Box Turtle Bulletin

Christians Had A Tip for One Kansas Waiter

A 20-year-old waiter at a Carrabba’s in Overland Park, Kansas got a lovely note from Christian customers:

Thank you for your service, it was excellent. That being said, we cannot in good conscience tip you, for your homosexual lifestyle is an affront to GOD. Queers do not share in the wealth of GOD, and you will not share in ours. We hope you will see the tip your fag choices made you lose out on, and plan accordingly. It is never too late for GOD’S love, but none shall be spared for fags. May GOD have mercy on you.

I had to search around for an unexpurgated version. The source I originally found here decided to eliminate the words queer and fag from its report lest they offend their viewers delicate hears. But this is the kind of thing that demands offense simply because that offense is story, not the fact that yet another waiter in America was stiffed a tip.

Of course, when it comes to Christians or Christianity, not all of them are like that. But throughout history, these kinds of Christians have had a way of defining Christianity down for everyone else. The community is falling behind this waiter, making special trips to Carrabba’s and asking to be seated in his section so they can personally encourage and tip him. KCTV reports that people on social media are encouraging everyone to go to Carrabba’s today to show their support for the waiter. Wouldn’t it be nice of some of them weren’t just NALT Christians, but also “Like Them” Christians who nevertheless can clearly see the un-Christianness of this behavior.

The Daily Agenda for Friday, October 25

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Gainesville, FL; New Smyrna Beach, FL; Taipei, Taiwan.

Other Events This Weekend: Halloween Block Party, Dallas, TX; Halloween New Orleans, New Orleans, LA; AIDS Walk, Washington, DC.

Charles H. Hughes, founder and editor of journal Alienist and Neurologist

THIS MONTH IN HISTORY:
120 YEARS AGO: An Organization of Colored Erotopaths: 1893. Charles H. Hughes, a St. Louis physician, former superintendent of Missouri’s State Lunatic Asylum in Fulton, and the respected founder and editor of the journal Alienist and Neurologist (“Alienist” was a ninetheenth century term for psychiatrist), published a lengthy paper in the October 1893 issue titled “Erotopathia — Morbid Erotism,” which he had presented to the Pan-American Medical Congress the month before. In that paper, he set out to distinguish various forms of sexuality and categorize them according to whether they were products of “the neuroses or the neuro-psychoses,” which he described as “resistless” or subject to “the resistible involvement of the will… simple moral vice, uninfluenced or unextenuated by neural disease, ” because “[t]he sexually insane must be differentiated from such of these perverts as are not damaged in mind to the degree of insanity; a difficult task, yet one now imperatively demanded of psychiatry.”

Some of those “perversions” did not yet have commonly known names, and so to describe homosexuality he needed to tie together several terms used by several other authors: “Westphal, Moll, Krafft-Ebing and many others have presented instances of sexual perversion under the titles of ‘Erninger and Conträre Sexualempfindung,’ psychopathia-sexualis, homo-sexuality, etc., the anima muliebris in corpore virili inculsa (a female psyche confined in a male body), according to Ulrichs, himself a sexual pervert, and reasserted by Magnan, Kiernan, Gley and Lydston.” The fact that Hughes used the word homo-sexuality, which had been introduced into the English language just a year earlier with the first English translation of Richard Von Crafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis, indicates Hughes’s keen interest on the subject. And that Hughes recognized the difficulty of assigning blanket categories of gay people as either morally bankrupt or mentally insane — and Hughes appears not to have entertained any other option — it reflected the limited parameters of debate then taking place in psychiatry.

Hughes was, among many things, a lover of debate, and his journal reflected his encyclopedic interests. What makes perusing old copies of Alienist and Neurologist so particularly rewarding is the variety of reprinted letters, anecdotes, speeches, news items, magazine articles, and just about anything else that remotely touched on psychiatry in the nineteenth century. On example was a suicide note from a young gay man in St. Louis (see Feb 23) which Hughes described in “Erotopathia — Morbid Erotism.” Another example is these three paragraphs which appeared later in that same October 1893 issue that included Hughes’s talk on “Erotopathia”:

Postscript to Paper on “Erotopathia.” — An Organization 0f Colored Erotopaths. — Apropos of my paper on “Erotopathia,” I am credibly informed that there is, in the city of Washington, D. C., an annual convocation of negro men called the drag dance, which is an orgie of lascivious debauchery beyond pen power of description. I am likewise informed that a similar organization was lately suppressed by the police of New York city.

In this sable performance of sexual perversion all of these men are lasciviously dressed in womanly attire, short sleeves, low· necked dresses and the usual ball-room decorations and ornaments of women, feathered and ribboned head-dresses, garters, frills, flowers, ruffies, etc., and deport themselves as women. Standing or seated on a pedestal, but accessible to all the rest, is the naked queen (a male), whose phallic member, decorated with a ribbon, is subject to the gaze and osculations in turn, of all the members of this lecherous gang of sexual perverts and phallic fornicators.

Among those who annually assemble in this strange libidinous display are cooks, barbers, waiters and other employes of Washington families, some even higher in the social scale — some being employed as subordinates in the Government departments.

[Sources: Charles H. Hughes. “Erotopathia — Morbid Erotism.” Alienist and Neurologist 14, no. 4 (October 1893): 531-578. Available online here.

Charles H. Hughes. “An organization of colored erotopaths.” Alienist and Neurologist 14, no. 4 (October 1893): 731-732. Available online here.]

A Letter from an Invert: 1919. Through the early part of the twentieth century, American medical and mental health writers took an increasing interest in homosexuality (or “sexual inversion,” “contrary sexual feeling,” “perverted sexual instinct,” or any number of other terms which they had yet to settle on). One of the professional journals to actively investigate all aspects of sexology was the Journal of Urology and Sexology under the editorship of William J Robinson, a physician, sexologist , birth control advocate, and department head of Genito-Urinary Diseases at Bronx Hospital Dispensary.

But it was rare to hear from “inverts” themselves. Last July, we reprinted one letter to the editor from 1919 which gave some indication of the frustration that many felt due to the severe societal disapproval that was prevalent a the time (see Jul 30). Three months later, that same journal published another letter “from an invert”:

To the EDITOR:
I know you will disagree with me, but it is my belief that two men who love each other have as much right to live together as a man and woman have. Also that it is as beautiful when looked at in the right light and far more equal!

There are many men who believe as I do. One might say they are abnonnal. Does that have anything to do with the right or wrong of the question? To sleep all day, to work all night, is an abnormal condition. It isn’t natural. Does that go to prove that the one who does it is right or wrong? There is that abnormal condition; to bring in a moral question would be foolishness. “Wrong” and “abnormal” seem to mean the same thing to many people. Or shall I put it — “wrong” and “unnatural”? From the way people look at me who know my belief, you would think me a leper or a negro! *

May I not have as high an ideal in my love toward men, as a man has towards a woman? Higher, no doubt, than most men have toward women? Higher, no doubt, than most men have toward women!

The idea people hold is making me bitter. All that I might be is being killed. I can understand the thoughts of Jean Valjean, who held to his high ideals and asked only to be left alone — yet had to lose his whole life fleeing, ever fleeing, from people.

I wish the question might be discussed in your magazine. I have never known of any other magazine which gave its readers the liberty of expressing their own opinions, as gladly as your magazine does.

There are reasons (position, etc.) why it would be better to withhold my name. You need not doubt the good faith in which this letter is written.

A MAN [?].

Jean Valjean is the protagonist in Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel Les Misérables, which follows his 19-year-long struggle with the law for stealing bread to feed his sister’s children. The editor appended this footnote to the letter:

* This sentence shows that the writer is no more broadminded on the racial question than most people are on the subject of sexual abnormalities and perversions.-W. J. R.

[Source: American Journal of Urology and Sexology 15, no. 10 (October 1919): 454-455.]

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Claude Cahun: 1894-1954. She was born Lucy Schwob in Nantes, France, but in 1919 she chose the gender-ambiguous name (in French) of Claude Cahun in keeping with her photographic self-portraits that she began making at the age of sixteen. Her self-portraits in different guises expressed a range of sexual self-expression, from the close-cropped hair and stubbled chin in her masculine appearance to the exaggerated femininity in china-doll perfection, to a range of androgyny inbetween. When surrealism became fashionable, she fit right in, declaring that she had “always been a surrealiste.”

In 1937, she and her stepsister/partner, Suzanne Malherbe moved to the Isle of Jersey in the English Channel, which would see Nazi occupation during the war. Cahun became active in the resistance by writing and distributing anti-German leaflets. She and Malherbe would sometimes dress up and attend German military events in Jersey, and sneak leaflets into soldiers’ pockets. They were arrested in 1944 and sentenced to death, but the sentences were never carried out. Much of Cahun’s photographic work, including plates and negatives, were destroyed with the army raided her home. While Cahun and Malherbe both survived the war, Cahun’s health had deteriorated due to her detention and she died in 1954.

Chely Wright: 1970. She had her first Top 40 Country in 1997 when “Shut Up and Drive,” peaked at Number 14. In 1999, she hit #1 in the U.S. and Canadian Country charts with “Single White Female,” from her album by the same name. Those successes however came during a rather complicated time in her personal life. Chely had been in a off-and-on committed relationship with a woman that she described as “the love of my life,” — even during a period when the woman had married a man during part of that time. They lived together during their final five years together, from about 1999 to 2004, despite both women being closeted and both of them believing that gay relationships were wrong.

In 2000, Chely’s already complicated life became even more so when she started an affair with fellow country singer Brad Paisley. She liked him, loved him even, but wasn’t in love with him. But, as she later wrote in her autobiography, “If I figured I’m going to live a less than satisfied life, this is the guy I could live with. If I’m gonna be with a boy, this is the boy.” But in the end, she she wound up with a lot of remorse over how she treated him, “I have a lot of regret for how that [relationship] began and had a middle and ended. I had no business being in a relationship with him.”

Beginning in 2004, she began coming out to members of her immediate family and close friends. In 2007, she finally decided to come out publicly when she began writing her autobiography, and with its 2010 release she was officially out, once and for all. In August 2011, Wright married LGBT rights advocate Lauren Blitzer in Connecticut. Wright herself has also become an LGBT advocate in founding LikeMe, which provides support and education scholarships for young LGBT advocates.

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 Thursday, October 24

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Gainesville, FL; New Smyrna Beach, FL; Taipei, Taiwan.

Other Events This Weekend: Halloween Block Party, Dallas, TX; Halloween New Orleans, New Orleans, LA; AIDS Walk, Washington, DC.

Dr. Joseph Collins

TODAY IN HISTORY:
A Doctor Looks At Love and Life: 1926. The October 24, 1926 edition of The New York Times reviewed a book by Dr. Joseph Collins, a physician and neurologist for the New York Neurological Institute, and also something of a polyglot. Collins himself was the first to review James Joyce’s Ulysses for the Times, and his earlier books included Sleep and the Sleepless (1912), My Italian Year (1919), The Doctor Looks at Literature (1923) and The Doctor Looks at Biography (1925). His latest endeavor, The Doctor Looks at Love and Life, was rather groundbreaking on several fronts, not the least of which in the way it prompted the venerable Times to print the word “homosexual” for the first time in its history.

The Doctor Looks at Love and Life had a clear division between the first part, “Love” which was specific to the issues of sex and matrimony, and the second part, “Life,” in which Collins took a literary view of psychology and education. Our interest lies in the first part, particularly in chapter IV, titled simply “Homosexuality,” which marked Collins as something of transitional figure in in how homosexuality was treated in the popular literature during the first decades of the twentieth century:

It will probably be difficult to convince the generation succeeding ours that, when this country was at the zenith of her commercial prosperity, it was improper to utter the word homosexuality, prurient to admit its existence and pornographic to discuss the subject. It was proper to read novels in which it was treated more or less openly if the setting was European: decadent people in decadent countries. Here, if it existed at all, it could not flourish; our soil is unfavorable, our climate prejudicial, our people, too primitive, too pure.

…It is impossible to make the average American believe that homosexuality is not necessarily a vice, or that its possessor is not what is called a degenerate. It may be a vice and the possessor of it may be immoral or unmoral, but the majority of homosexuals, male and female, are not degenerates, to use that word in its colloquial sense. Genuine homosexuality is not a vice, it is an endowment. …I have known many well-balanced homosexuals of both sexes. Some of them have made distinctive positions for themselves in various fields of activity from arms to the pulpit. … As a rule, they are persons of taste, refinement and sensibility. Many of them seek aid to be relieved of a burden which they find intolerable; if they attempt to deliver it in the way nature suggests to them, the State puts them into prison.

It is important to say that while Collins was a transitional figure, he was not a transformative one. And as a result, his chapter on homosexuality is, at times, self-contradictory. He criticized much of what had been written before about homosexuality: that it was a viscous crime, a sign of madness, or the result (or cause) of hereditary degeneracy of a race whose evolution was being adversely disrupted by the modern world (see Sept 3 for a brief discussion of degeneracy theory). Compared to those arguments, Collins’s view that homosexuality was in some way constitutional and that society needed to adjust its judgments accordingly can be seen as a kind of progress. But when he suggested that homosexuality was an endowment, he did not mean to say that homosexuality was normal: “They are not nature’s elect, but deviates who will one day disappear from the world when we shall have guessed the last riddle of the sympathetic nervous system and the ductless glands.” His opimism was typical in virtually the entire medical profession of his day. But while he believed that nature gave gay people a raw deal, society also had its share of guilt:

There are many potential and actual homosexuals whose intercourse with persons of their own sex is confined to emotional and intellectual contact, to establishing romantic friendships with them and seeking relief from tedium vitae in their society. They are not degenerates. There are others in which intercourse is physical as well. The rank and file of the world considers them degenerates, a blot on its escutcheon, a bar sinister in its pedigree. The world may do them an injustice, but nature has done them a far graver one. They are victims of Fate, the only ones that do not excite our compassion: and all because we cannot or will not distinguish between the work of God and Satan. … We are shorter of tolerance in this country than of any other virtue.

While he argued strongly that society should break from the past in how it regarded gay people, he could not accept the views coming out of Europe which held that homosexuality was just another variation of human sexuality. Those views he considered “pornographic” and dangerous, and on this point Collins suddenly becomes positively Victorian, if not Puritan:

Moreover, there has grown up around it an enormous literature, some of which may have been begotten in the interest of science, but most of which has been claimed by pornography. Strangely enough, this literature has come largely out of the country that precipitated the World War and that was decimated by the war. Ulrichs, Krafft-Ebing, Freud, Stekel and dozens of their countrymen have flooded the Western world with it. Their writings were promptly translated and published in this country, and though it has been claimed that their sale is restricted to clergymen, physicians, lawyers, social workers, etc., the books have been sold to high grade imbeciles, esthetes and flappers, pruriency mongers and potential perverts, to their great injury. To those for whom it is said they were intended they have been a fountain of misinformation, a flood of misrepresentation. One might readily gather from reading the latest one from Vienna that there were no normal people left in the world.

Unlike other books by Karl Ulrich’s (see Aug 28), Richard von Krafft-Ebing (see Aug 14), or Havelock Ellis (see Feb 2) — the sales of which were (ostensibly) restricted to  professionals to avoid running afoul of obscenity laws — Collins’s book was marketed directly to the average lay reader in homes across America. And like many those other mass market books, Collins upheld the hetersexual ideal, although by portraying homosexuality as a kind of a naturally-occuring defect, he was quite progressive in comparison. And unlike most of those other mass market books, Collins refrained from demonizing gay people as moral defects. But through the rest of his chapter, he emphasized that it was science’s duty to figure out how to cure and prevent homosexuality’s development (and he optimistically believed, in 1926, that science stood at the threshold of that very accomplishment). And yet it would take many more years before other books on sexuality and relationships targeting the mass market readership would begin to provide this kind of outlook:

I have but small hope that I shall be able to convince the majority of my readers that urnings are not monsters in human form whose salutations should be met with sneers and overtures to friendship with a kick; nevertheless, in view of the fact that my experience has taught me that they are not necessarily morbid or mad, and that many of them suffer through their sex-allotment, I construe it to be my duty to interpret them as it is society’s duty to understand them.

[Source: Joseph Collins. The Doctor Looks at Love and Life (Garden City, NY: Garden City Publishing Co., 1926): 64-103.]

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?

Oklahoma Sees Its THIRD Same-Sex Marriage

Jason Pickel (left), Darren Black Bear

That’s right. Oklahoma. Jason Pickel and Darren Black Bear have been together for nine years. The Oklahoma City couple had been planning to travel to Iowa to get married, but when the Supreme Court struck down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act last June, Black Bear decided to call the Cheyenne-Arapaho tribe (both are tribe members) to see if they could get a license through the Cheyenne-Arapaho court. They got good news:

Rosemary Stephens, editor in chief of the Tribal Tribune, a newspaper owned by the tribe, said the tribe’s law does not address gender in its marriage ordinance.

“One of them has to be a member of this tribe but not both,” Stephens said. “It’s our tribal law and order code. It doesn’t address gender at all.”

And it’s not even the first gay marriage that the tribe has licensed, she said. Lisa Liebl, spokeswoman for the tribe, said the first couple was two men who married on Dec. 12, 2012. Liebl said there is a third couple who received a marriage license on Oct. 7. Pickel and Black Bear were just the first who were willing to go public with their marriage plans, she said.

That’s right. The news going around the interwebs is that this is the first same-sex marriage license issued in Oklahoma, when in fact there have now been three. The first was ten months ago.

The Tulsa World verified that the Cherokee Nation, the Osage Nation and the Muscogee (Creek) Nation all have laws with specific language which bans same-sex marriage. Stephens said that the Cheyenne-Arapaho tribe has supported same-sex relationships for many years with no problems:

“We have a lot of support for gay couples within the tribe,” Stephens said. “They’re just not called out. … There’s a huge amount of support.”

As for the happy couple, they have planned a wedding for later this month. Black Bear’s father, a preacher, will officiate:

“My father has always fought for civil rights and equality and so that’s one of the reasons why we wanted to include them,” said Blackbear.

Blackbear says this will be his father’s first time officiating a same sex marriage, his father’s only request– for Blackbear and Pickel to write their own wedding vows.

Black Bear told Indian Country Today that his father has been contacted by other same-sex couples who want him to officiate at their weddings.

The Daily Agenda for Wednesday, October 23

TODAY’S AGENDA:
New Mexico Supreme Court To Hear Oral Arguments on Marriage Equality: Santa Fe, NM. Two months ago, Doña Ana County Clerk Lynn Ellins began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples after Attorney General Gary King issued an opinion saying that the state’s marriage law was gender-neutral and the longstanding practice of banning same-sex marraige was likely unconstitutional. After King announced that he wouldn’t intervene to halt Doña Ana County’s actions, seven more counties covering 58% of the states population jumped on the marriage equality bandwagon over the next two weeks. On September 7, the five-member state Supreme Court agreed to decide once and for all whether New Mexico would be a marriage equality state, and scheduled oral arguments for today. There’s an outside change that the Supreme Court could issue its decision today as well, but it’s far more likely that the decision will come sometime later. Oral arguments begin promptly at 9:00 a.m. MDT and are scheduled to go for one hour. In an extraordinary move, oral arguments will be live-streamed here.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Gainesville, FL; New Smyrna Beach, FL; Taipei, Taiwan.

Other Events This Weekend: Halloween Block Party, Dallas, TX; Halloween New Orleans, New Orleans, LA; AIDS Walk, Washington, DC.

Lt. Gen. Lewis B. Hershey

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Draft Board Head Says Being Gay Is One Way To Beat the Draft: 1965. Lt. Gen. Lewis B. Hershey, 72, had headed the Selective Service System since 1940, when he organized the Service after Congress authorized the draft for World War II. Establishing a national system of local draft boards was challenging, so was keeping the system operating while balancing the concerns, more or less, of five president, Republican- and Democratic-led Congresses, and millions of families whose sons would find themselves the recipient of a letter from Uncle Sam with the salutation, “Greetings!” Part of the systems success could be found in the autonomy that was granted to local draft boards. The Selective Service Law gave those local draft boards complete discretion in deciding to grant or deny deferments.

But as the Vietnam War escalated and students became restive with anti-draft demonstrations, Hershey found himself with a new set of challenges. In 1965, Hershey was still unfazed, calling the early anti-draft movement “a complete flop.” But he did express one concern to a United Press International reporter: “My real concern is that some local boards may react to all of this agitation by canceling student deferments. I hope that won’t happen. It would be unwise, because the national interest is served by keeping young men in college to complete their education.”

As for the “agitators,” Hershey said that of the two million college men, “only a tiny fraction of one percent have been involved in staging protest parades, burning draft cards or other demonstrations of unwillingness to serve in the armed forces. … The effect on our ability o meet draft calls has been negligible, and I am confident it will remain negligible.” Hershey had also learned that some young men were trying to beat the draft by deliberately flunking the mental and physical exams. “We also have ingenious ways of detecting these little frauds,” he said. “There are always some people who try to fool the examiners. But only a very few get away with it.” And with draft calls shooting up to 45,000 men a month, the armed forces had relaxed their examination requirements somewhat. “A man with a high school diploma is now virtually assured of acceptability,” Hershey said.

But there was still one sure-fire way to beat the draft: “If he tells the examiner that he’s a homosexual, he’ll be rejected. We recognize that he might be lying, but a person who’ll say that has certainly got something wrong with him. We have enough men to defend this country without having to draft self proclaimed homosexuals.”

Barbara Gittings (see Jul 31). Photo by Kay Lahusen (see Jan 5). Photo via New York Public Library’s online Digital Collection.

Gay Activists Hold Third White House Picket: 1965. Gay activists wrapped up an ambitious year of public protests with a third picket in front of the White House, demanding an end to the bans on federal employment, military service, and security clearances for gay people. Earlier protests took place at the White House (see Apr 17, May 29), the United Nations (see Apr 18), Civil Service Commission (see Jun 26), Philadelphia’s Independence Hall (see Jul 4), and the Pentagon (see Jul 31). The pickets were an outgrowth of an increased determination among gay activists for more direct action, in contrast to the aversion to publicity exhibited by the prior generation of activists.

This protest, like many of the others, was sponsored by the East Coast Homophile Organizations (ECHO), a loose coalition of independent gay rights groups. About 45 demonstrators showed up for the two-hour afternoon march, including representatives from the Mattichine Societies of Washington, D.C., New York, Miami, and Chicago, along with Philadelphia’s Janus Society. Frank Kameny (see May 21), head of the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., notified police and the media ahead of time, and picketers distributed leaflets and an open letter to President Lyndon Johnson listing their demands. FBI informants were there too. Their reports also described a small counter-demonstration by two teenage males carring placards which read, “Are You Kidding?” and “Get Serious.”

Mel White Meets With Jerry Falwell: 1999. Mel White had been a successful evangelical minister, television producer and ghostwriter for such popular televangelists as Billy Graham, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. When White finally came to terms with his own homosexuality and came out of the closet, he quickly became one of Falwell’s biggest critics, accusing Falwell of fostering anti-gay rhetoric which had the effect of encouraging violence against LGBT people. Having worked closely with Falwell before coming out, White repeatedly called on Falwell to meet with him to discuss the problem. After several years of back-and-forth negotiations, that meeting finally tool place on an October Saturday when about 200 members of White’s pro-LGBT advocacy group, SoulForce, joined members of Falwell’s congregation in the gymnasium of Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia.

The gathering was billed as an Anti-Violence forum, as the two groups sat down to discuss the impact of hate speech and hate-motivated violence. Falwell took the opportunity to complain that Christian fundamentalists were being singled out for violence because of pro-gay rhetoric. Falwell also infuriated White and the Soulforce attendees when a prominent ex-gay spokesman, Michael Johnston, got up to speak to the gathering about his “ultimate goal is to bring you out of the lifestyle and into the Lord.” (Four years later, Johnston’s ministry would end in disgrace when his double life of gay orgies and unprotected sex came to light. See Aug 1.)

Falwell later told White that he didn’t know anything about Johnston, claiming that Johnston just showed up that day and asked to speak. White also challenged Falwell over his web site, which claimed that the gay community’s quest for equality was “a sewer of moral filth,” created “an environment that’s incredibly dangerous to our children,” and represented “a culture that despises Christian faith and morality.” Falwell claimed that those statements were neither written nor approved by him, but he pledged to “look very carefully” at those statements and others in the future.

At a press conference afterward, White characterized the meeting as an important first step in an ongoing dialogue. “We’re listening to each other. I think, down the long road, we’re going to be reconciled, and it starts today,” White said. Falwell, in turn, praised White and said, “And I hope that evangelicals might build a bridge to gay and lesbian people just as we have built a bridge to drug addicts, alcoholics and unwed mothers.” It’s as if he never heard a thing.

Le Journal de Montreal’s front page coverage of the Truxx and Le Mystique raids (click to enlarge)

Demonstrations Against Montreal Police Raids: 1977. About two thousand of Montreal’s gay community took to the streets and jammed downtown Ste. Catherine Street very early on Sunday morning shouting “fascist dogs” and “gestapo” at motorcycle police who were called to clear the area. The focus of the anger was the brutal “morality squad” raids early Saturday morning at Truxx and Le Mystique, two gay bars. Police barged in wielding machine guns and bullet-proof vests as they arrested 144 men for being in a “bawdy house” or for “gross indecency” — common charges for anyone who was thought to be gay.

Those raids capped two years of nearly constant police harassment and raids which had begun as a campaign to “clean up” the city in preparation for the 1976 Olympics. But with this latest raid, the gay community fought back in what was later dubbed, “Quebec’s Stonewall.” Also different this time, gays and lesbians had the news media’s support. By the end of the year, the Parti Québéois adopted Bill 88 which ensured that sexual orientation would be covered under the province’s Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms which prohibited all forms of discrimination. However, the change failed to have much of an appreciable affect, and  police raids would continue until Montreal’s “other” Stonewall rebellion in 1990 following a riotous raid of a loft party.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
120 YEARS AGO: Jean Acker: 1893-1978. She appeared in several silent films in the 1910s and 1920s, thanks, in part, to a relationship she struck up with another silent film actress, Alla Nazimova (see Jun 3), who introduced Acker to a group of lesbian and bisexual actresses known as the “sewing circle.” Acker’s greatest claim to fame, however, is in her real-life role as Mrs. Rudolph Valentino (see May 5). They married in 1919 after a two month courtship, but the marriage was reportedly never consummated (it’s said that she locked him out of the hotel bedroom on their wedding night). They filed for divorce, although she insisted on using the name Mrs. Rudolph Valentino for some time after. In 1923, Acker met former Ziegfeld Follies girl Chloe Carter, and they remained together for the rest of their lives. Acker died in 1978 of natural causes and was buried next to Carter.

Lilyan Tashman: 1896. The actress got her start in Vaudeville and Broadway before moving to Hollywood to become a well-known film star. Most of her roles were as a “bitchy” other woman or as a sharp, clever villainess. She married a vaudevillian performer  in 1914, but they divorced in 1921. In 1925, she married openly gay actor Edmund Lowe, and they had what Hollywood reporters described, perhaps with a bit of snark, as an “ideal marriage.” The couple entertained lavishly at their home, where their weekly parties reportedly becoming “full-blown orgies.” One reporter described her as “the most gleaming, glittering, moderne, hard-surfaced, and distingué woman in all of Hollywood.” She died young, at the age of 37, of cancer shortly after filming her final film in New York in 1934.

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?

Hawaii Senate hears marriage on Monday

StarAdvertiser

Gov. Neil Abercrombie made the request for lawmakers to hear the other bills on Tuesday while also notifying the Legislature about a revised gay marriage bill.

The state Senate will take the lead on the gay marriage bill, with a public hearing Monday morning before the Senate Judiciary and Labor Committee.

Ohio Man Challenging Marriage Equality Ban Has Died

Sad news this morning:

John Arthur, who flew to Maryland in July to marry his longtime partner Jim Obergefell, touching off a legal battle to force the state of Ohio to recognize their marriage and those of other same-sex couples, died Tuesday at the age of 48.

Mr. Arthur was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in 2011, and his terminal illness played a prominent role in the couple’s decision to marry and in the ensuing legal battle. He and Obergefell had been a couple since 1992 but decided to marry after the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 26 decision striking down portions of the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

…Although he was bedridden in the last months of his life, the publicity from his court case gave him a link to the outside world as hundreds of people sent gifts, letters and cards of support. Known throughout his life for a sense of optimism and an equal sense of the absurd, Mr. Arthur saw both in the attention their story garnered. “It’s been a swell of anonymous support,” he said in August. “It’s truly the supporters who are seeking us out to congratulate us and acknowledge us and give us words of support and thanks.”

Soon after they married in July, the Cincinnati couple filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court challenging Ohio’s refusal to recognize same-sex marriages from other states. Judge Timothy Black issued an injunction requiring the state of Ohio to list the couple as married on Arthur’s death certificate.

Australian Capital Territory Passes Same-Sex Marriage Bill

The Legislative Assembly of the Australian Capital Territory (pop. 373,000), home of the nation’s capital of Canberra, earlier this morning gave its approval for the Marriage Equality Same-Sex Bill. Under the new law, same-sex couples throughout Australia will be able to marry in the ACT by the end of the year. The awkwardly-named bill’s title was the result of several last-minute changes made in an attempt to head off a promised High Court challenge by the Federal Government under Tony Abbot. According to this press release from the Human Rights Law Centre and Australian Marriage Equality:

The HRLC and AME have provided the ACT Government with suggested amendments which would be easy to make and would ensure the Bill creates a new legal status of “same-sex marriage” clearly distinguishable from federal marriage. This would greatly shore up the law’s chances of surviving the High Court challenge that the Commonwealth Government has promised to mount.

At this point, it’s unclear to me what differences lie between marriage as it existed before and this new legal status of same-sex marriage. Whatever those differences may be, the Federal Government under Prime Minister Tony Abbot has already promised to launch a High Court challenge. Liberal party leaders (which is actually the conservative party in Australia) are also concern-trolling on behalf of same-sex couples:

Earlier this month, Senator Brandis said he had received advice the bill was “invalid by reason of inconsistency” with the Commonwealth Marriage Act.

“It would be very distressing to individuals who may enter into a ceremony of marriage under the new ACT law, and to their families, to find that their marriages were invalid,” a statement put out today read.

ACT Opposition Leader Jeremy Hanson supports the Commonwealth’s stance.

“It would be disappointing for those individuals to then find themselves in a legal tangle,” he said.

Abbot’s sister, Christine Forster, who loves in Sydney and is engaged to her partner Virginia Edwards, welcomed the bill’s passage:

“There would have been many many couples that had been waiting for this, particularly couples that live in the ACT, and if Virginia and I were living there we would probably take advantage of this law having been passed,” Ms Forster told Sky News.

“The federal government has foreshadowed that it will challenge the law in the High Court and that casts a shadow over the long-term validity of this law.

“I hope that it stands. Ideally, however, the best outcome we could have for all Australians would be a change in the federal marriage act. Then it would be beyond question by the High Court and that’s the ultimate goal and I think that’s what everybody would like to see.”

Forster added that they will not rush to ACT to get married, but will wait until they can marry “here in our home.” She also called for her brother to allow a free conscience vote on marriage equality nationwide for the ruling coalition. Labor MPs were allowed a conscience vote last year when the question came up in the Federal Parliament.

Domestic partnership registries are currently available in New South Wales, Tasmania and Victoria. Until now, ACT provided Civil Partnerships for same-sex couples, as does Queensland. In 2004, the federal Parliament amended the Marriage Act to limit marriage to one man and one woman and to prohibit the recognition of same-sex marriage from a foreign country. Other parts of Australian law over the years have been changed however to recognize same-sex couples on the federal level in areas such as taxation, pensions, health, and unemployment.

The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, October 22

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Rally for Marriage: Springfield, IL. The Illinois House convenes a Veto Session this week, with another session taking place the first week of November. The House failed to take up a marriage equality bill last May — or, more accurately, Rep. Greg Harris, the bill’s openly gay sponsor, failed to bring the bill up for a vote, much to the consternation of gay advocates. The bill passed the Senate and Gov. Pat Quinn is ready to sign it, but Rep. Harris said that after counting the votes, he didn’t believe it would pass the House. Sixty votes are needed to get the bill through the House. Windy City Times has published its latest estimated tally as 34 yes’s, 18 likely yes’s, 41 no’s, and 9 likely no’s. Sixteen are on the fence, so it’s anybody’s guess right now what will happen.

Some are counseling caution, but the consensus emerging outside of the Statehouse seems to be coalescing around calling for a vote, come what may. Some think that with the recent momentum toward marriage equality nationwide and with history on the line, the votes will materialize. Others say that it’s just time to get everyone on the record so they will know who to work during the next legislative sessions.

Today, marriage equality supporters will converge on the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield for a rally and march. The rally begins at 2nd and Capitol streets at noon, followed by a march around the Capitol at  2:30.

Dr. Robert Bernstein

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Texas Health Official Seeks Authority to Quarantine People with AIDS: 1985. In the first such effort by a state health official, Texas Health Commissioner Dr. Robert Bernstein announced that he was preparing a request to the state Board of Health to add AIDS to the list of communicable diseases to be covered under Texas’s quarantine law. AIDS would join cholera, yellow fever and tuberculosis as conditions that would result in involuntary quarantine under Bernstein’s proposal. Bernstein said that the use of quarantine would be limited to what he termed “extraordinary cases”. Bernstein cited the case of a Houston hustler who continued to engage in sex with customers until he was finally persuaded to check into a hospital for treatment. “It would not be for the average or the multitude of cases of AIDS,” he said. “It would just isolate the one who are a potential risk.”

But critics of Bernstein’s proposal pointed out that quarantines were traditionally reserved for those whose disease was spread through casual contact. AIDS, they pointed out, did not fall under that category. Gary LaMarche, executive director of the Texas Civil Liberties Union said, “It’s almost a unique communicable disease. Everything we know about it suggests you have to go out of your way to get it.” Gay activist Ray Hill of Houston added, “You can’t catch it by getting breathed on. You can’t catch it by shaking hands.” Dr. Harry Haverkos, AIDS program officer at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,  agreed. “You don’t pick this disease up by riding the subway into work with someone or going to school with someone. We’re talking about a different form of transmission, and quarantining individuals isn’t necessary with this disease.”

Bill Foster of the Austin Lesbian-Gay Political Caucus added that much of the problem Bernstein cited was due to a lack of social services for people with AIDS. That shortage meant that some were being forced to fend for themselves using whatever means were at their disposal. “The quarantine law may allay fears of the general public,” he said, “but would, in fact, be nothing more than a smokescreen and a misdirection of public resources.” Two months later, the Texas Board of Health gave its tentative approval to Bernstein’s proposal (see Dec 14), but as criticism grew, the board withdrew its proposal in January (see Jan 17).

Surgeon General Urges Frank Sex Ed to Combat AIDS: 1986. While the Reagan White House would become widely remembered for its reticence to discuss the AIDS epidemic, the administration’s point man on health matters, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop had no qualms about addressing the topic head on. On October 22, 1986, Dr. Koop issued what The New York Times called “an unusually explicit report to the nation” calling on schools and parents to have “frank, open discussions” with very young children and teens about AIDS.

Koop wrote in the report, “Many people, especially our youth, are not receiving information that is vital to their future health and well-being because of our reticence in dealing with the subjects of sex, sexual practices and homosexuality. This silence must end. We can no longer afford to sidestep frank, open discussions about sexual practices — homosexual and heterosexual. Education about AIDS should start at an early age so that children can grow up knowing the behaviors to avoid to protect themselves from exposure to the AIDS virus.” His report also addressed several myths that were floating around about AIDS, stressing that HIV was not spread by common everyday contact like shaking hands, hugging, kissing, coughing or sneezing, nor is it spread from contact with toilet seats, food prepared by people with AIDS, or eating utensils.

This report marked the end of a long and puzzling period of silence about the AIDS epidemic, both from the administration and from Koop himself. He later wrote in Koop: The Memoirs of America’s Family Doctor that in 1983, Assistant Secretary of Health Ed Brandt had excluded him from the Executive Task Force on AIDS, an act which was the start of a long series of battles Koop had with others in the administration who effectively muzzled him from speaking on the topic. He was even forbidden from talking to Congressional representatives about it. That exclusion finally ended in the summer of 1985 when Koop was able to join the task force and become the administration’s public spokesperson on AIDS. In February 1986, Reagan asked him to write a report on AIDS, and Koop worked feverishly not only to complete the report, but to get it past some in the administration who opposed any discussion on AIDS.  After Koop’s press conference on October 22, some in the White House made a last ditch attempt to modify or “bottle up the report,” as  he put it, but “eventually the presses rolled, the mail trucks ran, and the report went out.”

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Lord Alfred Douglas: 1870-1945. Nicknamed “Bosie,” Douglas was best known as the lover of Oscar Wilde. Their affair began at around 1891 even though Wilde was already married and had two sons. Friends described Douglas as spoiled, reckless and extravagant, perhaps in a bid to emulate Wilde’s own flamboyance.  Douglas’s father, The Marquess of Queensberry, soon became suspicious of the relationship between his son and Wilde, and tried to disown him. Douglas refused, and tensions escalated. When Queensberry publicly insulted Wilde by leaving a visiting card at a club on which he had written, “For Oscar Wilde posing as a sodomite,” Wilde responded by suing Queensberry for libel. When Queensberry was declared not guilty, attention then turned to Wilde himself, who was arrested and tried for sodomy and “gross indecency” based on evidence presented at Queensberry’s trial. Wiled was convicted in 895 and sentenced to two years of hard labor. Douglas was forced into exile in Europe.

While Wilde was in prison, he wrote his famous letter, De Profundis, to Douglas, describing in detail what he felt about him, and making clear in no uncertain terms that the two men were lovers. He was never allowed to send it while in prison, although he may have sent a copy after his release. After Wilde’s death, portions of De Profundis were published in 1912, which led Douglas to denounce Wilde as “the greatest force for evil that has appeared in Europe during the last three hundred and fifty years.” He also began a “litigious and libelous career,” suing and being sued for criminal libel over the next decade. In 1923, he was convicted of libeling Winston Churchill, saying Churchill was part of a Jewish conspiracy to kill the British Secretary of State for War, for which Douglas spent six months in prison. Apparently that experience made him more sympathetic to Wilde’s experience, and his attitude softened. He died in 1945 at the age of 74.

Robert Rauschenberg: 1925-2008. Born to a blue-collar, fundamentalist family in Port Arthur, Texas, Rauschenbeg studied at the Kansas City Art Institute, the Académie Julian in Paris, and at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. It was at Black Mountain College where Rauschenberg studied painting under Josef Albers, a Bauhaus founder, but the strict Bauhaus principles of “uninfluenced experimentation” taught Rauschenberg to do “exactly the reverse.” The otherwise experimental nature of Black Mountain however encouraged him to explore and collaborate with a wide range of interdisciplinary artists, including performances with composer John Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham.

Monogram (1955-1959)

He had married, briefly from 1950 to 1953, and that union produced a son. After that marriage ended, he spent a year with painter Cy Twombly before embarking on a personally and professionally fruitful relationship with Jasper Johns. Rauschenberg and Johns remained together for the next eight years, exchanging ideas, critiquing each other’s work, and together establishing a new approach to art. Their personal relationship and professional collaboration would end up defining a new approach to art, one which sought to bridge the gap between art and life — especially the deeply introspective and sometimes obtuse art of Abstract Expressionists. Their approach was to combining found common objects — quilts, newspapers, tires, brooms, and all kinds of salvaged objects — with images from pop culture, as a kind of foreshadow for Andy Warhol’s work a decade later. Rauschenber called his works “combines,” and some of his most famous ones were Monogram (1955-1959, which included a stuffed goat with a tire around its abdomen) and Canyon (1959). In Factum I (1957), he created a painting that the spontaneous drips, splashes and smears of paint popularized by Action Painters like Jackson Pollack, and then questioned the entire process by faithfully reproducing his painting in Factum II.

After Rauschenberg’s relationship with Johns ended in 1961, Rauschenberg began working with silkscreen printing for a series of paintings what included news photographs. He designed sets and costumes for Merce Cunningham, and other experimental choreographers. In 1983, he won a Grammy Award for his album design for the Talking Heads’ Speaking in Tongues. In 1998, the Vatican commissioned a work based on the Apocalypse to commemorate the controversial Franciscan priest Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, who reputedly displayed stigmata on his hands, feet and side, and who had died in 1968. That work covers a massive window of Pio’s new pilgrimage church in Pio of Pietrelcina, which was designed by Architect Renzo Piano. The work was a particular challenge for Rauschenberg, who grew up in the austere Church of Christ and who hadn’t attended church since his twenties. “I bet you’ll be a Catholic before you finish the project,” the Franciscan prior in charge of the project told Rauschenberg. “And I suppose you’ll be an artist,” Rauschenberg replied. He died in 2008 at his home on Captiva Island, Florida.

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?

Geidner: Christie’s argument has been procedural, not personal

Chris Geidner

Christie’s entire defense of the marriage law, in fact, has been premised — like Monday’s statement — upon process and not upon his personal opposition to same-sex couples’ marriages, which he has continued to maintain in his bid for reelection.

When the trial court ruled against Christie in September, for example, he did not defend “traditional marriage” or something similar. Instead, he looked to process, with a spokesman saying, “Governor Christie has always maintained that he would abide by the will of the voters on the issue of marriage equality and called for it to be on the ballot this Election Day. Since the legislature refused to allow the people to decide expeditiously, we will let the Supreme Court make this constitutional determination.”

NJ Assembly Republican Leader weighs in

Dropped in at the end of an article (PolitickerNJ)

Assembly Minority Leader Jon Bramnick (R-21) praised Christie’s decision. “This is why he’s so respected,” Bramnick said. “He’s a practical realist.”

Bramnick, it should be remembered, is not an equality supporter, taking the Governor’s “let the people vote” position.

It’s an interesting peek into how Republicans in deep blue states want to get the issue behind them. They know marriage equality is coming and that any protracted battle is not going to benefit them. They just need a way to graciously concede without changing their public stance.

A vote of the populace is ideal. It allows them to hold their “personal view” while upholding “the will of the people”. And it shields them entirely from the debate. Which is, to some extent, why Democratic politicians in New Jersey fought that option.

Absent that, a swift court decision gives them an out. The judges can have “overstepped” and “dictated”, but it gives Christie and the Republicans a way to be “practical realists” and accept the eventuality.

And today’s dropping of the appeal in New Jersey allows that state’s Republicans to put this issue completely behind them. There is zero chance that they will make any effort to “take it to the people” and within the next week or so, some GOP legislator is going to conduct a wedding of a close friend or staff member and then this issue will cease to be trouble for the party at all.

NOM has no love for Christie

NOMblog:

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) today sharply criticized the courts of New Jersey for orchestrating the redefinition of marriage, and also criticized New Jersey Governor Chris Christie for withdrawing an appeal of the court ruling imposing same-sex marriage and thus abandoning the right of voters to determine the definition of marriage. NOM pledged to continue to fight for the right of New Jerseyans to define marriage, and suggested that Christie’s decision will end any chance of him winning the GOP nomination for president.

“…and thus abandoning the right of voters to determine the definition of marriage.” Huh?

I think NOM has now completely given up any pretense at making sense and is now just throwing up catch words and phrases in the hopes of stimulating emotions.

NJ’s largest synagogue on marriage

Hufpo

In the seven blessings we bestow upon couples under the wedding canopy (Sheva B’rachot), there is one that will resonate particularly for us in the legal marriages we will be blessed to perform as of today, October 21st, 2013: “Praised are you, Adonai our God, for the creation of people.” Indeed, all people. We are so fortunate to now be able to bless those who stand under the wedding canopy without question of their sexual orientation. This is a milestone moment for our state and a milestone moment for us as God’s servants, who feel renewed in our privilege to serve all of God’s people.

Cory Booker Conducts First Wedding as Mayor, Handles Heckler With Aplomb

Senator-elect Cory Booker is still mayor of Newark. Since becoming mayor in 2006, he has refused to conduct any weddings unless he can marry everyone equally. Now he can, and did, last night at Newark City Hall’s rotunda.

NJ Gov. Christie Drops Marriage Appeal

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie announced this morning that he is dropping the same-sex marriage appeal to the state Supreme Court. The announcement recognizes that last Friday’s Supreme Court ruling denying his request to stay a lower court order requiring the state to begin granting marriage equality today is a strong indicator of how the Court will rule next year when it is scheduled to hear the full case:

Colin Reed, a spokesman for Christie, said that Chief Justice Stuart Rabner, writing for the court in a 7-0 opinion last Friday, “left no ambiguity about the unanimous court’s view on the ultimate decision in this matter when he wrote, ‘same-sex couples who cannot marry are not treated equally under the law today.’ ”

But at the same time, Christie sharply criticized the court for stepping in and ruling on the case. The Republican governor, a potential presidential candidate in 2016, has maintained that he wanted voters to take up the issue on the ballot.

“Although the governor strongly disagrees with the court substituting its judgment for the constitutional process of the elected branches or a vote of the people, the court has now spoken clearly as to their view of the New Jersey Constitution and, therefore, same-sex marriage is the law,” Reed said. “The governor will do his constitutional duty and ensure his administration enforces the law as dictated by the New Jersey Supreme Court.”