Box Turtle Bulletin

Uganda’s Parliament Passes Anti-Homosexuality Bill (UPDATED)

Breaking: Anti-Sodomy bill passed in Ugandans Parliament. Photo with David Bahati immediately after pic.twitter.com/Ih2gBcTfFg" @ntvuganda

— Martin Ssempa (@martinssempa) December 20, 2013

Breaking News : I am officially illegal : Uganda Parliament passes the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, 2009

— Dr. Frank Mugisha (@frankmugisha) December 20, 2013

AHB being debated right now in Parliament of Uganda. Motion for 2nd reading. Be very alert. Police raided our workshop just yesterday.

— BombasticKasha (@KashaJacqueline) December 20, 2013

There are multiple reports from Uganda media indicating that the nation’s Parliament has given its final approval to the notorious Anti-Homosexuality Bill today. The independent Daily Monitor leads with the story:

Parliament has passed the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, 2009, which proposes life imprisonment for homosexual acts.

A proposal for a 14-year-sentence for those convicted for homosexual acts, which the Bill criminalises, was rejected by Members of Parliament who instead maintained the life imprisonment proposal.

The tabloid Red Pepper confirms the story, as do Warren Throckmorton and the BBC, which reports that the bill apparently passed despite a possible lack of quorum in Parliament:

The prime minister opposed the vote, saying not enough MPs were present. …She says that Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi might follow up on his complaints about a lack of quorum, while it remains to be seen whether President Yoweri Museveni will sign the bill into law.

The government-owned New Vision reports that the Prime Minister said “there would be further ‘consultations’ on part of the government.” It also reports that President Yoweri Museveni “will decide if it becomes law or not.”

Parliament Speaker Rebecca Kadaga’s decision to bring the bill up for a vote appears to have been a surprise. There has been no indication that the bill would be brought for a vote in the Order Papers posted on Parliament’s web site.

It is unclear which provisions of the bill’s original proposals made it into the final version passed by Parliament. This BBC report indicates the death penalty was dropped, but news agencies, including the BBC, have a very long history of getting this wrong before. (Update: Parliament Watch tweets that the death penalty was removed in favor of life imprisonment.) Last year, the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee made numerous recommendations to the bill, but held those recommendations secret. Warren Throckmorton has obtained a copy of those recommendations and posted them here.  The original bill (PDF: 847KB/16 pages) contained the following provisions:

Clauses 1 and 2: Anybody Can Be Gay Under the Law. The definition of what constitutes “homosexual act” as defined in the first two clauses are so broad that just about anyone can be convicted of just about anything, including “touching” with the “intent” of committing “homosexuality,” even when fully clothed. It also sets the penalty for any “homosexual act” as life imprisonment. The Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee recommended reducing that sentence to fourteen years, but based on news reports it appears that Parliament has rejected that recommendation. (Update: Parliament Watch tweets that the subclause outlawing “touching” with the “intent” of committing homosexuality was deleted.)
Clause 3: Anyone Can Be “Liable To Suffer Death”. And you don’t even have to be gay to be sent to the gallows. The Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee recommended replacing the death penalty with a life sentences, but it is not clear whether Parliament approved that recommendation. (Update: Parliament Watch tweets that the death penalty was removed in favor of life imprisonment.) But can anyone seriously imaging that spending a lifetime in Uganda’s notorious Luzira prison is any better? Especially once your fellow prisoners learn that you were sent there for “aggravated homosexuality”?
Clause 4: Anyone Can “Attempt to Commit Homosexuality”. All you have to do is “attempt” to “touch” “any part of of the body” “with anything else” “through anything” in an act that does “not necessarily culminate in intercourse.” The Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee recommended the removal of this clause for being “too hard and difficult to prove and may cause absurdities.” (Update: Parliament Watch conforms that Clause 4 was deleted.)
Clauses 5, 6, 8, 9, and 10: How To Get Out Of Jail Free. The bill is written to openly encourage and even opens the possibility for financial incentives for one partner to turn state’s evidence against another. The Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee recommended the removal of Clause 8, which would have prohibited the “conspiracy to engage in homosexuality.” The committee also recommended the removal of Clause 10, which would have prohibited the “detention with intent to commit homosexuality.” The reason given for the removal of both clauses was to prevent “absurdities.” At this time it is unknown whether Parliament followed through on those recommendations. (Update: Parliament Watch confirms that Clause 8 was deleted. They also confirm that Clause 10 was deleted.)
Clauses 7, 11, and 14: Straight People In The Crosshairs. The bill has specific clauses that would also target family members, doctors, lawyers, and even landlords for refusing to turn gay people over to the police or providing services to anyone that they know to be gay. The Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee recommended eliminating Clause 14 (“failure to disclose”), but it’s unclear whether Parliament adopted that recommendation. (Update: Parliament Watch tweets that the “failure to disclose” clause was deleted.) Providing services or providing lodgings still appear to be illegal.
Clause 12: Till Life Imprisonment Do You Part. Officiating a same-sex wedding results in up to three years’ imprisonment. The Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee recommended changing the penalty for entering into a marriage from life to fourteen years. It’s unclear whether that recommendation was adopted. (Update: Parliament Watch tweets that the penalty for conducting a marriage was raised to seven years.)
Clause 13: The Silencing of the Lambs. All advocacy — including suggesting that the law might be repealed — will result in prison sentences.
Clause 14: The Requirement Isn’t To Report Just Gay People To Police. It’s To Report Everyone. A closer look shows that the requirement to report doesn’t just apply to gay people, but to anyone, gay or straight, who violates the law’s clauses. (Update: Parliament Watch tweets that the “failure to disclose” clause was deleted.)
Clauses 16 and 17: The Extra-Territorially Long Arm of Ugandan Law. “Crimes” committed outside of Uganda by Ugandan citizens or residents will result in prosecution in Uganda.The Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee recommended eliminating these clauses, but it’s unclear whether Parliament adopted that recommendation
Clause 18: We Don’t Need No Stinking Treaties. The bill not only violates several international treaties, it also turns the Ugandan constitution on its head. The Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee recommended eliminating Clause 18, but it’s unclear whether Parliament adopted that recommendation
Clauses 15 and 19: The Establishment Clauses For The Ugandan Inquisition. These clauses empower the Ethics and Integrity Minister to enforce all of the bill’s provisions. He’s already gotten a head start.

The Daily Agenda for Friday, December 20

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Frank Kameny Fired From Government Job for Being Gay: 1957. Frank Kameny was a World War II veteran and Harvard-trained astronomer working for the Army Map Service. In Eric Marcus’s compendium of oral histories, Making History, Kameny described the events that led him to a lifetime of LGBT advocacy:

When I was on assignment in Hawaii in November or December of 1957, I got a call from my supervisor in Washington, D.C., to come back at once. I told him that whatever the problem, it could wait a few days, and I returned to Washington at the end of the week. As soon as I got back, I was called in by some two-bit Civil Service Commission investigator and told, “We have information that leads us to believe that you are a homosexual. Do you have any comment?” I said, “What’s the information?” They answered, “We can’t tell you.” I said, well, then I can’t give you an answer. You don’t deserve an answer. and in any case, this is none of your business.” I was not open about being gay at that time — no one was, not in 1957. But I was certainly leading a social life. I went to the gay bars many, many evenings. I’ve never been a covert kind of a person, and I wasn’t about to be one simply because I was working for the government. I’ve never been one to function on the basis that Big Brother may be looking over my shoulder.

So they called me in, and ultimately it resulted in my termination. They did it the way the government does anything: They issued a letter. They said they were dismissing me for homosexuality. I was in shock.

…Keep in mind I had been training all of my life for a scientific career, for this kind of occupation. I was not at all familiar with the job market. When I was thrown out, I had nowhere to go. Perhaps if this had happened five or ten years later, I would have had a professional reputation to fall back on, but in this case I didn’t. For a long time I applied for jobs in astronomy, but there was nothing. Ultimately, in 1959, I got a job doing something in physics. My bachelor’s degree is in physics, in the area of optics.

But meanwhile, I had decided that my dismissal amounted to a declaration of war against me by my government. First, I don’t grant me government the right to declare war on me. And second, I tend not to lose my wars.

Kameny launched a string of appeals, first through the Civil Service commission itself, then through the courts. He took his appeals all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court — writing his own brief (which is available here) declaring the discrimination he experienced “a stench in the nostrils of decent people, an offense against morality, an abandonment of reason, an affront to human dignity, an improper restraint upon proper freedom and liberty, a disgrace to any civilized society, and a violation of all that this nation stands for.” The Supreme Court denied his petition in 1961.

Kameny went on to co-found the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., which in 1963 launched a long campaign to overturn the federal employment ban on gay people and to overturn the district’s sodomy law. In 1965, he organized the first picket line in front of the White House in support of gay rights (see Apr 17), followed by several other protests throughout that year. He was also an instrumental player in the fight to remove homosexuality from the American Psychiatric Association’s list of mental disorders. In 1971, he became the first openly gay candidate for the U.S. Congress when he ran for D.C’s non-voting Congressional delegate (see Feb 22). In 1975, the U.S. Civil Service Commission notified him that they had changed their policies and were now allowing gay people to work in federal jobs (see Jul 3). In 2009, the U.S. government officially repudiated Kameny’s firing when John Berry, the openly gay Director of the Office of Personnel Management, delivered a formal apology during a special OPM ceremony in his honor. Upon receiving the apology, Kameny tearfully replied, “Apology accepted.” He passed away in 2011 at the age of 86. You can read his full biography here.

Vermont Supreme Court Rules State Must Recognize Same-Sex Unions: 1999. In a unanimous decision, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that the state must provide the same benefits, protections and obligations to same-sex couples as it does to heterosexual couples. The Supreme Court left it up to the legislature to decide how it would end the discrimination, either through marriage or through civil unions. Most state political leaders opted for the latter. State Attorney General William Sorrell, predicted, “It would likely be a civilly sanctioned relationship that would, for all intents and purposes, have the benefits and protections a traditionally married couple would have but wouldn’t be called a marital relationship. They wouldn’t be called spouses, they’d be called domestic partners, and for a number of people, that makes an enormous difference.” Gov. Howard Dean concurred, saying that same-sex marriage “makes me uncomfortable, the same as anybody else.” Beth Robinson, the lawyer for the winning plaintiffs, dismissed that idea and pressed for full marriage. “The Legislature will come to understand that as a practical matter, you can’t call it something different and have it be truly equal.”

It would take another decade before the Legislature would come to that understanding, opting instead to go for civil unions, which Gov. Dean signed into law 0n April 26, 2000. It took effect on July 1, 2000. In 2009, the Legislature revisited the issue again and passed a same-sex marriage bill with bipartisan support, only to see it vetoed by Gov. Jim Douglas (R). The legislature then overturned the governor’s veto, and same-sex marriages finally became available in the Green Mountain State on September 1, 2009.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Elsie de Wolfe: 1865-1950. She was the legendary interior designer who finally put gloomy victorian styles out of its misery. And for that, she is hailed as America’s first decorator and her designs, nearly a century later, are still just as fresh today as they were bold in at the turn of the last century. She began her creative life as an actress in the 1890s, but her appearances were appreciated more for her stylish clothes than her performing abilities.

At about 1887, she began what was called “A Boston marriage” with Elisabeth “Bessie” Marbury — a New York socialite, literary agent, and business manager with such illustrious clients as Oscar Wilde (see Oct 16), George Bernard Shaw, and Sarah Bernhardt. The two bought and restored Villa Trianon in Versailles, France, where de Wolfe became enamored with the light colors and brightly-lit rooms that defined French style. She then drew on those influences as she set about redecorating Marbury’s New York home by throwing out all of that dark Victorian furnishings and cluttering bric-a-brac, and people took notice. When a group of wealthy women formed the exclusive Colony Club, de Wolfe was tapped to design the clubhouse’s interiors. The Colony opened in 1907 and with it, de Wolfe’s reputation was set.

A photo from A House In Good Taste, 1913.

Instead of the dark paneled rooms and heavy atmosphere common with men’s clubs, The Colony featured light draperies, pale walls, wicker furniture, chintz — she became known as “the Chintz Lady” — and light, lots of natural light. Her design practice exploded overnight, with commissions for private houses, clubs, opera boxes, and a dorm at Barnard College. Her 1913 book, The House in Good Taste, became an instant classic which still offers timeless advice today. As she explained, “I opened the doors and windows of American and let the air and sunshine in.” That same year, her design business took up an entire floor of offices on Fifth Avenue. In 1915, she was commissioned to design a brand new townhouse for Henry Clay Frick, then the wealthiest man in America. That commission alone made her a very rich woman.

De Wolfe was an iconoclast in many ways. She single-handedly turned the design profession from a “man’s world” into one in which women could excel. She embroidered her own pillows with the motto, “Never complain, never explain.” At her home in France, she had a dog cemetery where each headstone carried the epitaph, “The one I loved the best.” And speaking of France, When World War I came along, she broke from all expectations by volunteering to become a nurse — where she was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Legion of Honor for her work with mustard gas victims. In 1926, she scandalized French society with her grand entrance to a society ball dressed as a Moulin Rouge dancer while turning handsprings — at the age of 61 — her many years of practicing yoga did well for her. Her marriage that same year to the diplomat Sir Charles Mendl was also a surprise because, as The New York Times dryly observed, “When in New York she makes her home with Miss Elizabeth [sic] Marbury at 13 Sutton Place.” Her marriage now made her Lady Mendl, immortalized in the Cole Porter lyric:

When you hear that Lady Mendl, standing up
Now turns a handspring landing up-
On her toes
Anything goes!

When World War II broke out, Mendl and de Wolfe moved to Hollywood. After the war, they returned to Villa Trianon where de Wolfe died in 1950.

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?

A map of marriage at the end of 2013

As we close out the last days of the year, 17 states and DC offer full marriage equality (or are waiting for the effective date of legislation):

Massachusetts
Connecticut
Vermont
Iowa
New Hampshire
District of Columbia
New York
Washington
Maryland
Maine
Rhode Island
Delaware
Minnesota
California
New Jersey
Illinois
Hawaii
New Mexico

Three more offer everything-but-the-name Domestic Partnerships

Oregon
Nevada
Colorado

And Wisconsin offers limited Domestic Partnership rights.

New Mexico Supremes rule for marriage equality

The Supreme Court of New Mexico has ruled on the decision of some county clerks to offer marriage licenses: (KOB)

The state Supreme Court declared state marriage laws unconstitutional and upheld New Mexico county clerks’ decisions to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

The state Supreme Court will now define “civil marriage” as the voluntary union of two persons to the exclusion of all others. In addition, all rights, protections, and responsibilities that result from the marital relationship shall apply equally to both same-gender and opposite-gender married couples.

We’ll bring you more, as more comes in.

UPDATE: From the Ruling

Prohibiting same-gender marriages is not substantially related to the governmental interests advanced by the parties opposing same-gender marriage or to the purposes we have identified. Therefore, barring individuals from marrying and depriving them of the rights, protections, and responsibilities of civil marriage solely because of their sexual orientation violates the Equal Protection Clause under Article II, Section 18 of the New Mexico Constitution. We hold that the State of New Mexico is constitutionally required to allow same-gender couples to marry and must extend to them the rights, protections, and responsibilities that derive from civil marriage under New Mexico law.

UPDATE 2 More:

Because same-gender couples (whether lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, hereinafter “LGBT”) are a discrete group which has been subjected to a history of discrimination and violence, and which has inadequate political power to protect itself from such treatment, the classification at issue must withstand intermediate scrutiny to be constitutional. Accordingly, New Mexico may neither constitutionally deny same-gender couples the right to marry nor deprive them of the rights, protections, and responsibilities of marriage laws, unless the proponents of the legislation—the opponents of same-gender marriage—prove that the discrimination caused by the legislation is “substantially related to an important government interest.”

And here we find that in New Mexico, discrimination against gay people must be held to “intermediate scrutiny”, a higher level that generally assumes that discrimination against gay people is at least somewhat likely to be unconstitutional.

I don’t yet see an effective date, so I assume this is law immediately.

The Ruling was unanimous.

UPDATE 3

It’s been a good year for marriage. In 2013, the number doubled from 8 states plus the District of Columbia to the new total: 17 states plus DC.

Ken Hutcherson is dead

Ken Hutcherson had a consistent theme throughout his life: hatred.

By his own accounts, Hutcherson’s youth was consumed with rage and hatred towards white people. He believed what his uncle told him: that the only good white person was a dead one. He claimed that it was this hatred that inspired him to play football.

“The only reason I played football was so I could hurt white people legally.”

Then he found Jesus and his hatred turned into love, to hear him tell it. He played pro-ball, founded the Antioch Bible Church in Kirkland, Washington, and married the “whitest of white women in the world.”

In reality, his hatred simply found a new target: gay people. Opposing equality, decency, and tolerance of gay people – and doing so as offensively and hatefully as possible – became the obsession in Hutcherson’s life.

I first became aware of Hutcherson back in 2004, when he was one of the speakers at the anti-gay MayDay for Marriage, a sort of anti-equality rally in Washington, DC. That was followed by years of anti-gay activism, local and global.

In 2005, he persuaded Microsoft to declare that it did not support a Washington State bill that would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation. He demanded that the software company fire two employees who had spoke in favor of the legislation.

The following year, when Microsoft committed to supporting the bill, he tried to lead a “nation-wide boycott” against Microsoft and other Washington State companies for their support. He claimed that the Southern Baptist Convention leadership, Focus on the Family, and the Family Research Council supported his boycott; none did and, in fact, the boycott proved to be non-existant. The bill passed.

Hutcherson tried twice to put an initiative on the ballot to reverse the law but was unable to collect sufficient signatures.

In April 2007, Hutcherson joined with a group of anti-gay African American preachers to oppose including sexual orientation in the hate crimes act.

In June 2007, “Hutch” joined Scott Lively in Riga to stir up anti-gay sentiment in the Baltic state of Latvia (falsely claiming to be a “special envoy” of the White House). The two joined with Latvian pastor Aleksey Ledyaev, to create an organization called Watchmen on the Walls. The SPLC came to descibe Watchmen on the Walls as “one of the most virulent anti-gay organizations we have seen in this country.”

Later that month, he was a featured speaker at Exodus International’s Freedom Conference.

In October 2007, Governor Schwarzenegger signed an anti-bullying bill in California. Watchmen on the Walls had this response:

“Now it’s time to rescue our children from the public schools as from a hellish furnace. Just like one who would prescribe the burning of kids in the Nazi’s concentration camps furnaces, now 65 years later Arnold Schwarzenegger opened furnaces which are even worse for our children by his signature. Pray and fast for the kids and families of California and take your kids out of public schools.”

The following month, Hutcherson showed up at the annual board meeting of Microsoft to continue his battle against the company for its support of gay employees.

“…we are putting together one of the largest, one of the most powerful groups to come to deal with Microsoft on issues that we believe is hurting our society. And the reason why we are excited about this is because we know that we have the power behind us.

And as I close, I would like to let you know that sometimes our love to work with you as a partner to improve our community, that fails; thus, we have to come another way, and I am probably one of the worst nightmares that this corporation can have. I’m a black man with a righteous cause, with a great deal and a whole host of powerful white people behind me. I hope to hear from you so we can work together. If not, you will be hearing from me again. Thank you.”

Microsoft politely ignored him. So Hutcherson decided to try for a hostile takeover of the company. He started AGN Financial Network with the plan that anti-gay Christians buy three shares of Microsoft and give one to the network. There is no indication whether a share was ever purchased.

In February 2008, the principle of Mt. Si High School in the Snoqualmie Valley (where Hutcherson’s daughter attended) invited the preacher to speak to the students about civil rights on Martin Luther King Day. Although Hutcherson did not take the opportunity to advance his anti-gay agenda, one of the teachers booed him and another asked how he could come and speak about civil rights when he was determined to deny the civil rights of gay people.

In response, Hutcherson demanded that the teachers be fired. Both received reprimands.

But failure to fire the teachers who offended him propelled Hutcherson into a full war against the school.

First he sent his daughter into Mt. Si’s Gay-Straight-Alliance with her camera to monitor and report back to him on anything that could be twisted into something objectionable. He complained to anti-gay press that teachers were telling her that she made other students uncomfortable.

In March of 2008, he took on the GSA’s attempt to have a Day of Silence, a national student-lead effort to bring attention to the bullying of gay teens. First he went after a librarian, a supportive staff member, sending her an email accusing the GSA of being a “sex club” and threatening,

I want the teachers Kit McCormick and George Potratz fired and I will not stop until they are gone. Do you wish to be added to that list? I want the day of silence silenced and it will not happen during school time anymore.

In April he announced his intention to protest the event and went on Christian radio claiming to be a victim of the “homosexual agenda”.

On the Day of Silence, Hutcherson showed up with a bullhorn and about 100 supporters to try and disrupt the event. About a third of students opted to stay away from school on that day. Hutcherson declared victory.

In November 2009, a group of Mt. Si High Schools students were bullying a gay student when another student tried to intervene. A 16 year-old student stepped in and attacked the 14 year-old would-be protector and beat him, knocking out two teeth and fractured his eye socket. Hutcherson had nothing to say about the attack.

In 2012 Governor Christine Gregoire stated her support for marriage equality. Hutcherson had this response:

She might as well change her name to John Wilkes Booth because what she’s doing now is trying to put a bullet in the head of one of the greatest traditions that has ever existed and has built our society, and that is marriage between one man and one woman.

And this

If this law is passed, what is going to happen? Now ask your guests in the studio. Do they believe that if they change the definition of marriage being between one man and one woman, what is going to stop two men one woman, two women one man, one man against a horse, one man with a boy, one man with anything?

And now Ken Hutcherson is dead from prostate cancer at the age of 61. He lived long enough to see hate crimes passed, sexual orientation inclusive non-discrimination laws enacted in his home state, marriage equality come to Washington State, and social acceptance of gays and lesbians by students throughout the country.

In his life, Rev. Ken Hutcherson was never hesitant to preach a message of hate towards gays and others.

During his sermon, Hutcherson stated, “God hates soft men” and “God hates effeminate men.” Hutcherson went on to say, “If I was in a drugstore and some guy opened the door for me, I’d rip his arm off and beat him with the wet end.”

If he’s right about all people facing judgment in an afterlife, Hutcherson now has the opportunity to find out if his God is as vengeful and full of hate as he was.

The Daily Agenda for Thursday, December 19

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Michelangelo Signorile: 1960. After graduating with a degree in journalism at at Syracuse University, the Brooklyn native returned to New York where he got his first job at a public relations firm which specialized in placing stories about their entertainment clients in gossip columns. That naturally meant that he was collecting and trading in gossip, which is where he noticed the double standard in how the media glamorized the heterosexuality of celebrities while maintaining a veil of silence around anything that might be remotely gay. But it wasn’t until his friends began dying in the early years of the AIDS crisis that he began to draw a line from gay invisibility to the ease with which media and public officials could turn a blind eye on what was happening. He became an activist in 1988 when he joined ACT UP, which led to his arrest during a speech by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later to become Pope Benedict XVI) who was the Vatican’s point man on Catholic orthodoxy and the author of papers against homosexuality and against condom use to prevent the spread of AIDS. Signorile had gone simply to watch the protesters, but as he heard the Cardinal speak, he thought of the homophobia he had experienced growing up in the church, and he couldn’t contain himself. As he wrote later in Queer In America: Sex, The Media, and the Closets of Power:

Suddenly, I jumped up on one of the marble platforms, and looking down, I addressed the entire congregation in the loudest voice I could. My voice rang out as if it were amplified. I pointed at Ratzinger and shouted, “He is no man of God!” The shocked faces of the assembled Catholics turned to the back of the room to look at me as I continued: “He is no man of God—he is the devil!'”

So yeah, he was arrested, and another gay rights activist was born.

Signorile is considered the pioneer of the controversial act of outing public figures. He was the co-founding editor of OutWeek, where, in a weekly column called “Gossip Watch,” a watch column of the city’s gossip columns, he railed against the media’s double standard on how they treated gay and straight public figures, and he argued that this double standard drove the gay community to invisibility in the midst of an growing health catastrophe. He outed Hollywood producer David Geffen, who was promoting Guns ‘N’ Roses and comedian Andrew Dice Clay, two acts which were attacked for crude anti-gay lyrics and “jokes” about the AIDS crisis. He also outed gossup columnist Liz Smith and publishing tycoon Malcolm Forbes. It was actually Time magazine which coined the term “outing”, but Signorile always considered the term itself biased. He preferred to call what he did “reporting,” and insisted that it was no different from the same kind of reporting that media outlets routinely do with straight people.

Signorile later worked at the Advocate and Out magazines, and he also wrote columns for Gay.com. In 2000 he began working in internet radio, and that led to hosting The Michelangelo Signorile Show on SiriusXM OutQ beginning in 2003. This past year, his program moved to a broader audience on SiriusXM’s Progress 127, from 3:00 to 6:00 p.m. EST. He has written three other books, including Life Outside: The Signorile Report on Gay Men and Hitting Hard, a collection of essays and columns. His 1996 book, Outing Yourself: How to Come Out as Lesbian or Gay to Your Family, Friends and Coworkers was an exceptionally valuable book to me as I was beginning my own journey of coming out.

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 Wednesday, December 18

TODAY IN HISTORY:
New York Court of Appeals Strikes Down Sodomy Law: 1980. New York became the twenty-fourth state in the nation to legalize homosexuality when the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, struck down the New York’s consensual sodomy law. In a 5-2 decision, the court ruled that the law violated Constitutional rights to privacy and equal protection, noting that the law banned anal and oral sex only when those acts were performed by unmarried couples. Married couples were exempt under the law. Writing for the majority, Judge Hugh Jones wrote:

“We express no view as to any theological, moral or psychological evaluations of consensual sodomy. It is not the function of the Penal Law or our governmental policy to provide for the enforcement of moral or theological values. …the People have failed to demonstrate how government interference with the practice of personal choice in matters of intimate sexual behavior out of view of the public and with no commercial component will serve to advance the cause of public morality or do anything other than restrict individual conduct and impose a concept of private morality chosen by the State.”

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Jay Bakker: 1975. Having grown up in front of television cameras as the son of televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker at their Christian theme park home in Charlotte, North Carolina, he was deeply affected when his father’s empire came crashing down. His father was sent to prison for financial irregularities and mail fraud, and his family was subsequently ostracized by fellow Evangelicals. For Jay, that led to a downward spiral of rebellion and drug abuse. But he eventually turned his life around and committed himself to a different vision of Christianity, one with God as a loving and accepting being rather than a God of judgment and wrath. In the process, he became a very different kind of minister, an “evangelical punk preacher,” as he describes himself. Jay’s experience of being outcast informed his own philosophy of inclusiveness which extends to LGBT people. In the 2006 documentary One Punk Under God, Jay is seen explaining why he supports same-sex marriage to a congregation that is not ready to accept that message:

In 2011, Jay Bakker released his book, Fall to Grace: A Revolution of God, Self and Society, in which he says that it’s grace, not religion, that he believes in. “Religion can be a very dangerous thing,” he told NPR. “It’s a constant reminder to me to be careful.” He co-founded Revolution Church in 1994, which meets every Sunday afternoon at a bar in Brooklyn. This past year, Jay has moved to Minneapolis where he established another Revolution Church location. He has also released a new book, Faith, Doubt, and Other Lines I’ve Crossed: Walking with the Unknown God.

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 Tuesday, December 17

TODAY IN HISTORY:
50 YEARS AGO: New York Times: “Growth of Overt Homosexuality In City Provokes Wide Concern”: 1963. Randy Wicker was a brash young activist who, beginning in 1958, decided it was time to shake things up if the gay community was ever going to get anywhere. As a grad student, he volunteered with the New York Mattachine Society hoping to move the organization’s advocacy efforts in a much stronger direction. When the group scheduled a talk on “The Homosexual and the Law,” Wicker took it upon himself to print up some signs and post then throughout Greenwich Village to publicize the event. Mattachine members, who were more accustomed to the more closeted word-of-mouth method of getting the word out, found Wicker a “disturbing acquisition to the movement,” as the group’s president later said. To get around the Mattachines’ fearfulness, Wicker created a one-man advocacy “group” he called the Homosexual League of New York, so that whenever he had a project that the Mattachines felt was too far out there, his “League” could ride to the rescue. It was under that guise that Wicker appeared on WBAI radio in 1962 (see Jul 15), where New York radio listeners, for the first time, heard Wicker and six other gay men talk for ninety minutes about what it was like to be gay.

Wicker was always looking for ways to generate attention, and so when Robert Doty of The New York Times contacted him asking for help on a story about homosexuals — Doty explained that he actually knew very little about the subject — Wicker was eager to help. He took Doty on something on a field trip of gay bars in New York, and he provided him with articles from ONE magazine about Evelyn Hooker, the UCLA psychologist whose research challenged the prevailing view that homosexuality was an illness (see Aug 30 and Sep 2). As Wicker later recalled, “I told him, ‘Look, I understand that the majority opinion in the psychiatric community says that homosexuality is a disorder and that these people are out claiming they can change people. All I want is equal treatment. At least give some exposure to the minority voices that say homosexuality is not necessarily a pathology.”

Unfortunately, equal treatment was not on offer when Doty’s story appeared on the Times’ front page on a brisk Tuesday morning in December:

The problem of homosexuality in New York became the focus yesterday of increased attention by the State Liquor Authority and the Police Department.

The liquor authority announced the revocation of the liquor licenses of two more homosexual taverns that had been repeatedly raided by the police. The places were the Fawn, at 795 Washington Street near Jain Street, and the Heights Supper Club at 90 Montague Street, Brooklyn.

The city’s most sensitive open secret — the presence of what is probably the greatest homosexual population in the world and the increasing openness of its manifestations — has become the subject of growing concern by psychiatrists and religious leaders as well as law enforcement officers. One division of the organized crime syndicate controls bars and restaurants that cater to the homosexual trade. Commenting yesterday on the attack on such places and the attention being directed at their habitues, Police Commissioner Michael J. Murphy said:

“The police jurisdiction in this area is limited. But when persons of this type become a source of public scandal, or violate the laws, or place themselves in a position where they become the victims of crime they do come within our jurisdiction.”

Mr. Hostetter said the Heights supper Club had a signal light system “that warned the boys to stop dancing with one another” when a newcomer was suspected of being a policeman. The Fawn had a back room to which an admission was charged and where as many as 70 to 80 deviates had parties on Friday and Saturday nights. Most of the patrons were males, but on police found women dancing with women.

There were 19 police visits this year resulting in summonses and complaints of a noisy jukebox, disorderly premises, insufficient lighting and dancing without a cabaret license, and an arrest for degeneracy.

Before Doty could even broach the subject of homosexuality as a mental illness — and he did devote much of his article to that very topic — he introduced New Yorkers to homosexuals as criminals, or at least as associating with the criminal element. Doty wrote that homosexuality had been, until now, “protected by taboos on open discussion,” which allowed it to become “an obtrusive part” of New York society. As for balance, Doty provided this:

Two conflicting viewpoints converge today to overcome the silence and promote public discussion. The first is the organized homophile movement — a minority of militant homosexuals that is openly agitating for removal of legal, social and cultural discrimination against sexual inverts. Fundamental to this aim is the concept that homosexuality is an incurable, congenital disorder (this is disputed by the bulk of scientific evidence) and that homosexuals should be treated by an increasingly tolerant society as just another minority.

This view is challenged by a second group, the analytical psychiatrists, who advocate an end to what it calls a head-in-the-sand approach to homosexuality. They have what they consider overwhelming evidence that homosexuals are created — generally by ill-adjusted parents — not born. They assert that homosexuality can be cured by sophisticated analytical and therapeutic techniques.

More significantly, the weight of the most recent findings suggest that public discussion of the nature of these parental misdeeds and attitudes that tend to foster homosexual development in children could improve family environments and reduce the incidence of sexual inversion.

Wicker’s copies of ONE magazine featuring articles about Evelyn Hooker’s research on homosexuality did make one small appearance in Doty’s article: “The homosexual has a range of gay periodicals that is a kind of distorted mirror image of the straight publishing world.” That was it. Doty then went on to describe, in a very stereotypical fashion, the homosexuals who “throng Manhattan’s Greenwich Village”:

They have their favored clothing suppliers who specialize in the rights slacks, short-cut coats and fastidious furnishings favored by mane, but by no means all, male homosexuals. There is a homosexual jargon, once intelligible only to the initiate, but now part of New York slang. The word “gay” has been appropriated as the adjective for homosexual.

… The list of homosexuals in the theater is long, distinguished and international. It is also self-perpetuating. There is a cliquishness about gay individuals that often leads one who achieves influential position in the theater — and many of them do — to choose for employment another homosexual candidate over a straight applicant, unless the latter has an indisputable edge of talent that would bear on the artistic success of the venture.

But back to that thing about homosexuality as a mental illness. A year earlier, Dr. Irving Bieber published the highly influential book, Homosexuality — A Psychoanalytic Study of Male Homosexuals, in which he and a team of seventy psychiatrists claimed a success rate of 27% in curing gay people through psychoanalysis. It would take several more years before many of Bieber’s colleagues and former patients to come forward to dispute those claims.But Doty devoted the remaining half of his lengthy article to Bieber’s views, including his theory that homosexuality was the result of of bad parenting:

In almost every homosexual case they found some combination of what they termed a “close-binding, intimate” mother and/or a hostile, detached or unresponsive father, or other parental aberrations.

Unsaid, though was that in almost every homosexual case they also found a gay man or a lesbian who was deeply distressed at being gay, so much so that they paid some very expensive psychoanalyst in a desperate attempt to get rid of it. What their so-called study said about those who didn’t seek their services, nobody bothered to ask. To back Bieber up, Doty turned to another psychoanalyst, Dr. Charles Socarides — the same Charles Socarides who would co-found the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) in 1992 and whose son, Richard, would come out as gay. In Doty’s article, Socarides denounced the efforts of gay activists to win social acceptance for what he called a kind of “normal abnormality.” The homosexual is ill,” he said, “and anything that tends to hid that fact reduces his changes of seeking and obtaining treatment. If they were to achieve social acceptance it would increase this difficulty.”

“I thought it was a terrible betrayal,” said Randy Wicker of Doty’s article. “Because he was a man I had given all the information to and when it came out it was disgusting. He didn’t give any mention — not one mention — that there was a division among psychiatrists — not one word.” The Daughters of Bilitis’s The Ladder wrote that the story was designed to frighten readers into believing that gay people were flooding the streets of New York and “threatening to engulf the normals.” But Newsweek saw the article positively: “While straining for objectivity, a Times trademark, Doty nevertheless tried to explode a favorite myth propagated by some homosexuals that their condition is incurable and innate.”

[Sources: Edward Allwood. Straight News: Gays, Lesbians, and the News Media (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996): 47-50.

Robert Doty. “Growth of Overt Homosexuality In City Provokes Wide Concern.” The New York Times (December 17, 1963): 1ff.

Jack Nicols. “Randolphe Wicker (1938- ).” In Vern L. Bullough’s (ed.) Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context (New York: Harrington Park Press, 2002): 273-281.]

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Paul Cadmus: 1904-1999. When he died in 1999 at the ripe old age of 94, his New York Times obituary read:

Paul Cadmus, an American artist noted for a virtuosic figurative style that he applied to subjects ranging from biting social satire to moralizing allegories to sensual, sometimes sentimental male nudes, died on Sunday at his home in Weston, Conn. He was 94.

Mr. Cadmus found his inspiration in the art of Italian Renaissance painters like Mantegna and Luca Signorelli. His career was remarkable for its unruffled stylistic consistency over 70 years, from his days as a precocious student in New York in the 1920’s through his incendiary stint in the 30’s with the federal Public Works of Art Project, later folded into the Works Progress Administration, and up to the present. Although he stopped painting a few years ago, he continued to sketch.

The Fleet’s In!, 1934 (Click to enlarge)

It took the Times’s Holland Cotter four paragraphs before he could work his readers up to Cadmus’s favorite subject matter: the frank depiction of gay men as free and happy people. His “incendiary stint” came about over his 1934 PWAP commission, The Fleet’s In!,  which portrayed sailors on shore leave in New York picking up local “trade”. That painting became the center of “the Battle of the Corcoran” when Navy Secretary Claude Swanson condemned it as “a most disgraceful, sordid, disreputable, drunken brawl” and ordered it seized from the gallery. The painting remained out of public view until 1981, but the outcry cemented Cadmus’s career as a satirist. For the rest of his life, he maintained that he was grateful for the publicity.

What I Believe, 1947 (Click to enlarge)

His cartoonish style became known as “magical realism,” and his themes nearly always touched on sexuality in some form, with homosexual themes nearly always present as either a subtext (glances and signals of cruising in otherwise ordinary scenes) or as an overt subject. His 1947 painting What I Believe, inspired by an E.M. Forster essay by the same name, was his visual manifesto. It depicts nude and contented gay couples in the center and left side of the painting in bright sunlight while reading, drawing, playing music, and conversing. That paradisal scene contrasted with the almost hellish right third of the painting, where heterosexual couples reclined in bare dirt and misery — not unlike traditional renderings of the final judgment. The painting, he said, celebrated  “the sensitive, the considerate, and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet. They represent the true human condition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos.”

In an interview with the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art, Cadmus quoted the French artist Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres: “People say my paintings are not right for the times. Can I help it if the times are wrong?” Times have changed. The Fleet’s In!, the painting that started all the controversy, is now in the permanent collection of The Navy Art Gallery in Washington, where it is among its most popular attractions.

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?

NJ marriage bill pulled

Over the weekend I wrote about a bill that might have great political advantage for the Democratic Party in New Jersey (and the nation) but which could have negative consequences on gay people.

This bill has now been pulled. (NJ.com)

“After conferring with Lambda Legal, the national gay rights law organization, we have decided to pull from consideration for now the proposed legislation that would write marriage equality into law,” Weinberg said in a statement. “The issue is still new and legally complex, and we want to be able to fully understand all the potential legal ramifications of our efforts as we work to reach our goal of bringing marriage equality firmly and permanently into our laws.”

Does being anti-marriage make you a homophobe?

Brandon Ambrosino, writing in the Atlantic, argues that being against gay marriage doesn’t make you a homophobe.

If it’s “anti-gay” to question the arguments of marriage-equality advocates, and if the word “homophobic” is exhausted on me or on polite dissenters, then what should we call someone who beats up gay people, or prefers not to hire them? Disagreement is not the same thing as discrimination. Our language ought to reflect that distinction.

I would argue that an essential feature of the term “homophobia” must include personal animus or malice toward the gay community. Simply having reservations about gay marriage might be anti-gay marriage, but if the reservations are articulated in a respectful way, I see no reason to dismiss the person holding those reservations as anti-gay people. In other words, I think it’s quite possible for marriage-equality opponents to have flawed reasoning without necessarily having flawed character. When we hastily label our opposition with terms like “anti-gay,” we make an unwarranted leap from the first description to the second.

Irrespective of the fact that this piece made anti-gay activists giddy, he’s right. It gains us no new converts by calling our opponents names, and (perhaps not too surprisingly) telling someone that they are your enemy often makes them so.

It is also true that there are some who oppose civil and/or religious gay marriage who do so not out of animus. It is entirely possible for someone to truly believe the disingenuous arguments about “the children needing opposite sex parents”. Or to support rights, but not quite be comfortable with the history and religious associations with the word marriage. Or to have stepped out of a time machine from 1994.

It is also true that there are many who do not favor same-sex marriage simply because they’ve not yet gotten used to the idea and it’s what everyone they know believes. We should be cautious not to conflate the not-yet-supporter with the wild-eyed opponent.

Yet, Ambrosino’s critics also have merit to their rebuttal. This debate is no longer novel nor is this a debate reserved to some ivory tower. It becomes increasing more difficult with each passing year to simultaneously hold to opposition to marriage equality while also being a person of good will and intent.

But I think it is still possible.

So, yes, I would agree with Ambrosino that being against gay marriage doesn’t make you a homophobe. But it does give you something in common with one.

The Daily Agenda for Monday, December 16

Miami Mayor Abe Aronovitz

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Miami Officials Testify Before Senate Committee About Anti-Gay Crackdown: 1954. It has been quite a year for Miami’s long-running witch hunt in that city (see Aug 3, Aug 11, Aug 12, Aug 13 (twice that day), Aug 14,Aug 26, Aug 31, Sep 1, Sep 2, Sep 7, Sep 15, Sep 19, Oct 6 Oct 20, and Nov 12), and Miami’s Mayor Abe Aronovitz got one more shot in before the year was out. He and several other Miami officials testified before the Senate Juvenile Delinquency Subcommittee about the “alarming” rise in young people running afoul of the law. Several problems were discussed: a growing crime rate, the lack of resources in the county sheriff’s office, runaways appearing in Miami from other parts of the country, and, of course, homosexuals.

Daniel Sullivan, chairman of the Greater Miami Crime Commission, complained to the subcommittee that there had been a “tremendous increase” in the number of “perverts” making the Miami area their “headquarters.” He cited recent estimates of the number of homosexuals there at 8,000 (out of about 500,000 for all of Dade County). Sullivan blamed the “increase” on the number of bars and nightclubs that cater to gay people.

Miami Mayor Abe Aronovitz chimed in, criticizing Police Chief Walter Headly’s preferred policy of allow gay bars to operate in certain areas, saying that this was, in effect, an open invitation “to homosexuals from all over the nation.” But Chief Headly countered that while he had obeyed the mayor’s orders to break up such gatherings (see Sept 2), but he believed that all that he had actually accomplished was to “scatter” the problem elsewhere in the area rather than actually getting rid of the “perverts.” Aronovitz saw it differently, telling the committee that the crackdown “temporarily improved” the situation, but said, “the federal government should spend money to help local governments battle the problem.”

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Noël Coward: 1899-1973. He first appeared on the stage at the age of eleven, and his stage work as a teenager — along with his (possibly romantic) relationship with the painter Philip Streatfeild — opened the doors for the precocious son of a house maid to London’s high society, and his embrace of that society cemented his image for the rest of his life. “I am determined to travel through life first class,” he often remarked. Coward went on to write fifty plays, over a hundred songs, and a dozen musical theater works. He never acknowledged his homosexuality, but given his body of work he hardly had to. His 1924 hit play, The Vortex, offered a daring portrayal of a nymphomaniac society woman and her drug-addicted son. The play shocked London sensibilities with its portrayal of drugs and hints of gay life in high society, but that shock leaned more toward titillation than outrage. Coward spent the rest of his life walking that balance.

Ever the fervent anti-Fascist, Coward enlisted with British Intelligence in 1938. For his first assignment in Paris he was given the cover story of working in the British Propaganda office, where he famously critiqued the quality of its work. “If the policy of His Majesty’s Government is to bore the Germans to death I don’t think we have time,” he said. His next assignment was to go to America and use his wit and celebrity status to sway popular opinion to support the British. He also used that tour to gauge public sentiment and political leaders’ opinions about the war and report those findings back to Bletchley Park. Coward’s next assignment was to travel the world to entertain the troops, another assignment which provided perfect cover:

“I was the perfect silly ass,” (Coward) said. “Nobody … considered I had a sensible thought in my head, and they would say all kinds of things that I’d pass along.”

It was a senior diplomat named Robert Vansittart, routinely dismissed in the Foreign Office as an anti-Nazi Cassandra, who in late 1937 or 1938 spotted how to use Coward’s flamboyance, intelligence and flawless memory to help tend an unofficial, off-the-books anti-Nazi intelligence network he had set up across Europe. Vansittart dispatched Coward on tour in such un-Cowardy places as Warsaw, Moscow and Helsinki, where he sang songs, gauged Nazi influence among star-struck V.I.P.’s and (very likely) contacted sources on the ground. If he fooled the V.I.P.’s, Coward failed to fool the Nazis. He was soon on the Gestapo’s list of people to be “liquidated” when Britain fell.

King George VI had recommended Coward for a knighthood during the war, but Prime Minister Winston Churchill vetoed it. Coward was too “flamboyant” for Churchill’s tastes. After the war, Coward continued to find success in Britain and America. He also fell in love with actor Graham Payn and they remained together for the next thirty years. The two became tax exiles and moved first to Bermuda, then Jamaica. He never did acknowledge his sexuality, believing that any direct discussion of sex was tasteless. Besides, he said, “There are still a few old ladies in Worthing who don’t know.” He was finally knighted in 1969. That year, Time wrote of him, “Coward’s greatest single gift has not been writing or composing, not acting or directing, but projecting a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise.” He died in 1973, in the company of his partner Graham. His diaries and letters were published posthumously.

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, December 15

TODAY IN HISTORY:
US Senate Committee Issues Report on “Employment of Homosexuals and Other Sexual Perverts”: 1950. The Senate Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Departments issued an interim report which would prove to become a major document of the 1950s anti-gay witch-hunts. The next day, The New York Times carried a story on the report:

“A Senate investigating group labeled sexual perverts today as dangerous security risks and demanded strict and careful screening to keep them off the Government payroll. It said that many Federal agencies had not taken “adequate steps to get these people out of Government.” …

Stressing the risks that the Government takes in employing a sex deviate or keeping one on the payroll, the subcommittee said:

“The lack of emotional stability which is found in most sex perverts, and the weakness of their moral fiber, makes them susceptible to the blandishments of foreign espionage agents.”

The report also noted that perverts were “easy prey to the blackmailer.” It said that Communist and Nazi agents had sought to get secret Government data from Federal employees “by threatening to expose their abnormal sex activities.”

The subcommittee criticized the State Department particularly for “mishandling ninety-one cases of homosexualism among its employees.” It said that many of the employees were allowed to resign “for personal reasons,” and that no steps were taken to bar them from other Government jobs. …

The committee said that it was unable to determine accurately how many perverts now held Federal jobs. It added, however, that since Jan. 1 1947, a total of 4,954 cases had been processed, including 4,380 in the military services and 574 on Federal civilian payrolls. …

In addition to strict enforcement of Civil Service rules about firing perverts, the subcommittee recommended tightening of the District of Columbia laws on sexual perversion, closer liaison between the Federal agencies and the police and a thorough inquiry by all divisions of the Government into all reasonable complaints of perverted sexual activity.

APA “Cures” Nation’s Gay Population: 1973. After years of research demonstrating that gays and lesbians are not mentally ill simply because they are gay, the American Psychiatric Association’s board of trustees approved a resolution that said, in part, “by itself, homosexuality does not meet the criteria for being a psychiatric disorder. … We will no longer insist on a label of sickness for individuals who insist that they are well and demonstrate no generalized impairment in social effectiveness.”

In a compromise to those who fought the finding, the APA agreed to define “sexual orientation disturbance” to describe “individuals whose sexual interests are directed toward people of their own sex and who are either disturbed by, in conflict with or wish to change their sexual orientation.” That diagnosis would provide cover for therapists to continue to try to “cure” gay people, with some of those “therapies” still involving electric shock aversion therapy. In 1980, that diagnosis would be changed to “ego dystonic homosexuality” before it was finally removed in 1986. Today, virtually all major medical and mental health professional organizations agree that homosexuality is not an illness to be “cured” or treated with the goal of trying to change one’s sexual orientation.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
W. Dorr Legg: 1904-1994. Born William Dorr Lambert Legg, Dorr Legg (who also sometimes wrote as Bill Lambert) took a rather intellectual approach to things when he finally joined up with the homophile movement in the 1950s. While studying landscape architecture and music at the University of Michigan in his home town of Ann Arbor, Legg reputedly read Marchel Proust’s Remembrances of Things Past in the original French, just so he could learn something about gays in Europe. After graduating, and after a stint in Florida, he settled in New York City While there, he became involved with the local gay scene, but he was put off by what he saw as fussy queens. But he also discovered the speakies and drag balls in Harlem, and that’s where he became interested in the intersection of gay life with similarly taboo interracial relationships.

In 1935, Legg moved to Corvallis, Oregon, where he took a teaching position at Oregon State College’s landscape architecture program. He remained there until 1942, when the draft claimed so many students that the landscape architecture program came close to collapse. Legg moved back to Ann Arbor where he met Marvin Edwards, and the two became lovers. But with Edwards being African-American, the sight of the two of them together sometimes raised the eyebrows of local police whenever they were out together. So in 1948, they decided to move to Los Angeles, where they felt that the more diverse culture there would be more to their liking.

Once they arrived in L.A., they quickly began to meet other gay African-Americans. Somewhere along the way, Edwards left and Legg met Merton Bird, another African-American, and the two of them founded the Knights of the Clock as a social and support group for interracial gay couples. That made Legg and Bird pioneers in the nascent gay rights movement in more than one way, but Legg gave Bird the credit. He later wrote, “Hostility and harassment were the daily lot of interracial same-sex couples in 1950. … [Bird’s] idea was that by coming together to form a mutual aid society, the group could at the very least offer each other encouragement.”

Legg also learned about the Mattachine Society, and he became one of that group’s early members. A few years, following a Mattachine Society discussion group that Legg hosted at his home, Legg, Don Slater (see Aug 21), Martin Block, and Dale Jennings (see Oct 21) stayed after the meeting was over and brainstormed about the pressing need for gay people across the country to have access to news and information about themselves and others. Out of that discussion, ONE Magazine was born (see Oct 15), and Legg became its business manager When ONE debuted in January 1953 as America’s first pro-gay magazine, it sported a very sophisticated look with bold graphics and professional typeset and design. ONE’s slick offering quickly caught the attention gays and lesbians across the country, and circulation jumped to nearly 2,000 within a few months — with most subscribers paying extra to have their magazine delivered in an unmarked wrapper.

ONE Magazine, October 1954.

ONE also caught the notice of federal officials. The FBI tried to shut the magazine down, but abandoned the idea after deciding the magazine wasn’t worth their efforts. But the Post Office was another matter. The Los Angeles Postmaster ordered the August 1953, held for three weeks while deciding if it violated federal laws. (Ironically, the cover story for that issue was on “homosexual marriage,” an issue that is still contentious more than fifty years later.) Three weeks later, the Post Office decided no laws were violated and allowed its distribution. ONE, in its typically brash fashion, proclaimed “ONE is not grateful” on its October cover. A year later, its October 1954 issue was confiscated and this time the Post Office decided that the issue was illegal. Ironically, that issue’s cover proclaimed “You Can’t Print It!” ONE sued, and the case went all the way up to the Supreme Court. On January 13, 1958, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered its first ever pro-gay ruling in ONE Inc. v. Olesen, a landmark decision that allowed a magazine for gays and lesbians to be sent through the U.S. mail. (You can read more about that landmark case here.)

While ONE magazine was perhaps the most visible part of ONE, Inc., Legg envisioned the organization’s main mission as educational rather than publishing. At Legg’s behest, ONE, Inc. established the ONE Institute of Homophile Studies in 1956, which became the first institution to provide LGBT studies in the US. The ONE Instutute began conducting annual seminars known as the Midwinter Institute, and published the ONE Institute Quarterly as an academic journal dedicated to the study of homosexuality. Legg, as “Marvin Cutler,” also wrote Homosexuals Today: A Handbook of Organizations and Publications about the nascent gay rights movement.

Legg’s interest in the educational side of the organization at the expense of ONE magazine, coupled with his increasingly authoritarian style, created tensions within the group, principly between Legg and Don Slater, ONE Magazine’s editor and the organization’s librarian. While Slater also saw ONE’s mission as being educational, he also felt that the magazine as playing an indispensable role in that mission. He also feared for the integrity of ONE’s archives, which he believed were the heart and soul of the organization. By 1965, the split on ONE’s board became irreconcilable, and on Easter Sunday, Slater and two others entered ONE’s offices and moved the magazine’s assets and archives out and to another location.

For the next four months, two competing ONE magazines hit the streets: Slater’s ONE was sent to subscribers using the organization’s subscriber list, and Legg’s ONE arrived after Legg re-assembled a rival subscriber list from memory and detective work. Legg and Slater were soon in court, where Legg’s overbearing demeanor, it’s been said, alienated the judge who might have otherwise ruled in his favor. Instead, ONE, Inc., retaining the right to publish ONE Magazine, while Slater’s The Tangent Group, which by then had change the name of their magazine to Tangents, retained ownership of the archives. ONE finally ceased publication in 1969.

Legg’s first-hand experience with police raids and harassment, FBI surveillance and intimidation, and Post Office censorship gave him a deep and abiding distrust of government. That distrust informed his libertarian politics. In 1977, he became a founding member of the Log Cabin Club, a group of California gay Republicans who organized to oppose the Brigg’s Initiative which would have banned gays, lesbians, and their supporters from teaching in the public schools. The Log Cabin Club later changed its name to Log Cabin Republicans. Legg’s libertarian political beliefs however, contrary to stereotypes about gay conservatives, did not amount to an assent to assimilation. He forcefully opposed the idea that gay people should “desperately contort themselves into simulacra of heterosexuality.”

Legg died in 1994. By then, the ONE Institute had stop offering classes due to another legal dispute with a prominent donor. After Legg died, the remnants of ONE, Inc. merged with the International Gay and Lesbian Archives. The ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives today is housed at the University of Southern California, and the ONE Archives Gallery & Museum is located in West Hollywood.

[Sources: Wayne R. Dynes. “W. Dorr Legg (1904-1994).” In Vern L. Bullough’s (ed.) Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context (New York: Harrington Park Press, 2002): 94-102.

Martha E. Stone. “Unearthing the ‘Knights of the Clock’.” The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide 17, no. 3 (May 2010).  Available online here.]

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?

NJ Democrats seek marriage bill

In October, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples must be allowed marriage on the same terms as heterosexual couples. Now New Jersey Democrats are seeking to pass legislation to change the laws on the books.

This is being presented as a protection should the Supreme Court decide to change its mind in the future, but it’s hard to see it as anything other than a political move having nothing to do with same-sex couples or marriage.

Republican Governor Christie somehow managed to come out of the marriage debate smelling like a rose. Although he had opposed – and vetoed – a marriage equality bill, when he opted not to appeal the decision, the public perception was that he was not extremist and many even believe that Christie “changed his mind” and supported equality.

This did not sit well with Democratic leaders in the state who, predicting Christie’s presidential aspirations, lost one of the points on which he could be portrayed as right-wing and out of the mainstream in a general election. They are gambling that a new bill could put cut Christie both ways: if he signs the bill, it would hurt him in the primary; and if he vetoes the bill, it fires up the base in opposition.

Unfortunately, and ironically, it is gay couples who could lose in the process.

I recognize the political reality that in some states it has been necessary to include religious protections in order to get legislation passed. I also recognize that the inclusion of such language implies that there is validity to the notion that somehow gay marriage imposes in some way on religious freedom. The best legislation is one in which same-sex couples simply are added to the framework without any histrionics or hand-wringing over ookie-spookie horrors that Teh Ghey might bring.

In New Jersey, the State Supreme Court decision did just that; it put marriage between same-sex couples on exactly equal ground with opposite sex couples. And any new bill, should it include religious protections, would enact limitations on same-sex marriage that are not currently present.

The executive director of Garden State Equality has opposed writing such a bill for exactly that reason.

In response, the legislators have changed the bill to reduce the protections granted. (NJ.com)

Lesniak said the new bill continues to have an exemption for religious organizations. But he said only church-affiliated groups that use an event space exclusively for their members would be able to turn away gay couples who wish to get married there. Clergy would not be required to perform gay marriages, but proponents say that exemption would be covered under the First Amendment anyway.

“It does not go as far as the bill that the governor vetoed,” Lesniak said.

“If you open up your facilities, you can’t discriminate.”

And therein lies the problem. A bill that did nothing more than change the language of the state law (as did California) to remove gender would possibly be an easy signature for Christie. It would merely codify existing law.

What this does, however, is define the exceptions to the law. By stating who is exempt, the bill implies who is not exempt.

As the law exists right now, there is no formalized conflict between gay rights and religious rights. While it’s likely that a religious fraternity like the Knights of Columbus could make a religious freedom case for refusing to rent their hall for a same-sex wedding, this is a matter of non-discrimination law, not marriage.

But by specifically excluding some entities – and telling the newspapers that this bill doesn’t protect the Knight of Columbus – this politicizes the marriage bill and announces a threat on the existing presumption of religious protection that the Knights have currently.

Of course, removing the Knights of Columbus protection from the previous bill – and announcing it – is designed specifically to invite a veto by the governor. I can’t imagine Christie signing the “Knights of Columbus must host gay marriages” bill. They’re trying to force his hand.

But it’s possible that Christie will not do as the Democrats in New Jersey plan. While he may not sign such a bill, he may consider a veto too difficult to explain.
And he has the option of ignoring the bill for 45 days at which time it becomes law without his signature.

Should he allow the bill to become law it is almost inevitable that someone will flounce down to the nearest Knights of Columbus to “I’ll show them” and demand to rent the hall. And then we will have one more item on the list of grievances that our opponents pull out to scream about how we are attacking them. Which will be true. And will suck.

But should they pass this bill, the Democrats may have more ammo to use against Christie should he run for President. At our expense.

Northern Ireland allows adoption

The court ruling came earlier in the year, but now the courts have rejected an appeal by the Health Minister.

BBC

In June, the Court of Appeal ruled that the ban based on relationship status was held to discriminate against those in civil partnerships and to breach their human rights.

Northern Ireland was the only part of the United Kingdom where that policy existed.

Now, the law in Northern Ireland is in line with the rest of the UK.

A Department of Health spokesperson said: “Following the Court of Appeal judgement in June 2013, unmarried couples, including same sex couples, and those in a civil partnership may apply to adopt.

Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that is not in the process of instituting same-sex marriage.

Pressure on for Australian marriage bill

Quite a bit of attention has been paid to marriage equality in Australia in recent days.

The big news was on Wednesday, when the High Court reversed the “same-sex marriage”* bill enacted by the Australian Capital Territory. But other movement has kept the issue from being past and forgotten.

New South Wales’ upper house of Parliament narrowly defeated a marriage equality bill on Thursday. The Green Party in Western Australia proposed a marriage bill on the same day that the Court ruled, which seems unlikely to advance. Earlier in the week, a fringe Catholic morality party, the Democratic Labor Party, had proposed a referendum on the issue which was defeated by the unlikely combination of the conservative ruling Liberal Party and the Green Party. And last month the Governor-General (the Queen’s representative and titular head of state) indicated her support for marriage equality.

Yesterday, Federal Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull said that Parliament may change the marriage laws to allow same-sex couples to marry. (Guardian)

Turnbull said he thought it was “very likely” that the parliament would consider a private member’s bill and that the Coalition party room would agree to a conscience vote, rather than a repeat of the situation last year when Coalition members were bound to vote against same-sex marriage.

“As to whether that would then result in the bill being passed, it’s probably a bit early to say because it’s a new parliament, there’s a lot of new members, but I think there is a reasonable prospect of a change to the law in this parliament,” Turnbull told ABC radio on Friday.

In an apparent argument that Australia was slipping behind similar countries elsewhere, Turnbull added: “I just note that if you look around the world, you know the big English speaking countries we feel ourselves culturally close to, all of them now recognise same-sex marriage: New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Canada and now about a third of the United States.”

Much of the issue depends on whether Prime Minister Tony Abbott will allow his party members to vote their conscience, or whether they will be required to vote in accordance with the party’s stance. As about two thirds of Australians support marriage equality, and as several Liberal MPs are expected to (or could be pressured to) support the bill, there is a good chance that it could prevail.

A number of other Liberal politicians, including the premiers of states and territories, have opined that a conscience vote should be allowed. And should that happen, Turnbull has indicated willingness to co-sponsor the bill.

It is far to early to predict, but Abbott has made a statement that could hint at a potential compromise. (Pink News)

On Friday, Mr Abbott said his position on the issue had not changed and that he remains opposed to equal marriage.

He said the High Court decision was obviously disappointing for the same-sex couples who had recently married in the ACT.

“They knew that there was this possibility that their marriages might fall foul of the High Court and obviously it’s disappointing for them,” he said.

“Let’s see what the future holds.”

* quotation marks are around “same-sex marriage” not as scare-quotes, but because the ACT sought to bypass federal control over marriage law by declaring that their bill was not about marriage but rather about an entirely separate institution called “same-sex marriage”.