blood: The Details of Freda Ward’s Murder Retold.” Aurora (IL) Daily Express (February 25, 1892): 2. Available online via Google News Archive here.

“Misfit Affection: Strange Case of Alice Mitchell and Freda Ward.” Warsaw (IN) Daily Times (July 19, 1892): 1. Available online via Google News Archive here.

“Loved Like A Man: Developments in the Freda Ward Murder Case.” Warsaw (IN) Daily Times (July 20, 1892): 1. Available online via Google News Archive here.]

Oklahoma High School Students Form Klan Chapters: 1978. An estimated 112 to 132 high school students, mostly freshmen and sophomores at two high schools in northwestern Oklahoma City and the surrounding suburbs, joined teen chapters of the Ku Klux Kan. The purpose of those chapters, according to newspaper accounts, was to wage “a campaign of terror against homosexuals.” One unidentified youth said, “We are not just against blacks like the old Klan. We are against gays and the clubs that support them and are going to try to shut them down because this activity is morally and socially wrong.”

Fear of homosexuals wasn’t isolated to a few high schools in the suburbs. Just a few days earlier, Rep. John Monks (D-Muskogee) had introduced a bill that he called the “Teacher Fitness Statute” in the state House of representatives. The bill would would allow public schools to fire or refuse to hire anyone who engaged in “public homosexuality activity,” which the proposed broadly defined to also include not just sexual activity, but also “advocating, soliciting, imposing, encouraging or promoting public or private homosexual activities in a manner that creates a substantial risk that such conduct will come to the attention of schoolchildren or school employees.” Which meant that straight teachers could be deemed unfit to teach if they said or did anything which might be construed as supporting gay rights — or, one might imaging, speaking out against an anti-gay KKK chapter in schools.

But school officials were skeptical of that the reports of student KKK chapters were true. Putnam City High School’s principal said that the news accounts could be the work of “one young man” who “has made accusations and wants publicity.” The principal of Putnam City West High School promised, “We won’t have the Klan on campus if I have any say-so.”

The boys, on the other hand, claimed credit for an attack on patrons leaving a gay bar in which several people were injured and cars were vandalized. As for the Klan chapter’s membership, one boy said, “The only people we won’t let in are girls, blacks, Jews or dope smokers. And we might consider Catholics if the time comes.” Another said that the chapters “have gotten instruction sheets and lots of information on the Klan from the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, even on making the robes and hats.” A third said that he joined the Klan “as a joke that kind of started making sense.”

As for the “Teacher Fitness Statue”, it would sail through the state House and Senate in lopsided votes just a few weeks later (see Feb 21). The U.S. Supreme Court finally struck the law down as unconstitutional in 1986 (see Mar 26).

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?

The Daily Agenda for Friday, January 24

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Events This Weekend: Midsumma, Melbourne, VIC; BeefDip, Puerto Vallarta, JAL; Winter Rendezvous Ski Week, Stowe, VT; GayWhistler Winter Pride, Whistler, BC.

TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:

From The Blade, September 1977, page 4.

 
Roman baths (and Greek baths before them) weren’t just places where people went to bathe. The were where the cultural and political life of the community took place. It was only natural, after all. With soap being a rare and expensive luxury, the process of bathing was time consuming, so conversations became a natural part of the experience. Over time, bathhouses (or thermae, as they were called) became more elaborate, typically with at least three pools (with hot, cold, and lukewarm water), and often featured steam and dry saunas. As the process of bathing became more elaborate, it also became much more social. Some thermae increased their social importance by adding exercise rooms, libraries, rooms for poetry readings, and small cafes. Emperors and politicians knew that building elaborate thermae was one way of gaining favor with the masses, and much of the water carried in Rome’s famed aqueducts went to supply the public baths. All of this made Rome unusually clean, with daily bathing commonplace. Which is why the baths were the epitome of clean living.

Which is, I’m sure, the thought behind this particular “bath and health club” calling itself Roman Delight. Its location in northwest Washington, D.C. just over the line from Takoma Park has changed quite a bit since 1977. With the later addition of the Metro’s Red Line and a convenient station within walking distance nearby, the block has since been re-developed into condos.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
“Gay Plague” Conservative Withdraws from Bush’s AIDS Panel: 2003. Could there possibly have been a more inappropriate pick for President George W. Bush’s AIDS advisory panel than Jerry Thacker? One might have imagined that the nominee who contracted the AIDS virus after his wife was infected by a blood transfusion might have been a good choice. But Thacker, a former Bob Jones University graduate and faculty member, had a web site where he presented his messages on AIDS prevention and caring for people with AIDS. Among his topics was a talk that he advertised, titled, “Help for Homosexuals,” in which he claimed to offer (via archive.org):

A message on the nature of homosexuality and how Christ can rescue the homosexual. Includes statistics on homosexual behavior, tips for ministry to those practicing this “deathstyle” and information on the homosexual movement and its political agenda.

Thacker also referred to AIDS as the “gay plague.” The web site was quickly scrubbed soon after the offending comments were discovered, but the damage was done. LGBT and HIV/AIDS advocates were furious. Carl Schmid, a Log Cabin Republican member and a board member for the Human Rights Campaign, had worked in Bush’s 2000 Presidential campaign. He said, “We need to have a scientific-based approach to the problems of HIV-AIDS and not this radical agenda he’s pushing.” Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-ND) also denounced the nomination: “Thacker’s characterization of AIDS as the gay plague and his offensive public statements about homosexuality indicate a disturbing bias that is completely at odds with the role the advisory commission should play.” But the panel’s co-chair, Tom Coburn (who would later become Republican Senator from Oklahoma), professed ignorance of Thacker’s opinions and claimed that Thacker’s views on homosexuality were irrelevant to the panel’s work.

A week after Thacker’s nomination, he withdrew is name from consideration. White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer moved quickly to distance the administration from the controversy: “Those words are as wrong as they are inappropriate. And they are not shared by the President. That remark is far removed from what the president believes.” Thacker blamed his nomination’s failure on “gay radicals” in an interview two weeks later: “The primary tactic used by gay radicals is intimidation. They’re going to be in your face and they’re going to be noisy.”

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Publius Aelius Traianus Hadrianus, the Emperor Hadrian: 76-138. Regarded as the third of the Five Good Emperors, he became emperor in 117 just as the Roman Empire was in its prime. Peace, for the most part, was at hand, which allowed the Emperor to travel to nearly every one of the Empire’s provinces. He endeared himself as the “people’s emperor,” traveling with his troops and eating the same rations. He embark on a massive public works campaign, building roads, temples, public baths, libraries, monuments and fortifications along the frontiers, including the massive Hadrian’s Wall in Britain. He was a strong patron of the arts, he wrote poetry in Latin and Greek, he reformed the legal code with respect to slavery, and he rebuilt the Pantheon with the dome that stands to this day.

Antonous

Here’s a little-known note: Hadrian popularized beards. Before his time, Romans were clean shaven. Hadrian’s beard was inspired by his love of all things Greek: philosophy, literature, culture, and a particular young man, his love Antinous. When Antinous drowned in the Nile, Hadrian “wept for him like a woman.” Hadrian struck coins in Antinous’s likeness and had him deified — unprecedented acts for one who was not an emperor. He founded the Egyptian city of Antinopolis in his lover’s memory, commissioned busts and statues in his likeness, built temples to him throughout his empire, and held festivals in his honor. The Cult of Antinous became very popular, particularly with a certain class of men in the empire.

Hardian did marry, to fulfill one expectation of being an Emperor, but the marriage was childless. In 136, he adopted a consul, Lucius Ceinius Commodus, that he tapped to be his successor, but Commodus died two years later. Hadrian then formally adopted Antonius Pius, on the stipulation that Antonius would adopt Marcus Aurelius and thus securing the succession of the Fourth and Fifth Good Emperors.

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Virginia Attorney General Says Same Sex Marriage Ban Unconstitutional

The Washington Post reports that Virginia Attorney General Mark R. Herring will announce today that the state of Virginia will ask a federal court to strike down the state’s ban on marriage equality. Citing “an official close to the attorney general with knowledge about the decision,” the Post reports that Herring’s office will file a supporting brief in Bostic v Raine on behalf of a Norfolk couple who were denied a marriage license. Their case is being represented by Ted Olson and David Boies, the same legal team what successfully overturned California’s Prop 8.

The Post reports:

Herring will say that Virginia has been on the “wrong side” of landmark legal battles involving school desegregation, interracial marriage and single-sex education at the Virginia Military Institute, one official said. He will make the case that the commonwealth should be on the “right side of the law and history” in the battle over same-sex marriage.

He has not informed Republicans in Richmond about his plans; an uproar is likely. GOP lawmakers have worried that Herring would change the state’s position — such decisions are up to the attorney general — and have contemplated legislation that would allow them to defend the law in court.

The attorney general thinks that is unnecessary, the official said. The clerks of the circuit court in Norfolk and Prince William County are defendants in the suit, and both are represented by independent counsel.

One county clerk named in the suit has hired a private attorney, while another one will be defended by the Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly the Alliance Defense Fund). Oral arguments for the case are scheduled for January 30.

The Daily Agenda for Thursday, January 23

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Events This Weekend: Midsumma, Melbourne, VIC; BeefDip, Puerto Vallarta, JAL; Winter Rendezvous Ski Week, Stowe, VT; GayWhistler Winter Pride, Whistler, BC.

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From The Voice, January 15, 1982, page 22.

 
The Stud lasted a decade, from 1976 to 1987, when it became Griff’s. In 1994, it became the Faultline, which caters to a decidedly assertive crowd.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
FCC Backs Stations Which Aired Programs About Homosexuality: 1964. In the summer of 1962, New York City’s Pacifica public radio station WBAI aired a highly controversial talk show about homosexuality (see Jul 15). It wasn’t so much that the subject was homosexuality — that alone was controversial but it had been done before — but that the station would agree to include gay rights activist Randophe Wicker and several other gay men on the program. Real live gay men, talking about the difficulties in maintaining careers, the problems of police harassment, and the social responsibility of gays and straights alike.

This discussion went on for ninety minutes, on the air for everyone to hear. At least one group of listeners were fit to be tied over it. They launched a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission to challenge the station’s broadcast license. That complaint was joined with two others against Pacifica stations in Los Angeles and Berkeley for their broadcasts of two poetry readings and a recording of playwright Edward Albee’s “The Zoo Story.” But after a lengthy investigation, the FCC unanimously agreed to renew the stations’ licenses. In doing so, the FCC issued a statement which said, in part:

We recognize that as shown by the complaints here, such provocative programming may offend some listeners. But this does not mean that those offended have the right, through the Commission’s licensing power, to rule such programs off the airways. Where this the case, only the wholly inoffensive, the bland, could gain access to the radio microphone or TV camera.

Commissioner Robert E. Lee addressed the specific complaints made about the WBAI broadcast. While he felt that a panel discussion featuring physicians and sociologists might be informative, “a panel discussion of eight homosexuals discussing their experiences and past history does not approach the treatment of a delicate subject one could expect from a responsible broadcaster.” While the FCC stressed that the ruling did not mean that the commission endorsed the broadcasts, it nevertheless was regarded as a landmark decision upholding the broadcaster’s right to determine the kinds of programs that it wishes to air.

[Source: Lawrence Laurent. “Stations’ judgment backed by FCC.” Washington Post (January 23, 1964): D20.]

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Sergei Eisenstein: 1898-1948. Acclaimed as one of the most brilliant cinematic pioneers, Eisenstein first followed his engineer father’s footsteps into the Petrograd’s Institute of Civil Engineering, but when the 1917 Revolution broke out, Eisenstein joined the Red Army, broke ties with his father who fled to Germany, and joined the First Workers’ Theater of Proletcult. He worked as a costume and set designer before switching to filmmaking. His cinematic debut, Strike (1924), exploded onto the world stage with his invention of the film montage, a cascading flood of imagery edited for maximum impact. His second full-length feature, Battleship Potemkin (1925), became one of the most famous films ever made, bringing him immediate worldwide acclaim. But back at home, official cinematic tastes began to change with the rise of Joseph Stalin and Soviet Realism. His next epic, October: Ten Days that Shook the World, was commissioned to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the 1917 revolution, but it got caught up in bureaucratic wrangling official censorship.

Poster for Battleship Potemkin.

October was released in 1928, again to worldwide acclaim but official criticism at home. Eisenstein decided that perhaps the time was right to take up an offer from Paramount Pictures in Hollywood to make a film in the U.S. He arrived in Hollywood in May, 1930, but Eisentsteim’s artistic approach proved iincompatible with Paramount’s formulaic methods and attention to the bottom line. Five months later, Eisenstein and Paramount parted ways. Eisenstein was temporarily rescued from the prospect of returning to the Soviet Union a failure when another benefactor, author Upton Sinclair, came to his rescue and backed his next project, ¡Que Viva Mexico!. Eisentein spent the next year in Mexico and a considerable amount of money shooting nearly fifty linear miles of film, but with little to show for it when Sinclair cancelled production. Eisentstin tried to re-enter the U.S. but was blocked at the border, thanks to an expired re-entry visa and a cache of homoerotic drawings that he had been secretly producing.

Thoroughtly disgraced, Eisentsein made his way back to Moscow. Somewhat miraculously, he was able to work his way back into Stalin’s good graces. He collaborated with composer Sergei Prokofiev for his first sound film, the biopic Alexander Nevsky. It’s 1938 release was critically acclaimed in both the West and the Soviet Union, with Eisenstein winning the Order of Lenin and the Stalin Prize. He then began work on his next epic, Ivan the Terrible, which he envisioned as a trilogy. The first installment again won a Stalin Prize in 1944. But the second installment was heavily criticized and remained unreleased until 1958. All of the footage shot for Part 3 was confiscated and most of it was destroyed. Eisenstien’s health failed, and he died of a heart attack in 1948 at the age of fifty.

Eisensten’s diaries were published as Immoral Memories in 1983, revealing his infatuations with several young men, including his unrequited love for his heterosexual assistant Gregori Alexandrov. Many of his homoerotic drawings were exhibited in 1998 for the centenary of his birth.

Gary Burton: 1943. The Grammy-Award winning jazz vibraphonist is an innovator on several fronts. He began learning to play the marimba and vibraphone while only six years old growing up in Anderson, Indiana. His father built him a platform so that he could reach the keys. By his senior year in high school, he was playing professionally at a restaurant in Evansville. While studying at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, he also began recording with several Nashville musicians, including Hank Garland, Floyd Cramer and Chet Atkins. He later began touring with Stan Getz from 1964 to 1966 as Bossa Nova became popular. Burton’s innovation didn’t end with the mixing of musical styles. His unique four-mallet technique has become known as the “Burton grip,” which allow him to play the vibraphone in a much more pianistic style. In 1967, he formed the Gary Burton Quartet, and the group’s first album, Duster, set the stage of the jazz-fusion tend in the 1970s by combining jazz, country and rock and roll. In 1968, he became the youngest musician to win Down Beat magazine’s Jazzman of the Year award, and his 1972 album Alone at Last (MP3) won him the first of seven Grammys.

Burton came out publicly in 1992 during a radio interview with NPR’s Terry Gross. ” At that time I was in my early 40s,” he wrote in an email to BTB. “Like many from my generation, I struggled for the first half of my life to understand my sexual identity, but finally accepted that I am gay and always was.” He added: “I have always hoped that my experience might serve as a source of encouragement and enlightenment for others in my profession, who are trying to reconcile a career in the public eye while being a member of the gay community. I have been fortunate to have found acceptance from both the musical community and the public during my 30 years of being out. I have no idea what might be said when I’m not around, but I have never directly experienced any discrimination because of my identity.”

By the time he came out, he was not only a successful recording artist, but he was also Dean and then Executive Vice President at Berklee College. He retired in 2003, but continues to teach some courses online. His 2012 release Hot House (MP3), with Chick Corea, won a Grammys for Best Improvised Jazz Solo. His latest album, Guided Tour (MP3) came out in August, along with his autobiography, Learning to Listen: The Jazz Journey of Gary Burton.

Here is Gary Burton and Makoto Ozone playing “Afro Blue” at Montreaux:

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Indiana GOP moves gay ban bill to the floor

As expected, the hand-selected committee chosen by Indiana House Leader Brian Bosma has given its rubber stamp to the divisive and discriminatory HJR-3, a proposal to put a gay marriage ban before voters in November. (Journal Gazette)

A panel of Indiana lawmakers has approved a proposed constitutional ban on gay marriage, sending the measure to the House of Representatives for consideration.

The House Elections Committee voted 9-3 to advance the measure Wednesday evening. The vote followed weeks of intense lobbying, emotional testimony and widespread uncertainty on the issue.

The Daily Agenda for Wednesday, January 22

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Events This Weekend: Midsumma, Melbourne, VIC; BeefDip, Puerto Vallarta, JAL; Winter Rendezvous Ski Week, Stowe, VT; GayWhistler Winter Pride, Whistler, BC.

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From Michael’s Thing, April 29, 1974, page 27.

 
The Bike Stop would later open another location at 381 3rd Avenue. That one became known as the Bike Stop East, and the 75th Street location became the Bike Stop West. The bar manager, known as “the Emerald Queen” for the emerald rings he wore, claimed to be Tab Hunter’s half brother. The Bike Stop East today is a sushi bar. I’m not sure what’s going on with the original location.

THIS MONTH IN HISTORY:
The Bicycle in the Treatment of Homosexuality: 1892. In the late 1800s, the entire country was swept up in a massive bicycling craze. We tend to think of bicycling today as a hobby or recreation, but in the late 1800s, it was an amazingly practical, efficient, cheap and speedy way of getting around. Before the bike came along, transportation was either by horse (cumbersome and expensive) or by foot (slow). By 1885, over 400 bicycle factories were working non-stop to keep up with demand. That year alone, Americans bought 2 million bikes, one for every 27 people in the country.

Bicycling also had the added benefit of being healthy exercise. And so it should come as no surprise that it would inspire doctors to find novel prescriptions for their patients’ ailments. Dr. Graeme M. Hammond of New York City wrote to the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease about the new contraption’s ability to calm his patient’s nervous disorders. He presented thirteen cases, which included “one of sexual perversion, and the thirteenth case was one of abnormally developed sexual appetite”:

CASES XII. and XIII. both suffered from abnormal sexual appetites. Case XII. a young man, twenty-four years of age, had observed for the past year a gradually increasing desire for members of his own sex. He had been able to control his appetite so far, but was fearful lest it should finally overcome him and lead him to perpetrate acts which were naturally abhorrent to him. Case XIII. was a man, thirty years of age, whose naturally vigorous sexual appetite had been fed by indulgence, till it seemed as if the gratification of his desires was his only object in life.

I have observed during my twenty years experience among athletes, that physical fatigue is antagonistic to the sexual appetite, and that men who devote their lives to the cultivation of their physical strength are seldom, if ever, immoderate sexually, and during the periods of active training are often abstemious simply from lack of desire. Energy, which, in others might be expended sexually, is in them consumed by hard physical work. It has, therefore, been my custom in those cases, in whom I have considered it advisable to diminish or to abolish the sexual appetite, to prescribe severe and fatiguing exercise in conjunction with suitable medicinal treatment. I have found nothing more serviceable than the bicycle to accomplish this object. It should be used daily, preferably in the afternoon, and the patient should be directed to ride long distances at a rapid rate of speed, not carrying it to such an extent as to produce exhaustion, yet sufficiently so to induce well-marked fatigue.

Both of these patients have repeatedly told me that a hard ride would invariably abolish all sexual desire, even if the appetite was at its strongest just before the ride was taken. Of course, medicinal treatment was administered in both instances; but there can be no doubt that their recovery was hastened and facilitated by the hard physical labor they were subjected to by the use of the bicycle.

Paging NARTH…

[Source: Graeme Hammond. “The bicycle in the treatment of nervous diseases.” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 17, no. 1 ( January 1892): 36-46.]

V.D. As Retribution for Illicit Intercourse: 1916. Today’s history item goes to show that the more things change, the more things stay the same. Through much of the first decades of the AIDS crisis, moralistic preachers, pundits and politicians described the fatal disease as divine punishment for what they saw as illicit behavior. In 1983, for example, New York Post Columnist Pat Buchanan wrote, “The poor homosexuals… they have declared war upon nature, and now nature is exacting an awful retribution.” (See May 24)

It’s that phrase — “awful retribution” — which is as ignorant is it is memorable, even some three decades later. But it’s hardly original. In 1916, Dr. Winfield Scott Hall, professor of physiology at Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago, published a book, Sexual Knowledge, “for the instruction of young people, young wives and young husbands… on the best way and the best time to impart sexual knowledge to boys and girls.” The book was published under a copyright held by The International Bible House, and it proved to be as ignorant and moralizing as anything Buchanan has ever written. The concern then, of course, wasn’t AIDS, but gonorrhea and syphilis, two sexually transmitted diseases for which there were no easy cures. And so avoiding them in the first place was an important priority. Condoms were known to as an effective barrier to transmission, and there were a variety of other remedies which were marketed as prophylactics. But Hall, in Sexual Knowledge, wrote that the only true prevention was adherence to marriage vows:

Nature has devised a retribution for illicit intercourse in the form of venereal disease. If the parties observe fidelity to their marriage vows, venereal disease is experienced in wedlock only on very rare occasions, and then through some accidental infection, as from contact with some public utensil, as a public water closet, a public towel, or a drinking cup. So rare is this unfortunate accident, however, that we may say that intercourse in undefiled wedlock results normally in pleasure and gratification to both parties; while intercourse out of wedlock, or illicit intercourse, is destined, as a rule, to be visited with retribution.

Mind you, this was a professor at Northwestern University’s medical school, one of the largest and most prestigious institutions in the Midwest. Dr. William J. Robinson, who was a physician, sexologist, birth control advocate, and editor of the American Journal of Urology and Sexology, exploded with fury in the January 1916 edition of his journal. Quoting the first sentence from the passage above, Robinson raged:

I wish I possessed a pen sufficiently sharp and vitriolic and a vocabulary sufficiently rich and varied, to characterize properly this sentence, to brand it as it deserves to be branded.

…It isn’t sufficient to characterize it merely as a stupid falsehood; the injury of such statements is much greater than one would casually conceive; they have a further reaching significance in the fact that they tend to loose, illogical thinking and lead to false ideas about Nature in general. Coming from a scientist such a statement is nothing less than a crime. Just think of what the sentence means: in order to discourage men from illicit sexual relations or to punish them for having indulged in ante-matrimonial or extra-matrimonial relations, Nature has designedly, purposely, created the gonococcus and the spirocheta pallida. So thoughtful, so solicitous is Nature about Man’s morality, so deeply interested is she that men should live in strictly monogamic marriage only (which, by the way, everybody except a Professor of Physiology knows is an institution of only comparatively recent origin), that she has deliberately and purposely devised a retribution in the form of gonorrhea and syphilis for all those who dare to indulge in illicit, i. e., natural sex relations! Any union sanctioned by priest or magistrate is to be blessed, happy and free from any disease or disharmony, any union not s0 sanctioned is to be punished by venereal disease. And this is Nature’s deliberate retribution, and so says a scientist, a Professor of Physiology, who is supposed to instruct and develop the thinking powers of the young!

Venereal disease is Nature’s retribution for illicit intercourse. And what is measles, scarlet fever and diphtheria a retribution for? What is consumption, cancer, heart disease, Bright’s disease, a retribution for?

Robertson was just getting warmed up. To drive home the sheer ridiculousness of Hall’s “retribution” thesis, Robertson demanded that Hall’s statement be brought to its most logical conclusion:

I believe in logic to a finish. If it be reprehensible to teach people the use of venereal prophylactics because such knowledge circumvents Nature and destroys the deterrent effect of venereal disease, then it is also reprehensible, nay even criminal, to treat venereal disease, and every venereal specialist is a criminal, because by his skill in curing venereal disease, which is the direct result of illicit intercourse, he circumvents Nature, minimizes the stings of the punishment and thus directly encourages immorality. I am not joking. I am simply logical. And if we believe that Nature has devised venereal disease as a retribution for illicit intercourse, then it stands to reason that any attempt to cure venereal disease, to free men from Nature’s punishment, is a sin against Nature.

Here is the situation. A man knows that there is such a thing as venereal disease; still, prompted by the imperiousness of his instinct, he takes the risk with the conscious or unconscious thought that if he is unfortunate enough to contract the disease he will go to a specialist who will cure it. But suppose there were no such a thing as a venereal specialist? Suppose the treatment of venereal disease were made a criminal offence? Can’t you see that the fear of venereal disease would exert its deterrent effect in a thousand times stronger measure than it does now? If a man were sure that if he contracted gonorrhea or syphilis or chancroids, that he would have to carry the disease for the rest of his life, that not only would there be no hope of any cure, but that he would get no relief, don’t you agree with me that such a man would hesitate much more than he does now, before subjecting himself to the risk of venereal infection? Of course you do. Q. E. D.

We thus reach the logical, the unassailable conclusion that if Nature devised venereal disease as a retribution for illicit intercourse, then it is not only criminal to teach the use of venereal prophylactics, as is now done so commonly in the armies and navies of the world, including those of the United States, but it is just as criminal, in fact more so, to treat venereal disease in any form. If a man wants to be a criminal and wants to break Nature’s laws against illicit intercourse, then let him bear the full consequences, and every man who wants to save him from Nature’s punishment, or wants to cure him after he has been punished, is accessory to the crime.

How does Professor Hall and those who believe with him like this logically unassailable conclusion?

[Sources: Winfield Scott Hall. Sexual Knowledge (Philadelphia: John C. Winston Co., 1916): 129-130. The passage can be read online via Google Books here.

William J. Robinson. “Venereal disease as a retribution for illicit intercourse.” American Journal of Urology and Sexology 12, no. 1 (January 1916): 24-29. Robinson’s article can be read online via Google Books here.]

Portrait of Francis Bacon, 1617, by Frans Pourbus the younger.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Sir Francis Bacon: 1561-1626. The philosopher, essayist, author, jurist, statement and scientist is known as the creator of empiricism, which insisted that knowledge must come from direct experience and evidence rather than traditions, intuitions or religious beliefs. Bacon further honed those theories into a disciplined approach to scientific method which became known as the Baconan methond or, more simply, the scientific method.

Bacon’s career began in law, first as a barrister and then as a member of Parliament, where he became known as a reformer and an advocate against religious persecution. But his career stalled under Queen Elizabeth I, and he found himself mired in debt. When James I ascended to the thrown, Bacon’s prospects improved. He also, at the age of 48, finally married Alice Barnham. His close relationship with the gay James I was fruitful, as Bacon was awarded the office of Solicitor General, then Attorney General, then Lord High Chancellor, the highest post in government aside from the King himself, all within a decade. But his public career ended in 1621 when after falling into debt, he was charged by Parliament with 23 counts of corruption. He was fined £40,000 and sent to the Tower of London at the king’s pleasure. Again, his closeness with the King came in handy as he was released days later with James I covering the fine.

During Bacon’s downfall, there was considerable speculation about his private life and his love for “very effeminate-faced youth,” and Welsh male servants. The Puritan MP Sir Simonds D’Ewes wrote in his diary on the very day of Bacon’s censure by Parliament:

The favour he had with the beloved Marquis of Buckingham emboldened him, as I learned in discourse from a gentleman of his bedchamber, who told me he was sure his lord should never fall as long as the said Marquis continued in favour. His most abominable and darling sinne I should rather burie in silence, than mencion it, were it not a most admirable instance, how men are enslaved by wickedness, & held captive by the devill. For wheeras presentlie upon his censure at this time his ambition was moderated, his pride humbled, and the meanes of his former injustice and corruption removed; yet would he not relinquish the practice of his most horrible & secret sinne of sodomie, keeping still one Godrick, a verie effeminate faced youth, to bee his catamite and bedfellow, although hee had discharged the most of his other household sevants: which was the moore to bee admired, because men generallie after his fall begann to discourse of that his unnaturall crime, which hee had practiced manie yeares, deserting the bedd of his Ladie, which hee accounted, as the Italians and the Turkes doe, a poore & meane pleasure in respect of the other; & it was thought by some, that hee should have been tried at the barre of justice for it, & have satisfied the law most severe against that horrible villanie with the price of his bloud; which caused some bold and forward man to write these verses following in a whole sheete of paper, & to cast it down in some part of Yorkehouse in the strand, wheere Viscount St. Alban yet lay:

Within this sty a *hogg doth ly,
That must be hang’d for Sodomy.

(*alluding both to his sirname of Bacon, & to that swinish abominable sinne.)

But hee never came to anye publicke triall for this crime; nor did ever, that I could heare, forbeare his old custome of making his servants his bedfellowes, soe to avoid the scandall was raised of him, though hee lived many yeares after his fall in his lodgings in Grayes Inne in Holbourne, in great want & penurie.

With his career in government over, Bacon turned to writing and conducting scientific research. He wrote New Atlantis, a utopian fiction which set out his ideals about the best way to organize society; Novum Organum, in which he discussed the organization of knowledge; and The Advancement of Learning, where he argued for empirical research instead of supposition and superstition. In 1626, his commitment to empiricism may have been a factor in his death. To test whether freezing meat would preserve it, he went out in a blizzard and stuffed a dead chicken with snow. As he wrote while on what would turn out to be his death bed, “As for the experiment itself, it succeeded excellently well; but in the journey between London and Highgate, I was taken with such a fit of casting as I know not whether it were the Stone, or some surfeit or cold, or indeed a touch of them all three.” He died of pneumonia a month later on April 9, 1626.

70 YEARS AGO: Elaine Noble: 1944. Before Harvey Milk won political office in San Francisco, there was Elaine Noble in Boston. She won her Massachusetts state House of Representatives seat in 1974, becoming the first non-incumbent “avowed homosexual” to be elected to public office. It was a nasty campaign from beginning to end: her windows were shot out, her car was vandalized, and windows were smashed at her campaign headquarters. As she later recalled, “I was elected in a largely Irish-Catholic town. I was elected in spite of being gay. In the height of desegregation in Boston, I was riding on the buses with children of color. The gay community was just as racist as the straight community. So I had a lot of issues around race… There was a level of animosity in all strata of society against homosexuality.”

Despite that animosity, she won 59% of the vote. She did it by focusing on the things people in her district cared about: crime, health care, housing for the district’s many elderly residents, and the neglect in city services.

But the harassment continued after she took office. “One day, I was walking to the State House and there was a guy, 85 years old, and he walked up and said, ”Rep. Noble.’ And I reached up to shake his hand and he spit on me. And then I turned around and he started doing his diatribe. I walked all the way home, showered and changed my clothes. So, even walking to work or riding my bike to work was not terribly safe.”

She not only had to deal with obscene profanities, she once found human feces left in her desk. But when she stood for re-election two years later, she won with almost 90% of the vote. In 1977, she was part of the first delegation of gay men and lesbians invited to the Jimmy Carter White House to discuss issues important to the LGBT community (see Mar 26). Being such an important “first” took its toll on her though, and she decided against running for re-election in 1978:

My phone was ringing constantly from people all over the country who had very frightened voices. There were people all over the country calling and asking if I would come and speak. They’d say, “Well, you have a responsibility to a bigger constituency.” I was pulled in a thousand different ways. It was not going to have a happy ending and I was smart enough to know that. I thought, “Well, I’ve done my best. It’s time for me to move on to the next step in my own life. I’ve paid my dues.”

Since then, with the exception of an occasional interview, she has mostly been living a considerably quieter private life.

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Indiana marriage ban moved to another committee

You may recall that last week the Indiana Judiciary Committee heard testimony on a bill to place a constitutional amendment banning marriage equality on the ballot this fall.

At the time, I said that if Republican Party leadership was smart, they would kill the bill in committee. Not only will it hurt the future of the party in the state, it may go down to embarrassing defeat in November and drag Republican candidates down with it.

And, for a moment, it appeared as though that might have happened. No vote was called on the bill.

But, as it turns out, the party leadership is astonishingly stupid. Stunningly so. (IndyStar)

In a highly unusual move, Indiana House Speaker Brian Bosma today moved the controversial same-sex marriage ban to a new committee — where it stands a better chance of passing — after the measure stalled in another committee.
…
The measure had a hearing last week in the Judiciary Committee, but House Republican leaders decided against bringing it to a vote amid concerns that three GOP lawmakers might vote against it and kill the amendment.

Bosma said Greg Steuerwald, R-Avon, Elections Committee chairman, told him he was not confident the amendment was going to come to the floor. Bosma said he didn’t talk to the members, but let Steuerwald do that.

Ninth Circuit: gays deserve heightened scrutiny

In 2011, GlaxoSmithKline sued Abbott Laboratories over the pricing of an HIV drug. Glaxo received a mixed win, but was not awarded the funds they felt they deserved and argued that the process was unfair, specifically the way in which the jury was selected.

Abbott’s attorneys had excluded a potential juror because he was gay and they believed that he would be biased against their drug pricing practices.

It has long been impermissible to exclude juror based on race or on sex. But the question had not been answered as to whether a person’s sexual orientation could be a reason for exclusion.

Now the Ninth Circuit has weighed in and, not surprisingly, the answer is no. You cannot purposefully select an all-straight jury (or, for that matter an all gay one).

But while it’s nice to find that I can’t be discriminated against in jury selection (though I’m tempted to wish otherwise) the reason for the ruling is the big story here. (Buzzfeed)

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a unanimous decision, held that discrimination based on sexual orientation is subject to heightened scrutiny — a decision the court concluded has been made in action, though not in word, by the Supreme Court itself.

In describing the reason for applying the new standard, Judge Stephen Reinhardt examined the Supreme Court’s June decision in Edith Windsor’s case challenging the Defense of Marriage Act. Although equal protection claims brought based on sexual orientation have previously been judged under the lowest level of review, called rational basis, the 9th Circuit held that a higher standard now applies.

Writing for the three-judge panel, Reinhardt wrote:

Windsor review is not rational basis review. In its words and its deed, Windsor established a level of scrutiny for classifications based on sexual orientation that is unquestionably higher than rational basis review. In other words, Windsor requires that heightened scrutiny be applied to equal protection claims involving sexual orientation.

When a court reviews a discrimination case, it has different levels of “scrutiny” with which it examines a potentially discriminatory situation.

The weakest, “rational basis”, requires that the state be attempting to bring about a legitimate governmental purpose and that the law be rationally related to that goal. For example, a state might restrict driving in a carpool lane to vehicles with a minimum number of passengers. And while single people might feel this disadvantages them, because the state seeks to reduce vehicle emissions (a legitimate purpose) and because encouraging carpooling is rationally related to that goal, there is no civil rights issue. Under this basis the state generally has the presumption of legitimacy.

The strongest, “strict scrutiny”, requires a compelling governmental interest to which the policy is narrowly tailored and is the least restrictive way to achieve that goal. This category comes into play when a targeted group has a history of discrimination, an immutable characteristic, and is politically powerless to bring about change on its own, such as a group defined by race.

Strict scrutiny is a much higher standard and much more difficult to pass. Under this basis, the presumption is on the side of the group subjected to discrimination. For example, if a state were to pass a law restricting a carpool lane on the basis of race, it would be assumed to be unconstitutional out of the gate.

In between is “intermediate scrutiny”, in which a law must be for an important governmental interest and substantially related to that interest. Sex and illegitimacy issues fall into this category.

Another possible category appears to be “heightened scrutiny”, which is not yet well defined. It may be the same as intermediate scrutiny, and has been used in legal circles interchangeably, but that is not yet clearly established. But if it is not the same, it’s quite similar. It is in this category that the Ninth Circuit has found sexual orientation.

What all this means in practical terms is that – unless the Supreme Court reverses this decision – at least in the Ninth Circuit, laws that distinguish on the basis of sexual orientation will likely be overturned.

We have won a number of issues on the lowest, rational basis scrutiny, and if a state must now prove that their anti-gay discrimination is substantially related to an important governmental interest, then we have an even better chance of winning.