Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyOctober 21st, 2013
Lambertville City Councilwoman Beth Asaro and Joanne Schailey, making history at 12:01 a.m. this morning.
Couples celebrate after being pronounced legally-wedded spouses in Jersey City.
TODAY’S AGENDA:
New Jersey Says “I Do”. At the stroke of midnight, the Garden State became the fourteenth state in the Union to provide marriage equality for all of its couples. The first marriage to take place after the stroke of midnight was between Lambertville City Councilwoman Beth Asaro and Joanne Schailey, who in 2007 were the first couple to take advantage of New Jersey’s civil unions. Senator-elect Cory Booker, in his capacity as Mayor of Newark, also officiated some of the earliest weddings in the rotunda of Newark City Hall. Those were the first marriages that Booker has officiated since becoming mayor in 2006. Since taking office, he has refused all requests to officiate marriage until the day when he could legally marry all couples. There was one hitch in the ceremony. When Booker asked for objections, a heckler shouted, “This is unlawful in the name of God.” After the heckler was escorted out, Booker resumed: “I do not hear any substantive, worthy objections.” Other midnight marriages took place in Jersey City, and a judge in Essex granted four lesbian couples a waiver so they could skip the mandatory 72-hour waiting period and marry today.
Click to enlarge.
With New Jersey’s addition to the roster of states providing equal marriage for same-sex couples, fully one third of Americans — 33% — now live in marriage equality states. That figure now surpasses the 30% of Americans who lived in states where their relationships were a criminal act just ten years ago. In addition, another 10% of Americans live in states with similar though lesser recognition of same-sex relationships, states which included New Jersey until today. More may be on the way. In the next two weeks, the Illinois and Hawaii legislatures are expected to take up marriage quality bills, and the New Mexico Supreme Court on Wednesday will hear oral arguments on whether it is unconstitutional to deny same-sex couples marriage licenses.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
The Bishop of Clogher Defrocked for “Sodomitical Practices”: 1822. On July 19, 1822, Bishop Percy Jocelyn, the Anglican Bishop of Clogher in the Church of Ireland was caught in, shall we say, a most compromising position with a Grenadier Guardsman, John Moverly, at the White House Pub’s back room (apparently, they had ’em even then) in Westminster. They were caught by the pub’s proprietor, and dragged through the streets by a mob, mostly naked as they were found, to a nearby jail. Bishop Clogher was granted bail a few days later, but the soldier remained in jail:
Lord Sefton when to see the soldier in prison. He says he is a fine soldierlike man and has no the air which these wretches usually have. The Bishop took no precautions, and it was next to impossible he should not have been caught. He made a desperate resistance when taken away, and if his breeches had not been down they think he would have got away. It seems that the soldier will be proceeded against with the greatest vigour, and the Magistrate is much blamed for having taken such small bail as that which he required. The Duke will not spare the Soldier. Lord Lauderdale said the other day that the greatest dissatisfaction would pervade the public mind at the escape of the Bishop and the punishment of the Soldier, and the people, who cannot discriminate, or enter into nice points of the law, will only see in such apparent injustice a disposition to shield the offender in the higher classes of society from the consequences of his crime, while the law is allowed to take its course with the more humble culprit.
Eventually, the soldier was released on bail as well. Both fled the city and were never seen again (although the Bishop was reportedly later seen in Paris as though nothing had happened). The Bishop’s ecclesiastical trial was set for October 21, and it went on despite his absence. According to the court record:
…It [the evidence] also proved the fatal and depraved purposes for which he associated himself with a private soldier, wholly beneath him in rank and station, as the unworthy and vicious partner of his depravity and guilt. The place chosen by him for that base purpose was also unfitted to him as a prelate of the church, the man of high rank and station; it was a common alehouse, situate in St. Alban’s-place in the city of Westminster. In his career of vice, he was very fortunately stopped, before he had perpetrated the last foul act, or crime, which he himself designed; and by which, if committed, his life would have been forfeited to the offended law of the country. Being found by the watchman and others, in a situation disgraceful and degrading to him, he was made a prisoner, in order to be removed to the watch-house of the district.
The bishop wasn’t actually convicted of the capital offense of sodomy itself because English law required that the act be, err, fully consummated, a standard of proof that was difficult to reach. Hence the observation that he was caught before perpetrating “the last foul act, or crime” of the, um, emission of seed. But the evidence was strong enough to strip the bishop of his office for “the crimes of immorality, incontinence, Sodomitical practices, habits, and propensities, and neglect of his spiritual, judicial, and ministerial duties.”
It’s almost impossible for a scandal to unravel worse than this one. First, the fact that a Bishop was caught in flagrante delicto was itself quite shocking. That was compounded by the perception that he had been given preferential treatment with his early release with very low bail. And if all that wasn’t enough, the Bishop was a well-known member of the Society for the Suppression of Vice. All of this hypocrisy was too much for Londoners to bear, and for many weeks afterward it was unsafe for members of the clergy to be seen on the streets. But it all made great material for satirists:
The Devil to prove the Church was a farce
Went out to fish for a Bugger.
He baited his hook with a Frenchman’s arse,*
And pulled up the Bishop of Clogher.
*Moverly was from a French family.
Morris Kight (white hair, glasses) and other activists emerge from a meeting with L.A. Times editors.
Los Angeles Times Picketed Over Refusal to Cover Gay Issues: 1974. Two hundred demonstrators protested the ongoing crackdown on gay bars in West Hollywood, but the Los Angeles Times ignored the protest. Later that summer, two thousand people turned out for the Christopher Street West parade (the name given for the annual Pride event held in June), but the Times ignored that also. Four months later, the Los Angeles Metropolitan Community Church raised money to buy a bus for a local children’s home –a fascinating human interest story, but the Times wasn’t interested. On Sunday, October 20, Rev. Lee Carlton told his congregation that it was time to do something about it.
The next day, thirty protesters arrived at the Times building, with reporters from five local TV stations, radio stations and the Associated Press in tow. Times managers though the protesters would leave by the end of the day. But at closing times, protesters pushed their way into the vestibule, spread out their sleeping bags and settled down for the night. The next morning, Times employees stepped and tripped over the protesters as they tried to get to work. Finally, a manager came down and said that the editorial board would meet with a few representatives. Six went inside. Activist Morris Kight later described the tacit agreement: “They said we were absolutely right in our protest. They admitted they had dealt with us very badly and laid out out a plan. They said we would disappear from their pages for about six months while they figured out what to do about us. We took them at their word on that. After that, they improved dramatically.”
[Source: Edward Alwood. Straight News: Gays, Lesbians and the News Media
Justices of the Kansas Supreme Court, 2005.
Kansas Supreme Court Overturns 17-Year Sentence for Gay Sex: 2005. Matthew R. Limon was eighteen. In February 2000, a week after his eighteenth birthday, he performed consensual oral sex on another teenager who was just under fifteen years old — three years, one month and a few days younger. The two were students at the same residential school for developmentally disabled youth. Under Kansas law, what Limon did was statutory rape. Also under Kansas law, a “Romeo and Juliet” exemption provided much more lenient sentences for those in a similar situation to Limon’s: a maximum of fifteen months’ imprisonment. But also under Kansas law, that “Romeo and Juliet” exemption applied to heterosexual teens only. Because Limon’s act was with another boy, he wasn’t eligible to be sentenced under that exemption. Limon got seventeen years as an adult sexual predator.
In 2003, lawyers for the ACLU appealed the sentence, which a state appeals court upheld. It then went to the Kansas Supreme Court which ruled unanimously that because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2003 decision striking down the nation’s sodomy laws, Kansas could not use its laws to express “moral disapproval” of homosexuality, nor could it punish illegal sex more harshly if it involved homosexual acts rather than heterosexual acts. The court ordered Limon re-sentenced under state’s “Romeo and Juliet” law, which resulted in his release after five years of imprisonment.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Claire Waldoff: 1884-1957. Born Clara Wortmann in Gelsenkirchen, Westphalia, she took the stage name of Claire Waldoff while studying theater. In 1907, she went to Berlin where she quickly became a celebrated cabaret singer. Her style was unique: instead of using double-entendres for which cabaret was known for, she went straight to the point. She was bucked the cabaret’s stylish conventions by adopting a rough persona, wild red hear and street Berliner slang, all of which suited her short and stocky presence. She limited her performances to just three songs and no encores, which gave her time to play at several venues in a single night. Openly lesbian, Waldoff settled in nicely with other lesbian friends and her life partner, Olga Von Roeder, through much of the Weimar period.
The Great Depression and the Nazi’s rise to power brought cabaret culture to an end. In 1939, Waldoff and von Roder left Berlin and moved to remote Bayerische Gmain near the Austrian Alps. After the war, she lost her savings in the German Monetary reform of 1948, but was able to get a stipend from the City of Berlin in 1954, the year after she wrote her biography. She died in 1957.
Dale Jennings: 1917-2000. If anyone knows anything about Jennings, it’s probably limited to just one thing: his false arrest in February of 1952, from within his own home, on charges of soliciting a police officer for immoral acts. It wasn’t the fact that he was arrested which was so notable, but that he chose to fight the charges while also refusing to deny that he was gay. A gay man arguing before a jury that he was innocent was so unusual it made headlines across the country. Those headlines only got bigger when the jury deadlocked 11-1 for acquittal and the charges were dismissed (see Jun 23).
If he was known for anything else, then perhaps it was because two years earlier, Jennings helped to found the Mattachine Foundation with Harry Hay, Chuck Rowland, Rudi Gernreich, and Hay’s student at the California Labor School, Bob Hull, who happened to be Jenning’s boyfriend at the time. Jennings had met Hay and Gernreich while involved with the Communist Party in Los Angeles. When Jennings was arrested in 1952, the Mattachines came to his rescue by raising money, hiring a lawyer, and generating enough publicity about the case that it would come to the attention of those newspapers which wrote about it. The case also had the effect of raising Mattachine profile among gay people who previously hadn’t known about the secretive group, and its membership skyrocketed.
That it was Jennings who galvanized the Mattachines and gave it a sense of purpose is, perhaps, the greatest irony. Jennings, despite his flirtations with Communism, had little patience for the political theorizing and navel-gazing that took place in the early Mattachine meetings. One Mattachine member recalled that as the group droned on about “the pain and sorrow, the desperate loneliness of being homosexual and afraid, always having to lie and hide,” Jennings “struggled not to laugh out loud.” He also scoffed at Hays’s insistence that homosexuals made up a distinct minority who were inherently and qualitatively different from heterosexuals. Jennings maintained that there were no differences whatsoever between men who preferred sex with women and men who preferred sex with men. “How could you construct a cultural minority out of a group of people with little in common except what they did in bed?”, he asked. Where Hays wanted the right to be publicly gay, Jennings wanted nothing more than the right to be left alone.
Jennings may expressed a desire to be left alone, but his combative nature ran counter to any desire he might have had to leave things well enough alone. As a budding novelist and playwright, he felt like he had a lot to say and wanted to say it. And so during another one of the interminable Mattachine meetings, he found himself drifting into the kitchen where a smaller group of people were discussing the need for a nationally-distributed magazine (see Oct 15) — a real magazine, professionally typset and graphically designed rather than the typewritten and mimeographed newsletters that had tried to pose as pale imitations. Jennings’s contributions would prove to be crucial: he was the only one of that small group who knew the first thing about the mechanics of publishing: editing, layout, typesetting, artwork, advertising, and so forth. He also provided access to the magazine’s first printing press: the first issue was printed by Jennings’s sister and brother-in-law in their basement.
Jennings wound up serving on the editorial board of ONE Magazine when it made its debut in 1953. As was common practice with ONE in its early days, Jennings not only wrote under his own byline, but under other pseudonyms as well to provide the illusion that ONE’s staff was larger than it really was. That first issue included his first-person account of his arrest and acquittal under his own name, along with two other articles as “Heironymus K.” and “Elizabeth Lalo.” In ONE’s third issue, as “Jeff Winters,” Jennings wrote “Homosexuals Are Not a People,” which, as the title suggested, reiterated his contention that homosexuals did not make up a distinct minority. (“Homosexuality is today’s great irrelevancy,” he argued.) As “R. Noone,” he lambasted President Eisenhower’s executive order barring the employment of gay people in the federal government (see Apr 27), and in 1954, again as “Jeff Winters,” he wrote “Can Homosexuals Organize?”, a very critical history of the Mattachine Foundation which had just kicked out its founders and reorganized itself as a much more conservative Mattachine Society (“The present Society however invites certain destruction by denial of all those things for which the Mattachine was founded. …From the trembling president on down to the least officer, they are terrified.”).
Jennings tenure as ONE’s first editor-in-chief was short-lived. He was headstrong and opinionated, which led to constant fights with business manager Dorr Legg (a.k.a. Bill Lambert, see Dec 15) and co-founder Don Slater (see Aug 21), and others. That divisiveness — and Legg’s unease over Jennings’s Communist ties — led to Jennings’s departure in March of 1954. (He was replaced as Editor in Chief by Irma “Corky” Wolf, who went by the pseudonym Ann Carll Reid.) As Jennings acknowledged nearly three decades later to Slater:
Bill Lambert got rid of me at almost the precise time that the local red cell took my membership card away from me for being a carnivore (gay) and hence a security risk. Naturally both organizations were quite correct and should have been more circumspect about letting me come near them in the very beginning.
After leaving Mattachine and ONE, Jennings more or less dropped out. In 1968, he published his first novel, The Ronin
Jennings bought a ranch outside of Los Angeles, but then lost it in a lawsuit to a former lover. He then moved to northern California, but decided in the 1980s to move back to southern California and reconnect with the gay community. But by then, the gay community had long since moved on and had forgotten him. Not only that, but the gay community had moved left politically while Jennings moved hard to the right. He did manage to reestablish contact with Don Slater in the 1980s, and they maintained a correspondence that lasted until Slater died in 1997. In 1984, Jennings sent one Christmas card to Slater lamenting, “When I was a loud-mouthed commie, people fled the Mattachine in the thousands; now that the prevailing shade this season is red, my conservatism is worse than damned: it’s ignored.”
Through the 1990s, Jennings became reclusive, surly, and a heavy drinker. He spent every day working on his memoirs on a word processer, but he often lost an entire day’s work by shutting the machine off without remembering to hit save. He began losing his memory, but was cognizant enough to ensure that his papers would go to Slater’s Homosexual Information Center Archives, which are currently housed at California State University at Northridge. He died on May 11, 2000 at the age of 82.
[Source: C. Todd White. “Dale Jennings (1917-2000): ONE’s Outspoken Advocate.” In Vern L. Bullough (ed.) Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context
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?
October 20th, 2013
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Jacksonville, FL; Nashville, TN (Black Pride).
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Atlanta, GA; Austin, TX; Philadelphia, PA; Phoenix, AZ; Watertown, NY.
Other Events This Weekend: Polari Film Festival, Austin, TX; Louisville LGBT Film Festival, Louisville, KY; Chéries-Chéris Film Festival, Paris, France; , Phoenix, AZ; Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, Seattle, WA.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
60 YEARS AGO: “Homosexual Ring” of Service Women Broken Up: 1953. According to a newspaper report, “army investigators have ‘broken up a ring’ of approximately 25 women members of the armed forces who, the investigators charged, engaged in abnormal sex practices. It said the crackdown stemmed from charges made last month by a 19-year-old WAC (Women’s Army Corps) private who was under treatment at a local (Washington, D.C.) army hospital. Half a dozen of the group were said to have confirmed the WAC’s disclosures. Most of the 25 were said to be WACS, but ‘three our four’ were reported as navy WAVES. All were described as enlisted personnel.”
None of the women were identified in the article, but the article went on to say that the women were “rounded up and questioned. Disciplinary action is pending. The group under investigation was said to have used two taverns located in the Georgetown area (of Washington) as ‘hangouts’ where meetings and ‘dates’ were arranged during off-duty hours.” An Army spokesman said that cases like these “are a continuing problem in the army,” and that military regulations required that persons found guilty of homosexuality were to be discharged as undesirables, except in some cases “where psychiatric examinations show that medical treatment or disciplinary action is warranted.”
Miami Formally Outlaws Gay Bars: 1954. Miami’s ongoing hysteria over the shocking discovery that there were gay people in the 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, and Oct 6) reached an important legal milestone when the Miami City Commission passed new ordinance which prohibited liquor establishments from employing gay people or allowing “homosexuals or perverts” to congregate. The ordinance provided up to 60 days in jail, a fine of $500 (that’s about $4,000 in today’s money) and the loss of their liquor licenses. This latest ordinance came about after a previous proposal by Mayor Abe Aronovitz (see Oct 6) was rejected for being “too broad.” The vote on the revised ordinance was unanimous, and because it was adopted as an emergency ordinance it went into effect immediately.
And in another move to protect the morals of Miami’s children, the City Commission also made it illegal to sell horror comic books to children under the age of seventeen.
Federal Panel Urges Decriminalizing Homosexuality: 1969. A fourteen-member panel of doctors, lawers, and social and behavioral scientists led by UCLA’s Evelyn Hooker (see Sep 2) released a report urging the United States abolish all laws forbidding private same-sex relationships among consenting adults. The panel found, “Homosexuality presents a major problem for our society largely because of the amount of injustice and suffering entailed in it not only for the homosexual but also for those concerned about him.”
The panel had been formed two years earlier (see Sept 24), and it featured such illuminaries as psychiatrists Dr. Judd Marmor and John Money, Kinsey Institute for Sex Research director Paul Gebhard, Princeton theologian Seward Hiltner, and other experts in the fields of anthropology, sociology, and the law. The final report, which was dated October 10, 1969, called for the establishment of a Center for the Study of Sexual Behavior within the National Institute of Mental Health. The proposed center would then focus on five specific activities: research, training and education for professionals and law enforcement, social policy, and, in a reflection of the times, treatment and prevention. The panel’s research recommendations were particularly wide-ranging: they wanted to see more focus on the experiences of gay people (including job history and occupational performance), legal and civil rights issues, psychological studies, differences between lesbians and gay men, and numerous other social factors.
As for treatment, the panel recommended that the “the goal of treatment for homosexual patients as for others must be the decrease of discomfort and increase in productive functioning,” although as part of that “decrease in discomfort,” the panel endorsed treatment “to achieve some heterosexual interests and competence if they are motivated to do so.” Similarly, the panel recommended research into “prevention”, which the panel called “one of the most important goals.” “It is apparent that research in a number of areas described above, including parental relationships, childhood peer activities, endocrine, genetic and biological elements, effects of early trauma, the role of social class mores, and developmental crises, will have a direct bearing on the design of preventive programs.”
The report, therefore, might not appear to be particularly forward thinking by today’s standards, but it was quite progressive in one area in which it was somewhat timid and another area in which it was vocal. The report was timid on the question of whether gay people were inherently mentally ill, which the American Psychiatric Association’s official diagnostic manual answered in the affirmative. The report simply said that “homosexual individuals vary widely in terms of their emotional and social adjustments. Some persons who engage in homosexual behavior function well in everyday life,” a point that even those who argued that gay people were mentally ill would acknowledge when pressed. Some were just less sick than others, the reasoning went, and the report did little to dispel those arguments. But it did suggest that much of the problems gay people experienced were the result of anxiety over being discovered and loosing their jobs or going to jail.
And it was on that point where the the report was at its most controversial: the rampant discrimination that gay people regularly faced in employment and the law. Homosexuality was illegal in every state except Illinois. The panel observed that “the extreme opprobrium that our society has attached to homosexual behavior, by way of criminal statutes and restrictive employment practices has done more social harm than good.” Furthermore, “[t]here is evidence to indicate that entrapment is not uncommon, that existing laws are selectively enforced, and that serious injustice often results.” The report added, “Many homosexuals are good citizens, holding regular jobs and leading productive lives. The existence of legal penalties relating to homosexual acts means that the mental health problems of homosexuals are exacerbated by the need for concealment and the emotional stresses arising from this need and from the opprobrium of being in violation of the law.” The panel, citing similar recommendations made by American and British legal experts, recommended that the law “be recast in such a way as to remove legal penalties against acts in private among consenting adults.”
The panel was unanimous on all of its recommendations except for the last ones on discriminatory laws and employment practices. Three dissented, saying that those recommendations should be deferred pending further research in the other recommended topics. (One panelist, Judge David L. Bazelon of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, resigned on June 3 before the report was formally adopted, perhaps to avoid potential conflicts of interest.) The report made headlines on October 20 when the task force’s recommendations were formally made public, with news reports focusing almost exclusively on the panel’s criticisms of the nations’ anti-gay laws. The NIMH responded by saying simply that would study that report before deciding which recommendations they would endorse. The report was buried; none of its recommendations were adopted and the NIMH even refused to publish it. A year later, NIMH director Stanley F. Yolles, was forced out by the Nixon Administration, partly because of the report’s recommendations, but also because of his call for legalizing marijuana possession for personal use.
But thanks to those news reports, the gay community was aware of the report and homophile leaders were eager to give it greater publicity. ONE magazine had by then ceased publication, but ONE, Inc., was still in operation as an educational institution, publishing the scholarly ONE Institute Quarterly: Homophile Studies (although by the late sixties, it wasn’t so much a quarterly as it was an occasionally). In 1970, when it became clear that the NIMH was dragging its heels in releasing the report, Hooker sent a copy to One, Inc., which promptly published it in a special edition of the Quarterly. Dorr Legg, the publication’s editor (see Dec 15), defended the action, saying the report merited “careful attention, for it contains the potential for unlocking a whole new era of individual and social well-being for many millions of American men and women.”
With the cat now fully out of the bag, NIMH eventually relented and published the report in 1972, accompanied with seven working papers and three appendices which were not available in the Quarterly. Its full appearance in 1972 came just in time for the APA’s debate over the removal of homosexuality from its list of mental disorders.
[Source: National Institute of Mental Health Task Force on Homosexuality: Final Report and Background Papers. John M. Livingood (ed.). DHEW Publication no (HSM) 72-9116. (Rockville, MD: NIMH, 1972).
ONE Institute Quarterly: Homophile Studies, 8, no. 22 (1970).
Stuart Auerbach. “Panel Urges Repeal of Homosexual Laws.” Washington Post (October 21, 1969): A1.
Evelyn Hooker: “Reflections of a 40-year exploration: A scientific view on homosexuality.” American Psychologist 48, no. 4 (April 1993): 450-453]
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Arthur Rimbaud: 1854-1891. The French poet’s period of productivity was unusually short. He wrote his entire life’s output of poetry as a teenager, and he gave up creative writing altogether before turning twenty. His education was interrupted at the age of sixteen by the Franco-Prussian War. Bored, Rimbaud ran away from his home in Charleville and caught a train to Paris, where he was promptly arrested for fare evasion and vagrancy. He was released and sent back to Charleville, but he ran away again just ten days later, determined to live the life a poet. He had it all planned out, as he wrote to one of his teachers earlier that spring:
I’m now making myself as scummy as I can. Why? I want to be a poet, and I’m working at turning myself into a seer. You won’t understand any of this, and I’m almost incapable of explaining it to you. The idea is to reach the unknown by the derangement of all the senses. It involves enormous suffering, but one must be strong and be a born poet. It’s really not my fault.
Rimbaud joined up with the Symbolist poet Paul Verlaine, and the two embarked on a torrid affair fueled by absinthe, hashish, and some of the most striking visionary verse that Paris had ever seen. The two moved to London in 1872, where they lived an impoverished life, though Rimbaud’s adapted the splendor of the British Museum’s reading room as his office, where “heating, lighting, pens and ink were free.”
A year later, Verlaine left Rimbaud and returned to Paris, but he soon missed his young lover. Verlaine asked Rimbaud to meet him in Brussels, but the reunion went badly. On July 10, Verlaine, drunk, fired two shots at Rimbaud, wounding him in the left wrist. Verlaine was sentenced to two years in prison, but only after an intense interrogation about his relationship with Rimbaud. Rimbaud, for his part, returned home to Charleville and completed his landmark Une Saison en Enfer (A Season in Hell) in 1873. The pioneering Symbolist work candidly detailed his relationship with Verlaine. The following year, Rimbaud was back in London, this time with the poet Germain Nouveau. They were together for three months while Rimbaud wrote the poems that would eventually make their way into Les Illuminations.
Rimbaud’s poetry was revolutionary, and it would go on to influence not only the Symbolists, but the Dadaists and Surrealists who followed. Those poems also marked the end of Rimbaud’s writing career (even though Les Illuminations itself wouldn’t see print for another decade). What happened? Why did he stop writing? Nobody really knows. Rimbaud instead spent the next decade undertaking more reliable work in exotic locations: first as a Dutch soldier in Java, then as a quarry foreman in Cyprus, then as a coffee trader in Ethiopia and Yemen. In 1891, he developed what he thought was arthritis in the knee. When he returned to France, the diagnosis turned out to be bone cancer. He died that year in Marseille and was burred in Charleville. Before he died, Rimbaud was by then indifferent to his poetry, but when Verlaine published Rimbaud’s complete works in 1895, he cemented his ex-lover’s singular reputation in the world of poetry forever.
Edward John Barrington Douglas-Scott-Montagu, 3rd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu: 1926. Okay, first of all: how can you not love a name like that? Lord Montagu has been a Conservative member of Britain’s House of Lords since 1947. He knew from a very early age that he was bisexual, but he always tried to keep his affairs with men quiet. That proved impossible when in 1954 he and two others were convicted and imprisoned for twelve months for “conspiracy to incite certain male persons to commit serious offenses with male persons.” Britain, like America, was then in the midst of a massive anti-gay witch hunt. The Sunday Times had editorialized that “its eruption… is today a serious and growing criminal problem,” while a Daily Mail headline read, “Homosexuality spreading like a foul growth in our midst.” As many as 1,000 men were arrested every year for violating the country’s anti-gay laws, and Home Secretary Sir David Fyfe urged magistrates to inflict maximum penalties on those who were found guilty.
But with Montagu protesting his innocence even after his conviction, the trial ended up provoking a sharp debate in British popular opinion. Kinglsy Martin exemplified a growing discomfort over Britain’s gross indecency laws when he wrote in New Statesman & Nation, “It is a social evil but its bad effects are greatly aggravated by our savage criminal law … There should be no penalties attached to adult males consorting together who, in private, decide to live a homosexual life… I believe there are Members of Parliament who’d be willing to make this change in the law.”
Parliament instead decided to study the issue by establishing a special commission to look into Britain’s laws against homosexuality and prostitution. Chaired by Lord John Wolfenden, the commission met over the next three years, and in 1957 issued its report recommending that “homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in private should no longer be a criminal offence.” The report also found that “homosexuality cannot legitimately be regarded as a disease, because in many cases it is the only symptom and is compatible with full mental health in other respects.” It would take another ten years before Parliament would act on the report’s recommendations and decriminalize homosexuality.
As for Lord Montagu, the distress over having been arrested and imprisoned never faded. He never talked about it, saying that he abhors the idea of becoming “a professional convict.” He married his first wife in 1958, and the couple had one son and one daughter before divorcing in 1974, when he turned around and married wife number two, who bore him another son in 1975.
But when Britain’s Channel Four was preparing to air a documentary about the trial in 2007, Lord Montagu felt that it was time to speak up. “I am slightly proud that the law has been changed to the benefit of so many people. I would like to think that I would get some credit for that. Maybe I’m being very boastful about it but I think because of the way we behaved and conducted our lives afterwards, because we didn’t sell our stories, we just returned quietly to our lives, I think that had a big effect on public opinion.”
Allan Horsfall: 1927-2012. He was born in the tiny mining village of Laneshaw Bridge in Lancashire where he was raised by his grandparents, whom he described has “God-fearing Conservatives and fervent upholders of law and order.” Like most gay men who grew up in small towns, it was during his time in military service — the RAF, in particular, where Horsfall discovered other gay men. One man, in particular, he met in an ex-Servicemen’s Club in 1947: Harold Pollard, a primary school teacher, would remain his life partner until Harold’s death in 1996. But unlike a lot of gay men who grew up in small towns, Horsefall didn’t flee to the big city. He decided instead to return back to his small town, take up residence in a simple miner’s cottage and become a clerk for the National Coal Board.
Horsfall settled in to a rather non-descript life until 1956. when the Suez Crisis inspired him to enter politics. He joined the Labour Party and won an election as a councillor in Nelson. After the Wolfenden Report was released in 1957 with its recommendation that homosexuality be decriminalized, Horsfall immediately became involved with the London-based Homosexual Law Reform Society. When he decided that the HLRS was too hidebound, closeted and aloof to be effective, Horsfall helped to found the North West Committee for Homosexual Law Reform in 1964. In doing so, he made it clear that he believed gay people shouldn’t remain closeted in order to support law reform. His North West Committee also rejected the national campaign’s opinion that gays were “unfortunates” who deserved pity. Again, against the advice of friends, he used his home address and phone number as the public point of contact. But he found that there was actually very little hostile reaction. If anything, his experience harkened back to the days of Edward Carpenter from the turn of the century (see Aug 29), who lived openly and undisturbed in the mining vilage of Milthorpe while Oscar Wilde was being prosecuted for “gross indecency” in London.
After Britain finally decriminalized homosexuality in 1967 (see July 28), the London-based HLRS, believing that its work was done, floundered for a few years before folding. But Horsfall’s North West Committee kept going and evolved into the Campaign for Homosexual Equality which, in 1971, took part in the first major gay rights demonstration in London. Horsfall’s main focus, by then, was on increasing the social support for gay people by establishing membership clubs in the north of England. Modelled after Working Men’s Clubs, his proposed Esquire Clubs were intended to function as a combination community center and pub for rural and small-town gays and lesbians. The clubs themselves were unsuccessful, but his fight to establish them paid a very different kind of dividend. In Burnley, Horsfall’s CHE organized a public meeting to confront the local Christian Alliance, which had formed to prevent the opening of an Esquire club there. During the packed meeting, Horsfall asked all of the homosexuals to stand up. Over one hundred did so, making it one of the first mass coming-out demonstrations in the U.K. It also marked a coming-of-age for the gay rights movement in Britain. CHE went on to become the UK’s largest LGBT-rights organization, with over 5,000 members in more than 100 local groups across England and Wales.
Horsfall suffered a heart attack in 1970, and by 1974 he began withdrawing from the front lines of the gay-rights movement. As a sign of the respect he commanded, he was named President for Life of CHE. In 1998, he became involved in the case of the Bolton Seven, a group of gay men who were prosecuted because, while homosexuality was legal, group sex between men was not. He also campaigned for an end the ban on gays serviing openly in the military, the equalization of the age of consent, and allowing gays to adopt children. He also became involved with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament during the 1980s.
Horsfall died on August 27, 2012 of heart failure at the age of 84. His web site, Gay Monitor, has been selected for preservation by the British Library’s UK Web Archive.
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October 19th, 2013
Russia’s RAI Novosti’s headlines makes it sound like good news — “Russian MP Withdraws Bill Taking Children Away from Gay Parents” — but you only have to go to the second paragraph to see the other shoe drop:
A bill that proposes stripping gays with children of their parental rights, introduced by Russian lawmaker Alexei Zhuravlyov, has been withdrawn from the parliament, a spokesperson for the lawmaker said Saturday.
“Yes, he has indeed withdrawn it,” spokesperson Sofia Cherepanova said, adding that the document would be later revised and again submitted to the Russian State Duma. She said that the author’s position on the matter “remains unchanged.” “Anyway, we are interested in passing the bill,” Cherepanova added.
The bill had been scheduled to come up for debate in February, at about the same time Russia would take center stage internationally as host to the Winter Olympics. Given that Zhuravlyov intends to resubmit the bill, this may be a delaying tactic to avoid drawing attention to Russia’s dismal human rights record while the television cameras are on in Sochi.
October 19th, 2013
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Bakersfield, CA; Jacksonville, FL; Nashville, TN (Black Pride); Winston-Salem, NC.
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Atlanta, GA; Austin, TX; Philadelphia, PA; Phoenix, AZ; Watertown, NY.
Other Events This Weekend: Polari Film Festival, Austin, TX; Louisville LGBT Film Festival, Louisville, KY; Chéries-Chéris Film Festival, Paris, France; , Phoenix, AZ; Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, Seattle, WA.
A Daughters of Bilitis breakfast, 1959. L-R: Del Martin, Josie, Jan, Marge, Bev Hickok, Phyllis Lyon.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
Daughters of Bilitis Founded: 1955. Phyllis Lyon remembered the phone call in September. Rose Bamberger was on the other end, asking, “would yo like to be a part of the group of six of us that are putting together a secret society for Lesbians?” Lyon recalled later, “We said ‘Yes!!’ Because we would immediately know five more lesbians and we did, which was…. AMAZING.” The “we” were Lyon (see Nov 10) and her partner, Del Martin (see May 5). They had known each other since meeting in Seattle in 1950, and lived together in San Francisco since 1953. But they felt isolated because they hadn’t made any other friends who were lesbians. So when Rose, whom they met earlier that summer through a gay male couple they knew, suggested they start a secret club, Lyon and Martin jumped at the chance. “She wanted it to be in people’s homes and she wanted it to be so we’d be able to dance … so that we wouldn’t get caught up in police raids and we wouldn’t be stared at by tourists and so on. You couldn’t dance in the bars in those days. And she loved to dance. That was the whole idea behind it.”
Over the month of September, four couples, including Martin and Lyon, met to make plans for forming the club. Their first decision to make was the club’s name. Several were suggested: Que Vive, Habeas Corpus, Plus Two, Amazon — but all of them were rejected. Then someone suggested Daughters of Bilitis, named for the work of nineteenth century poet Pierre Louys, whose Songs of Bilitis spoke of lesbian love. Lyon had never heard of him. “Del and I went to the library to look up Bilitis, and of course found nothing. They had said it would be a great name because no one would know what it meant.” The second important decision was how to pronounce it. They rejected Bill-EYE-tis because they thought it sounded too much like a disease. So Bill-EE-tis it was.
The small group met several more times to begin putting some organization behind the idea: bylaws, membership rules (no one under 21, males welcome only as guests on specific occasions), and a tentative schedule. Business meetings would be held on the first Wednesdays of each month at 8:00 p.m. “Qui vive” became the club’s motto, sapphire blue and gold the colors, and an triangular insignia was chosen — that was serendipitous; they didn’t know that the pink triangle marked homosexuals in Nazi concentration camps. And then they named interim officers: Del Martin was president, Noni Frey was vice president, Phyllis Lyon was secretary, Rosemary Sliepen was treasurer, and Marcia Foster was trustee.
The first official meeting took place on October 19, 1955. It was awkward. The women quickly realized that they would be welcoming other women into their homes with whom they had very little in common except their sexuality. But the meeting was also a success, and more followed. As the members became more comfortable with each other, they also became more confident, and within a year began reaching out to the local Mattachine Society and the staff of ONE magazine in Los Angeles. When they joined the Mattachine Society to lobby for a change in California’s sex laws, they began to get involved in local advocacy and cooperation with other homophile groups.
But they remained focused for providing a social and intellectual outlet for women within the larger gay movement. In 1956, DoB began publishing The Ladder, first as a typewritten and mimeographed newsletter, then as a nationally distributed magazine which became a lifeline to lesbians across the country and around the world. Soon, there were DoB chapters in dozens of other cities, including one in Melbourne, Australia, which was the first “openly homosexual political organization” in that country. Beginning in 1960, the Daughters held the first of their biennial conventions in San Francisco.
DoB remained active as a until 1970, when the national organization disbanded but allowed the remaining local chapters to continue under the name. The Ladder survived the national organization by two years, until it went under due to a lack of financial support in 1972. But as many as twenty local DoB chapters continued in several American cities, with New York, Boston and the original San Francisco chapters remaining particularly active. The original San Francisco chapter folded in 1978, and its files, which included both the local and national archives, were turned over to the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco. At last report, the Boston Chapter, since moved to Cambridge, was still in existence as of 2004, but it appears to have gone dormant sometime since then.
[Source: Marcia M. Gallo. Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rise of the Lesbian Rights Movement
“Downtown” Markleeville, Alpine County’s unincorporated county seat.
Gay Group Plans Takover of Alpine County: 1970. The Gay Liberation Front in Los Angeles hit on a novel idea: What if enough gay people gathered in one location in numbers sufficiently large enough that they could then take over the area through free elections? On October 19, the group issued a two-page statement announcing their dream of encouraging gay people to move to sparsely-populated Alpine County, California. Located high up in the Sierra Nevadas just south of Reno and Carson City, Alpine County only had a little over 400 residents and 384 eligible voters.
The way GLF member Don Jackson figured it, if they could get a similar number of gay people to move, they could have the county all sewn up with little difficulty. And with homosexuality still a criminal act in California (it would remain so until 1975: see May 12), having power over law enforcement would be an important advantage. “A gay Superior Court Judge would have great discretionary powers. A gay district attorney could choose which laws and which criminals he wished to prosecute. … It would mean a … gay civil service and a county welfare department which made public assistance payments to refugees from prejudice,” Jackson told reporters. The numbers were in Jackson’s favor; he already had 479 gay people sign up to move into the county by January 1.
As you can imagine, not everyone was thrilled with the idea, especially the people who already called Alpine County their home. Hubert Bruns, chairman of the county’s Board of Supervisors, joined four other officials in a closed-door meeting with Gov. Ronald Reagan’s assistant legal affairs secretary to try to figure out what options were available to them. When a reporter asked if they were encouraged by what they learned, Bruns simply replied “No,” then added, “If these people come up here and abide by the laws, there’s nothing in the world we can do to prevent them from coming and registering. Today, to the best of our knowledge, we don’t have gay people here. We do not need that kind of business.”
Bruns predicted a chilly reception. “We thought it was a joke,” Bruns said. “Today we don’t think it is a joke. They will receive a hostile reception when they come.” When asked how he would know which of the new residents were gay, Bruns replied, “We’re going to make every attempt to find out. I’m sure we’ll know some of them.” Other observers noticed that the cool reception wouldn’t just be from county residents. The planned January 1 start date would have coincided with the dead of winter when it’s not uncommon to have twenty-five feet of snow on the ground.
Not everyone in the gay community was on board either. The Gay Liberation Front of Berkeley voted against the proposal. They gave the same reason they gave for everything else they opposed: it was “sexist” and “racist.” And “impractical,” something that they had not been known to be worried about before. Berkeley’s vote didn’t bother L.A.’s Don Kilhefmer though. “All the Berkeley vote means is that they don’t dig the idea, while San Francisco and Los Angeles is going ahead.” But as the deadline approached, the plan fizzled. Good thing, too, because that January the worst snowstorm in nineteen years blanketed Alpine County with more than eight feet of snow.
Postscript: Whatever reservations Alpine County residents had for gay people in 1970, those attitudes changed remarkably by 2008, when Alpine County was one of just three interior counties in California to vote against Prop 8. County residents disapproved of the discriminatory ban on same-sex marriage by 379 to 293.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Robert Reed: 1932-1992. Poor Carol Brady. How could she know that her husband was gay? Actually, Florence Henderson, who played “the lovely lady” in The Brady Bunch, later said she figured it out the first time they shared a screen kiss in the first episode.
Reed was already a well-established character actor, appearing in episodes of more television series than anyone can count. He also worked on Broadway, in Neil Simon’s Barefoot In the Park. Reed never liked his role on The Brady Bunch, thinking that the schmaltzy show was beneath him. He often sparred with the show’s producer, Sherwood Schwartz over the silly scripts and nonsensical story lines. But Reed liked his co-stars and filled the role of father figure to the six younger cast members whenever he could. After the third season wrapped, he even brought the entire cast on vacation to New York and a cruise on the Queen Elizabeth II to London. Most of the cast members knew he was gay, but they were very protective of the fact. After all, in the 1970s it would have been a career-killer. When he died in 1992 of colon cancer and lymphoma, the media reported that he had died of AIDS (he had tested positive for HIV the year before but it had not progressed to AIDS). His Brady family was taken aback by the sensational reporting surrounding his death. As he was a father figure to the Brady cast in life, they returned the favor by being something of a family-figure to him. The cast attended his memorial, while many of his actual relatives stayed away.
Divine: 1945-1988. He was born as Harris Glenn Milstead, but everyone knew him as Divine, the Drag Queen of the Century who practically defined what a John Waters movie was all about. Divine described his character as “just good, dirty fun, and if you find it offensive, honey, don’t join in.” But he drew a clear distinction between his private life and his performance. “My favorite part of drag is getting out of it,” he said. “Drag is my work clothes. I only put it on when someone pays me to.” And yet whether he was in or out of drag, he was always Divine: he even had it put on his passport.
His most famous character, that of Edna Turnbald in the film Hairspray, was so popular that the character has been played by a male in drag in every adaptation since then, whether on the stage or the 2007 film remake. But not all of his characters were in drag; he also appeared as the racist TV station manager Arvin Hodgepile in Hairspray and as Earl Peterson, the fat man driving an Edsel station wagon who picks up Divine while hitchhiking. Divine was nominated for a Razzie Award for playing Rosie Velez in Lust In the Dust, which Tab Hunter both produced and starred in. I think he should have won an Oscar, with Lainie Kazan receiving special kudos for playing Divine’s step sister. He died, much too soon, of heart failure in 1988 at the age of 42.
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October 18th, 2013
From the New Jersey Star-Ledger:
…And it’s a setback for Gov. Chris Christie, an opponent of same-sex marriage who says only “one man and one woman” should be able to wed.
At a campaign event at a restaurant in Dover, Christie ignored a reporter’s request for comment about the ruling.
Michael Drewniak, Christie’s spokesman, later issued a brief statement.
“The Supreme Court has made its determination,” Drewniak said. “While the Governor firmly believes that this determination should be made by all the people of the State of New Jersey, he has instructed the Department of Health to cooperate with all municipalities in effectuating the order of the Superior Court under the applicable law.”
Gov. Christie said earlier this week that if one of his four sons had come out to him as gay, he would “grab them and hug them and tell them I love them,” but he would also tell them “that Dad believes that marriage is between one man and one woman.” Beginning Monday, his hypothetical gay son will be allowed to marry just like his other brothers.
In related news, Princeton makes the fifth city (that I know of) to announce that they will accept license applications today from same-sex couples who want to get married on Monday. They early start on accepting applications is intended to accommodate New Jersey’s 72-hour waiting period. Princeton joins Asbury Park, Jersey City, Newark and Red Bank in accepting applications today.
October 18th, 2013
Lambda Legal just tweeted moments ago:
BREAKING: #MarriageEquality is coming to New Jersey on Monday! The #NJ Supreme Court unanimously refused to delay the ruling! #LGBT #NJ4M
— Lambda Legal (@LambdaLegal) October 18, 2013
Update: In 2006, the New Jersey Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the state must provide legal recognition for same-sex couples. The legislature decided on civil unions rather than full marriage, which was arguably equivalent at the time since the federal government would recognize neither thanks to Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act. But now it looks like that with the U.S. Supreme Court striking down DOMA3, the New Jersey high court now sees civil unions as inferior.
Updates: From the New Jersey Supreme Court decision refusing the stay of a lower court’s order that New Jersey begin providing marriage licenses to same-sex couples (PDF: 1MB/20 pages):
At the heart of this motion are certain core facts and principles. Lewis guaranteed same-sex couples equal rights under the State Constitution. After Windsor, a number of federal agencies extended marital benefits to same-sex couples who are lawfully married, but not to partners in civil unions. As a result, civil-union partners in New Jersey today do not receive the same benefits as married same-sex couples when it comes to family and medical leave, Medicare, tax and immigration matters, military and veterans’ affairs, and other areas. The State Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection is therefore not being met.
To evaluate an application for a stay, this Court in essence considers the soundness of the trial court’s ruling and the effect of a stay on the parties and the public. See Crowe v. De Gioia, 90 N.J. 126 (1982). Largely for the reasons stated in Judge Jacobson’s opinion dated October 10, 2013, we deny the State’s motion for a stay. The State has advanced a number of arguments, but none of them overcome this reality: same-sex couples who cannot marry are not treated equally under the law today. The harm to them is real, not abstract or speculative.
Because, among other reasons, the State has not shown a reasonable probability of success on the merits, the trial court’s order — directing State officials to permit same-sex couples, who are otherwise eligible, to enter into civil marriage starting on October 21, 2013 — remains in effect.
The Supreme Court has scheduled oral arguments for the case in January, but based on Court’s 2006 ruling and the briefs submitted so far, it appears that the Court is unconvinced that the state’s case against marriage equality has a likelihood of prevailing, which is necessary in order to grant a stay:
The State presents three arguments to show that its appeal has a reasonable probability of success. First, the State claims that plaintiffs “will not be able to overcome the highest presumption of constitutional validity that attaches to statutory enactments.” Once again, Judge Jacobson did not strike down a statute. The Civil Union Act, while it may not see much use in the coming months, remains available for people who choose to use it. Even more important, though, the statute was presumptively valid “so long as” it provided full and equal rights and benefits to same-sex couples. Lewis, supra, 188 N.J. at 423. Based on recent events, the Civil Union Act no longer achieves that purpose.
Second, the State argues that plaintiffs’ “claims fail on federalism grounds.” Underlying part of this argument is the State’s interpretation of Windsor, which, as noted above, is at odds with the practice of the federal government. Although the State claims that the federal government must “defer to the states in matters concerning domestic relations,” federal agency rulings are following New Jersey’s rule about who may marry.
Third, the State claims that plaintiffs’ equal protection claim must fail because “the State’s action is not legally cognizable.” The State argues that it has followed Lewis and provided “same-sex couples with all State marriage benefits,” and that it cannot be responsible for “federal bureaucrats that … refused to extend federal benefits.”
Lewis is not limited in that way. The decision recognized that it could not alter federal law, Lewis, supra, 188 N.J. at 459 n.25, yet at the same time directed the State to provide same-sex couples “the full rights and benefits enjoyed by heterosexual married couples,” id. at 463 (emphasis added) Lewis left it to the Legislature to revise State law in a way that satisfied the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection. Id. at 457-62. And the State acted in response. It enacted the Civil Union Act and created a structure that allows same-sex couples to enter into a civil union but not to marry. See N.J.S.A. 37:1-28 to -36. That structure today provides the framework for decisions by federal authorities. The State’s statutory scheme effectively denies committed same-sex partners in New Jersey the ability to receive federal benefits now afforded to married partners. The trial court therefore correctly found cognizable action by the State.
We conclude that the State has not shown a reasonable probability or likelihood of success on the merits.
In refusing the stay, the Court also had to weigh the balance of hardships on both parties in granting or denying the stay. The Court then listed several benefits that same-sex couples cannot access because they cannot marry: health benefits, claims under the Family and Medical Leave Act, Medicare, immigration, survivor benefits:
Lewis guarantees equal treatment under the law to same-sex couples. That constitutional guarantee is not being met. And the ongoing injury that plaintiffs face today cannot be repaired with an award of money damages at a later time. See Crowe, supra, 90 N.J. at 132-33 (“Harm is generally considered irreparable in equity if it cannot be redressed adequately by monetary damages.”); see also Laforest v. Former Clean Air Holding Co., 376 F.3d 48, 55 (2d Cir. 2003). Plaintiffs highlight a stark example to demonstrate the point: if a civil union partner passes away while a stay is in place, his or her surviving partner and any children will forever be denied federal marital protections.
Noting that there is a potential override of Gov. Chris Christie’s veto of a marriage equality bill, the state had argued that the Court should wait and allow the democratic process “a chance to play out” rather than act now. The Court stomped on that argument:
The State argues that we should give the democratic process “a chance to play out” rather than act now. When courts face questions that have far-reaching social implications, see Lewis, supra, 188 N.J. at 461, there is a benefit to letting the political process and public discussion proceed first. Courts should also “avoid reaching constitutional questions unless required to do so.” Comm. to Recall Menendez, supra, 204 N.J. at 95-96 (citing Harris v. McRae, 448 U.S. 297, 306-07, 100 S. Ct. 2671, 2683, 65 L. Ed. 2d 784, 798 (1980); Randolph Town Ctr. v. Cnty. of Morris, 186 N.J. 78, 80 (2006)). But when a party presents a clear case of ongoing unequal treatment, and asks the court to vindicate constitutionally protected rights, a court may not sidestep its obligation to rule for an indefinite amount of time. Under those circumstances, courts do not have the option to defer.
October 18th, 2013
TODAY’S AGENDA:
At Least Four New Jersey Cities To Begin Issuing Marriage Licenses: Asbury Park, Jersey City, Newark, Red Bank. Unless the state Supreme Court issues a stay against a lower court ruling requiring the state of New Jersey to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples, marriage equality will commence on Monday, October 21. In late-breaking news last night, officials in four New Jersey cities announced that they will begin issuing marriage licenses for same-sex couples today in consideration of the state’s mandatory 72-hour waiting period. Senator-elect Cory Booker, who is currently mayor of Newark, has announced that he will be prepared to conduct the first rounds of weddings in the City Hall rotunda after the stroke of midnight Monday morning. The state Supreme Court is expected to decide as early as today whether to allow those weddings to take place.
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Bakersfield, CA; Jacksonville, FL; Nashville, TN (Black Pride); Winston-Salem, NC.
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Atlanta, GA; Austin, TX; Philadelphia, PA; Phoenix, AZ; Watertown, NY.
Other Events This Weekend: Polari Film Festival, Austin, TX; Louisville LGBT Film Festival, Louisville, KY; Chéries-Chéris Film Festival, Paris, France; , Phoenix, AZ; Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, Seattle, WA.
HM Prison, Brixton
TODAY IN HISTORY:
Two Suggestions for Curing Homosexuality: 1947. Dr. F.H. Taylor had published a paper in the October 4, 1947 edition of the British Medical Journal in which he described treatment outcomes for 96 people who had been sent to His Majesty’s Prison in Brixton. Of those committed, 66 were identified as “pseudo-homosexual,” with 34 showing some signs of mental illness (although his definitions were somewhat surprising: three “epileptics,” twelve with “personality defects”, and five as “dull and backward”). The “pseudo-homosexuals” were those who Taylor described as “hav(ing) heterosexual tendencies and in whom the homosexual offence was in the nature of a substitution for the normal heterosexual act.” He described twelve more as bisexuals (“not so much by way of a perversion in the psychiatrical sense, but rather an indication of sheer depravity”), five as prostitutes (which he considered situational, much like his “pseudo-homosexuals”) and thirteen cases as “true inverts.”
It was that last group which he focused his paper on. Of those thirteen, seven showed no improvement in treatment, and three refused it altogether. Of the remaining three, one was “too dull to be able to co-operate in any form,” and another ” had already been considered by a clinic and a consultant psychiatrist and turned away as unsuitable.” That left one last man, whose ” offence was directly attributable to heavy consumption of alcohol,” was considered a good prospect for treatment. “Thus out of 13 cases, in only one was there any indication that psychotherapy would be of any value whatsoever — and then only as a palliative, not as a cure.”
Taylor’s article prompted a a couple of letters to the editor two weeks later. Dr. Clifford Allen of London wrote that it was no wonder that Taylor’s views on treating gay people were so pessimistic “since in prison psychiatry the hopeless cases and failures are most likely to be met, while the successfully treated ones live normal lives.” Allen then offered:
My own solution to this problem is that there should be a definite clinic for psychosexual conditions to which the courts send these cases for psychotherapy. The psychiatrists working on this one type of case would be certain to become more skilled than otherwise, and the patients more likely to be cured.”
How Allen believed that his solution would be any difference from Taylor’s, he didn’t explain. The second letter, from L.M.M. Beadnell was equally non-sensical:
SIR,–Dr. F. H. Taylor’s article (Oct. 4, p. 525) on homosexual offences makes me wonder once again why one never sees any mention of gonadal treatment in these cases; surely it must have some effect on at least a proportion.
A few years ago on transferring to a new area I came across a health visitor, aged about 35, who had a very deep voice and a distinct moustache. She had had a major operation, presumably a hysterectomy, about a year previously for dysmenorrhoea. About a year after I met her she was forced to leave the district as there had been several complaints from the mothers of girl guides in a company which she ran. I do not know exactly what these complaints were, but it was common local gossip that the girl was a homosexual. I feel sure that if this girl; had been given appropriate hormone treatment at the time of and subsequently to her operation she would not have become a Lesbian.
I should be interested to know if others have any experience of these cases being prevented or alleviated by hormone therapy.–I am, etc.
L.M.M. Beadnell
Rushden, near Buntingford, Herts.
Justice Powell Regrets Bowers Ruling: 1990. In 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Bowers v. Hardwick to uphold Georgia’s sodomy law, and with it similar laws in twenty-five other states and the District of Columbia (See Jun 30). It had been reported that Justice Lewis Powell, Jr., had originally voted to strike down the law, but a few days later he changed his mind and became the deciding vote in the court’s 5-4 decision. His retirement the following year gave him plenty of time to think about what he had done. Four years after Bowers, Powell spoke before a group of law students at New York University where he was asked how he reconciled his vote in Bowers, which limited the right to privacy, with his vote in Roe v. Wade, which extended a woman’s right to privacy to include whether she wanted to have an abortion. “I think I probably made a mistake on that one,” Powell said of his Bowers decision.
Powell later explained to a law journal, “I do think I was inconsistent in a general way with Roe. When I had the opportunity to reread the opinions a few months later, I thought the dissent had the better of the arguments.” But Powell refused to consider his deciding vote all that important. “I thought it was a frivolous case. I still think it was a frivolous case.” He considered his decision as “one of little or no importance,” because, he said, no one had actually been prosecuted for homosexual conduct.
White Supremacists Found Guilty In Gay Nightclub Bombing Plot: 1990. Robert John Winslow, a twenty-nine year old former infantryman from Laclede, Idaho had it all figured out. He used a towel spread out on a table top to represent the area around Seattle’s Neighbours Disco, a popular nightclub in the Capital Hill gayborhood, as he explained to Rico Valentino how it would all go down. They’d plant four bombs in the alley adjacent to Neighbours’ rear entrance. They’d paint them black and hide them in the shadows, on opposite sides of the alley. They could even use propane to create a “fireball effect.” Then someone would phone the bar with a bomb threat and everyone would evacuate out into the alley. “Fag burgers!” Winslow laughed. Why? Winslow said that homosexuals in America were threatening “white Christianity.” They also talked about bombing the Anti-Defamation League, cars owned by Jews, and businesses owned by blacks and Chinese.
They began planning the operation on April 20, 1990, during an Aryan Nation’s celebration of Hitler’s birthday, and now they were ready to do it. Winslow, Stephen Nelson, 35, and Procter Baker, 58, who had served as master of ceremonies for the birthday observance, were members of the Church of Jesus Christ Christian (Aryan Nations) at Hayden Lake, Idaho. But Valentino, a former professional wrestler, was a paid informant who had been working undercover for three years for the FBI. He wore a wire as Winslow laid out the plans. He also collected evidence at the Aryan Nations compound in Idaho. On May 12, 1990, Winslow and Nelson were arrested after driving with Valentino to Seattle. FBI agents trailed the van and arrested them in a motel parking lot near Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Agents found pipe-bomb components, a .38-caliber pistol, a 12-gage shotgun and white-supremacist literature. Baker was arrested at his home in Coeur d’Alene. A search of his cabin in Kendrick turned up a partially assembled pipe bomb.
On October 18, 1990, Nelson, Winslow, and Baker were convicted of conspiracy and manufacturing and possessing pipe bombs. Nelson and Winslow were also found guilty of using interstate commerce in a conspiracy and possessing firearms during a violent crime. Winslow was sentenced to nine years, Nelson eight, and Baker to two years. The sentence was considered light: they had faced 20 to 25 years. But U.S. District Judge Harold Ryan rejected prosecutors contention that their actions amounted to “domestic terrorism,” and he also declined the government’s request to add time to the sentenced based on the intended victims.
Navy Apologizes for USS Iowa Blast Accusation: 1991. On April 19, 1989 in the Number Two 16-inch gun turret aboard the USS Iowa exploded, killing 47 crewmen who were inside the turret. Iowa crewmen were ordered to remov the bodies, throw damaged equipment overboard and repaint the damaged turret the next day — all without taking photos or gathering any evidence. Investigators immediately set out the theory that Second Class Gunner’s Mate Clayton Hartwig, was killed in the blast, had committed suicide by detonating the explosion after an alleged affair with another male soldier ended. As far as the Navy was concerned, that explained everything and the case was closed.
But Congress and the general public weren’t satisfied. After mounting criticism, Navy Secretary J. Lawrence Garett III ordered the service to reopen the investigation and hand it over to independent investigators. During that investigation, a sample of gunpowder of the same type used on the USS Iowa exploded during a ram test, which simulated the process of raming bags of gunpowder into the gun during loading. With that, the original investigation, which was based on circumstantial evidence, also went up in smoke. The Navy was left with nothing to do but apologize. “For this, on behalf of the U.S. Navy, I extend my sincere regrets to the family,” said a statement from Adm. Frank Kekso, chief of naval operations. “The Navy will not imply that a deceased individual is to blame for his own death, or the death of others.” He also apologized to the other families of those who died because “such a long period has passed, and despite all efforts, no certain answers regarding the cause of this terrible tragedy can be found.”
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
60 YEARS AGO: Tim Gill: 1953. In 1984, Apple came out with the life-changing Macintosh, the first mass-market computer with an operating system based on a graphical user interface and a mouse. It was also the first computer to make desktop publishing a breeze. PageMaker was the first Mac desktop publishing application. PageMaker was fine for printing birthday invitations, but it would be QuarkXPress, which debuted in 1987, which was adopted by professional page designers, typesetters and commercial printers. Tim Gill’s Quark, Inc., which he started in 1981 with a $2,000 loan from his parents, revolutionized the publishing industry and made him a millionaire many hundreds of times times over.
Gill became involved with political activism during the 1992 fight against Colorado’s Amendment 2, which prohibited all non-discrimination protections based on sexual orientation. He created the Gill Foundation in 1994, which is one of the largest LGBT-rights funding sources in the U.S. He also founded the Gill Action Fund in 2005 to support both Republican and Democratic pro-LGBT political candidates in local, state and national offices and to lobby for gay rights laws across the nation. Gil lives in Denver with his husband, Scott Miller.
Martina Navratilova: 1956. Billie Jean King called her “the greatest singles, doubles and mixed doubles player who’s ever lived.” During her career, she became the all-time record-holder of 31 Grand Slam women’s doubles titles, in addition to 18 Grand Slam singles titles and 10 Grand Slam mixed doubles titles. She reached the Wimbledon singles final twelve time, including nine consecutive years from 1982 through 1990. She also won the women’s singles title at Wimbledon a record 9 times, and with Kink won 20 Wimbledon titles, another all-time record.
In 1975, the Czechoslovakia native sought political asylum in the United States after Czech sports authorities decided that she had become “too Americanized.” She was stripped of her Czech citizenship when she defected. Naveratilova became a U.S. citizen in 1981. That same year, she came out publicly as a Lesbian, In 2008, her Czech citizenship was restored, although she has not renounced her American citizenship, nor does she plan to.
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October 17th, 2013
When New Jersey Superior Court Judge Mary Jacobson ordered the state to begin granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples beginning October 21, she also ruled against a motion asking that she stay her ruling pending appeal. That led Gov. Chris Christie to ask the state Supreme Court to bypass the normal appeals process and take the case immediately. The high court agreed and will hear oral arguments on January 6 or 7, but it has yet to issue a stay on Jacobson’s ruling. That may happen sometime Friday. But unless that happens, Judge Jacobson’s order remains in effect and Garden Staters are now counting down the hours before they can marry on Monday.
Counting those hours is important because New Jersey requires a 72-hour waiting period after applying for a marriage license. So for those who want to marry on Monday, then Friday is the day to get the license. The marriage forms have been modified and are ready to go, but state’s department of health issued an order advising cities to hold off in accepting applications “until you hear from this office that we have the authority to do so.” But some cities have decided to go ahead and begin issuing licenses anyway:
Asbury Park administrator Terence Reidy said the city has fielded at least two dozen calls from couples asking whether it is issuing marriage license applications.
He said he’s told them yes.
“We’re doing it so that we’re ready,” Reidy said. “If something happens — the law changes — the city isn’t going to do anything in violation of any ruling or regulation. We’re being proactive so that when the 21st comes, any couple that wants to be married, they’re ready and we’re ready.”
Officials in Newark, Jersey City and Red Bank have said that they will also be issuing licenses on Friday.
October 17th, 2013
Oregon’s constitution still bears the ugly wound of discrimination thanks to a constitutional amendment that was approved by voters in 2004. But Michael Jordan, chief operating officer for the state’s Department of Administrative Services, has issued a directive to all state agencies advising them of a new policy in which the State of Oregon will now recognize same-sex marriages contracted elsewhere:
“Oregon agencies must recognize all out-of-state marriages for the purposes of administering state programs,” Jordan wrote. “That includes legal, same sex marriages performed in other states and countries.”
That means that gay couples who were legally married in other states are entitled to the same benefits in Oregon as any other married couple, said Matt Shelby, spokesman for the Department of Administrative Services. That would apply to everything from medical benefits to taxes to business licenses, he said.
A spokesman explained:
“The state of Oregon has typically recognized legal, out-of-state marriages,” said Department of Administrative Services spokesman Matt Shelby.
Because of that history, plus the U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down the Defense of Marriage Act, Oregon could have been in legal trouble if it did not honor marriages legal in other states.
“Whether that’s a common-law marriage, whether that’s a same-sex marriage, whether that’s a more traditional man and woman marriage, the state of Oregon, state agencies, are going to treat you as a married couple,” he said.
Jordan’s directive came about after he sought a legal opinion from the state Attorney General’s office. Deputy Attorney General Mary Williams wrote in her opinion dated yesterday (PDF: 481KB/7 pages):
Oregon’s constitutional prohibition on same-sex marriage would likely be construed as also prohibiting recognition of out-of-state same-sex marriages. But such a construction would likely violate the federal constitution. …
We cannot identify any defensible state interest, much less a legitimate or compelling one, in refusing to recognize marriages performed between consenting, unrelated adults under the laws of another state — marriages that would be unquestionably accorded recognition if the spouses were of opposite sexes. Likewise, we cannot justify any legitimate (much less compelling) state interest in requiring that each marriage recognized in Oregon contain one partner of each sex; no benefit to Oregon from that limitation and no injury would result from recognizing the marriages.
And same-sex relationships are given legal recognition in Oregon, in the form of domestic-partnership registration. To defend a refusal to acknowledge marriages, the state would have to articulate a state interest in allowing partnerships but refusing to recognize marriages — and, again, we cannot point to any such interest that would pass constitutional muster at even the lowest possible level of scrutiny, rational basis review.
Because Oregon is constitutionally barred from providing same-sex marriage itself, I wouldn’t be too surprised to see an uptick in marriage applications in Vancouver, Washington, just across the Columbia River from Portland.
On Tuesday, two gay couples filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court in Eugene seeking to overturn the state’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. Oregon United for Marriage is also collecting signatures to place a measure onto the November 2014 ballot asking voters to rescind the constitutional amendment.
October 17th, 2013
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Bakersfield, CA; Jacksonville, FL; Nashville, TN (Black Pride); Winston-Salem, NC.
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Atlanta, GA; Austin, TX; Philadelphia, PA; Phoenix, AZ; Watertown, NY.
Other Events This Weekend: Polari Film Festival, Austin, TX; Louisville LGBT Film Festival, Louisville, KY; Chéries-Chéris Film Festival, Paris, France; , Phoenix, AZ; Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, Seattle, WA.
Reps. Henry Hyde, Barney Frank
TODAY IN HISTORY:
Henry Hyde Slurs Barney Frank During House Debate: 1990. It was just another one of those ordinary debates taking place on the floor of the House of Representatives which would have otherwise passed into history unnoticed. One congressman accused another congressman from the other party of flip-flopping, this time a Democrat accusing a Republican of changing his stance on taxes. Barney Frank (D-MA) remarked that he wasn’t in the chamber earlier when the subject came up but read in the Congressional Record that ten days earlier “someone passing himself off as the Republican leader” urged a vote on new taxes, but then eight days later said that taxes should not be raised. Frank said, sarcastically, that there must be a security problem in the house that allowed an impostor to speak for the Republican leader Robert Michel (R-IL). Henry Hyde (R-IL) leaped to the defense of his fellow Illinoisan and said that the reason Frank hadn’t heard Michel was because “he (Frank) was in the gymnasium doing whatever he does in the gymnasium and he wasn’t available.” The remark was made in reference to an unsubstantiated allegation by a male prostitute (and former roommate, who Franks kicked out three years earlier when he learned the roommate was still escorting) that he had sex with Frank in the House gym.
Rep. Craig Washington (D-TX) called out Hyde, saying he was appalled at Hyde’s remark. “Great minds think about ideas, average minds think about things, and small minds think about people,” he said. A few minutes later, Hyde apologized to Frank: “What I said was in anger. One should never speak in anger. It was out of line.” Frank accepted the apology.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Montgomery Clift: 1920-1966. His on-screen reputation was for playing what The New York Times described as “moody, sensitive young men.” You know what that means. Despite that, his riveting performance opposite Elizabeth Taylor in A Place In the Sun, which is regarded as one of his finest performances as a Method actor, fueled rumors that he and Elizabeth were dating. His next movie, Alfred Hitchcock’s I Confess, was less successful. Clift played a priest who was romantically involved with a woman, and that proved too controversial. But he rebounded in 1953 with From Here to Eternity. He lost the Academy Award for Best Actor to William Holden (for Stalag 17), which surprised everyone, including Holden.
The major turning point in his life was in a 1956 car accident, which severely injured his face, requiring plastic surgery. His looks were different because of the accident, but that’s not what led to his career’s down downward spiral. The accident exacerbated his alcoholism and left him addicted to pain killers, which affected his health and led to what some observers called “the longest suicide in Hollywood history.”
He did keep working though, making as many movies after the accident as he did before. He appeared in Lonelyhearts, The Young Lions, Suddenly Last Summer, and The Misfits with Marilyn Monroe who, recocgnizing her own emotional problems, described Clift as “the only person I know who is in ever worse shape than I am.” Director Stanley Kramer recalled that in 1961, during filming for a twelve-minute part in Judgment at Nuremberg Clift kept forgetting his lines. Kramer finally told Clift to ad-lib them if he had to. It worked, and Clift was nominated for an Oscar for best supporting actor. He died in 1966 of a heart attack in New York City.
Rebecca Wight: 1959-1988. She would have turned fifty-four years old today, but she didn’t even live to see her twenty-ninth birthday. She was murdered on May 13, 1988, by Stephen Roy Carr while camping along the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania with her partner, Claudia Brenner. Carr, described as a “mountain man” who often lived in a cave in Michaux State Forest, ran into Wight as she walked into a restroom near the couple’s campground. Thinking that no one was around, she was nude except for her shoes. After a brief conversation — he asked her for a cigarette although she clearly didn’t have one on her — she ran back to the tent to tell Brenner that someone else was there.
They got dressed, packed up, and decided to hike to a more secluded spot. During the hike, they stopped to look at a map. They kissed, and Carr appeared from behind them with a rifle slung over his shoulder and asked if they were lost. They said no and went on. By evening, they found a more secluded spot — after looking around to make sure they were alone — pitched their tent, had dinner, and then began to have sex. But they weren’t alone. Carr watched from about 80 feet away, and fired eight shots from his rifle. Brenner was shot five times but survived. Wight was shot twice, but was more seriously wounded. Carr, believing that both women were dead, left. Brenner hiked three miles to the nearest road where she was able to get a ride to the police station, where she gave a quick statement and was airlifted to Hershey Medical Center. But while she was gone, Wight died from her wounds. Police found her body that night.
Carr fled to a Mennonite community and hid. Because that particular community didn’t read the news or watch television, they didn’t know they had a murder suspect in their midst until one member happened to recognize Carr while surreptitiosly watching a news broadcast and called police. In court, he claimed that he had been enraged at the sight of the two women having sex. Prosecutors sought the death sentence, but after the judge ruled that the nature of the two women’s relationship was irrelevant, the defense accepted a plea deal and Carr was sentenced to life without parole.
Brenner went on to write a book about the shooting in 1995. Titled, Eight Bullets: One Woman’s Story of Surviving Anti-Gay Violence
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October 16th, 2013
Federal District Court Judge Bernard A. Friedman turned down requests to issue a summary judgment either for or against the constitutionality of Michigan’s ban on marriage and adoption by same-sex couples. A lesbian couple who, between them, have adopted three special needs children, had asked the court to declare the state’s constitutional ban, which was approved by Michigan voters in 2004, unconstitutional under the Federal constitution. There had been widespread expectation that Judge Friedman would rule on the ban’s constitutionality. A trial date has been set for February 25.
October 16th, 2013
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Federal District Judge to Consider Michigan Marriage/Adoption Ban: Detroit, MI. Last March, U.S. District Court Judge Bernard A. Friedman announced that he would delay ruling on DeBoer v. Snyder, which challenges Michigan’s ban on same-sex marriage and adoption by same-sex couples, until after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its rulings on its two marriage cases last summer. This case involves two lesbian registered nurses who have individually adopted three special-needs children. But because Michigan bars them from marrying, Jayne Rowse has no legal standing for one of the children, while April DeBoer is a legal stranger to the other two.
Now that the U.S. Supreme Court kicked California’s Prop 8 back to the Ninth District Court of Appeals (which then paved the way for marriage equality in California) and declared Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act Unconstitutional, Judge Friedman is prepared to hear testimony this afternoon in Detroit, and he may issue a ruling immediately after hearing the testimony. If he rules against the ban and declines to issue a stay pending an appeal — the best possible outcome, but also perhaps the least likely — then same-sex marriage would be legal in Michigan until a higher court intervenes. Michigan State Attorney General Bill Schuette will be there to argue to uphold the ban. If Judge rules against him, he is likely to request a stay pending an appeal.
In the event the Judge rules against the ban and refuses to issue a stay pending appeal, Equality Michigan has posted an online database county clerk offices with instructions for same-sex couples on getting a marriage license during what would undoubtedly be a very short window, at best. Clerks in at least ten of Michigan’s 83 counties have said that they are ready to begin issuing licenses immediately after a ruling. The hearing on Summary Judgment Motions is scheduled to begin at 2:30 p.m. EDT.
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Bakersfield, CA; Jacksonville, FL; Nashville, TN (Black Pride); Winston-Salem, NC.
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Atlanta, GA; Austin, TX; Philadelphia, PA; Phoenix, AZ; Watertown, NY.
Other Events This Weekend: Polari Film Festival, Austin, TX; Louisville LGBT Film Festival, Louisville, KY; Chéries-Chéris Film Festival, Paris, France; , Phoenix, AZ; Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, Seattle, WA.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
Excessive Masturbation May Cause Your Sex To Change: 1725. The West’s preoccupation with the dangers of masturbation is historically tied with the broader preoccupation with non-procreative sex generally. But masturbation was seen as particularly dangerous because it was believed to be responsible for an individual’s moral, mental and physical collapse. (See Sep 16 for some of the reasons masturbation was believed to be so dangerous.)
In the early 1700s, an unknown London doctor and clergyman wrote an important book which brought all of those beliefs together in one place, and it became, for several future generations, the primary source for information about all of the moral, physical and mental dangers that masturbation posed. Titled, Onania; or, the Heinous SIN of Self-Pollution, and All its Frightful Confequences, in both SEXES, Confider’d. With Spiritual and Phyfical Advice to Thofe, who have already injur’d themfelves by this abominable Practice. And feafonable Admonition to the Youth of the Nation, (of both SEXES) and thofe whofe Tuition they are under, whether Parents, Guardians, Mafters, or Miftreffes, the book went through several editions. Each successive printing expanded from the previous with the inclusion of letters from readers and responses from the quack doctor. The added supplemental material had the effect of firehosing any objections which may have arisen in the meantime. The ninth edition, published in 1722, closed with the author’s statement that there would be no further additions made to future printings, but in 1725, he added a letter from a young lady, dated October 16, 1726, in which she describes herself practicing masturbation with herself and another lady friend:
Just as this supplement, was as ’twere printed off, the following letter from a young Lady, was left for me at the booksellers, which, for the particularity of the case, and ingenuity of the writer, I thought I could do no less than make room for.
To the commendable Author of the ONANIA, Oct. 16, 1725,
SIR,
This Letter comes from a young female creature, but an old transgressor of the practice of that filthy pleasure which you have so justly exploded and condemned, in your ingenious book Onania, which I happily met with about 10 days ago: but in all the cases therein enumerated, there is not one that is parallel to mine, which as my welfare requires it, I must be obliged to relate, and is what I question, Sir, whether you have ever once met with: nor could I tell it, though at the same time I bless the opportunity, but that I am sure you no more know the writer of it, nor ever will, than I know the author of Onania, or desire it.
I began, sir, the folly at 11 years of age, was taught it by my mother’s chambermaid, who lay with me from that time all along until now, which is full seven years, and so intimate were we in the sin, that we took the opportunities of committing it, and invented all the ways we were capable of to heighten the titillation, and gratify our sinful lusts the more. We, in short, pleasured one another, as well as ourselves, but whether by the hard usage of my parts by her, or myself, or both, or whether from any thing in nature more in my make, than is customary to the sex, I don’t know, but for above half a year past I have had a swelling that thrusts out from my body [here, she describes her clitoris — JB], as big, and almost as hard, and as long or longer than my thumb, which inclines me to excessive lustful desires, and from it there issues a moisture or slipperiness to that degree that I am almost continually wet, and sometimes have such a forcing, as if something of a large substance was coming from me, which greatly frightens both me and my maid. She went to a midwife about it, but did not, she says, tell her of our practice; the midwife said it was a bearing down of the womb, by weakness, and told her what I should do, which I did, but to no purpose. Ever since I have been so, I have not had the course of nature [menstruation], have great pain in my back, and my belly is swelled, am not near so strong as I was, my countenance much paler, and appetite less. It has almost distracted me, and unfits me for my learning, and am afraid I am so hurt, as that it cannot be remedied.
O! that I should be so wicked, I, who have had a much nobler education (and should know better) than is common to most of my sex; that am versed in the classics, and designed by my friends, who are very rich, for something above the common station of my sex; I say, that I should so filthily debase myself, wrong my body, and, which is worse, my soul, is surprising even to myself. Had I read more the Bible, and less in Martial, Juvenal, Ovid, &c it had been better form, but those books Rochester [a famous sexual libertine], and Plays, at first debauched my silly fancy. But I hope, as now, both myself and maid have, on consulting your curious discourse of Self-Pollution, abandon’d the practice, and resolved, through God’s Grace, to commit it no more, we shall find pardon, and my infirm body, from your hands, good sir, relief. She ails nothing, is a strong wench of twenty-seven, myself of a tender make, and naturally inclined to be weakly, and but just turned of eighteen. I have with this, sent you a guinea fee, and desire your cordial advice, what I had best to do, and your opinion of my case, sealed up safe, directed to Mrs E.N. and I will send for it tomorrow morning, at the bookseller’s where this is left; and, sir, I must needs desire you to send me this letter back, that I may have the satisfaction of committing it to the flames myself. According to your answer, you shall hear further from,
SIR,
Your ever obliged, and
Most obedient humble Servant,
E.N.
NOT, sir, but you may copy my letter first, and if you think worthwhile, to print it also in your next edition, as a caution to others; but would not that my hand be seen by any besides your self, the circumstances of the relation, so as not to be know ’tis me, I have taken care of and guarded against.
The un-named author and “doctor” responded with the warning that the if she persisted in these “unnatural practices,” she may experience an unwanted change of sex.
THIS young lady’s case, though the height of her lust, and force and frequency of abusing herself, and probably the unnatural proponderance of the part, is no more, according to the account she gives, than a relaxation of the Clitoris, a thing common to many of the sex, both in the single and married, who are vigorous and lustful, and have given up themselves to the practice of Self-Pollution for any time. In some women it extends itself, and is enlarged when inflated to the exact likeness and size of a human Penis erect, except that it has no perforation (though it really looks, by the natural impression at the end, as if there was a passage) nor is altogether so long, but yet it erects and falls as that does, in proportion to the venereal desire or inclination of the woman. I have had in my time one or two under this circumstance, by the same practice, for cure, who upon their living afterwards chaste, and using some astringent foments, and a few internals, to regulate the inordinate and enraged venereal desires, have been brought to rights, and the parts restored to their pristine, natural state and condition. It was the like case of this lady’s, that gave rise to the report of two Nuns at Rome, having changed their sex, and which had made such a noise in that city, that the Pope, upon hearing of it, gave orders for their being inspected by some cardinals. Dr Carr, in his medicinal epistles, translated by Dr Quincy, has in his answer to a letter sent him by a divine, upon the subject of it, wrote his opinion at large, which as it may confirm mine, in relation to the aforesaid lady’s case, and be of some use both to practitioners and patients, I shall not think much to transcribe it, and give it to the reader, verbatim. It is his 6th Epistle, entitled, Concerning two nuns reported to have changed their sex.
A gay couple in Berlin, ca 1930. (via the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum)
German Reichstag Committee Approves Repeal of Paragraph 175: 1929. In 1897, Magnus Hirschfeld (see May 14) co-founded the Wissenschaftlich-humanitäre Komitee (Scientific-Humanitarian Committee), the first gay rights organizaiotn in history. The WhK’s first project was to lobby for the repeal of Germanys infamous Paragraph 175, which criminalized homosexuality between men (women were unmentioned in the anti-gay code). After three decades of lobbying, the WhK came tantalizingly close to achieving its goal when the Reichstag’s Commission for Law Reform voted 15 to 13 in favor of a resolution to repeal §175.
But the crash of world stock markets two weeks later and the resulting Great Depression and political instability quickly overwhelmed the Reichstag, which suddenly found itself with more pressing matters to contend with. By 1930, Germany was besieged by massive unemployment and the Nazi party became the second-largest party in the Reichstag following the September elections. The rest, as they say, is history. The Nazi’s expanded §175’s reach in 1935, resulting in a tenfold increase in convictions with authorizaiton to incarcerate gay men in concentration camps. In 1950, Communist East Germany abolished the Nazi amendments, but West Germany kept them until 1969 when it effectively decriminalized consenstual relationships for those above the age of 21. East Germany finally decriminaized consenstual relationships between gay men in 1988, and a reunited Germany followed suit in 1994.
FBI Warns of Extortion Ring: 1959. With consensual same-sex relationships criminalized in all fifty states, and when the discovery of one’s homosexuality typically resulted in being fired from one’s job and evicted by one’s landlord, there was a great deal of money to be made in blackmailing gay people — a fact which was, itself, often used to further justify the wholesale ban on federal employment and security clearances for gay people. But regardless of the victims, blackmail was still against the law, as demonstrated by this FBI warning that appeared in The Washington Post:
The FBI warned last night that a man believed the co-leader of a Nationwide extortion ring is reported heading for Washington. He is George Brooks, 55, charged with extorting $25,000 from a man in Tucson, Ariz. Brooks is named on a warrant also charging William Tavenner, 26, a former Washington resident, whose present location is unknown.
The FBI said the men are believed to head an extortion ring of 25 people who prey on homosexuals by posing as policemen. They have been operating in Phoenix. Portland. Los Angeles, Miami and Chicago.
Tavenner. whose last known address here was listed at 1400 Fairmont St. NW, is reported by the FBI to have a record including charges of impersonating a police officer, narcotics violation, assault and disorderly conduct.
[Source: “Extortionist ring believed coming here.” The Washington Post (October 17, 1959): D4.]
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Oscar Wilde: 1854-1900. His wit and flamboyance, tinged as it was with an undercurrent of rebellion, made him one of the most popular celebrities of his day. His three comedies of society, written between 1892 and 1895, lampooned Victorian values and enjoyed tremendous success in the London theater. But that just prepared the ground for his masterpiece, 1894’s The Importance of Being Earnest, and that made Wilde a superstar. That acclaim, combined with his embrace of aestheticism, belief that the pursuit of beauty was a virtue in itself, placed him at the forefront of London’s high fashion, a rare position for a man to take. He was a flashy dresser and he entertained lavishly. “I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china,” he once quipped. The life he lived, however, was not seen as manly, and his high profile meant that he quickly became an easy target for those who saw him as a dangerous threat to Britain’s moral bearing. Just a few days after Earnest’s premiere, a series of events began which would ultimately see Wilde tried for sodomy and gross indecency. His first criminal trial, which quickly became regarded as the trial of the century, is famous for the question that was put to him, a question that was on everyone’s mind:
Prosecutor: What is “the love that dare not speak its name?”
Wilde: “The love that dare not speak its name” in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art, like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as “the love that dare not speak its name,” and on that account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an older and a younger man, when the older man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it, and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it.
That case ended in a mistrial, but a second trial a month later saw him convicted of gross indecency and sentenced to two years’ hard labor. Wilde’s health declined sharply during the term. He collapsed from illness and hunger at one point, and suffered a rupture in his right ear drum during another mishap that would later contribute to his early death. When he was released in 1897, he was broken, both financially and physically. He moved to the continent, where he wandered during the last three years of his life. He spent the last months of his life in a run-down hotel in Paris. “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death,” he told an acquaintance. “One of us has got to go.” Not long after, he developed cerebral meningitis and died in November 30, 1900. He was only 46 years old.
Paul Monette: 1945-1995. The author, poet, and memoirist spent more than half of his life in the closet, the doors of which flug open when he met his future partner Roger Horwitz in 1974. That was the basis of his appropriately-named 1992 memoir, Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story
Monette’s writings weren’t all so mordant. In addition to other volumes of poetry and “silly novels,” as he called them, he also wrote the novelizations for the films Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), Scareface (1983), Predator (1987), and Midnight Run (1988). But he still had his own story to tell, with 1995’s Last Watch of the Night: Essays Too Personal and Otherwise
Bob Mould: 1960. He was the guitarist, vocalist and songwriter for the 1980s band Hüsker Dü, and for Sugar in the 1990s. Beginning in the late 1990s, Mould detoured from heavy sounds of his earlier work to dance music and electronica. Lately he has been performing as a live DJ in Washington, D.C., and other events around the country under the name, “Blowoff.” His homosexuality was always something of an open secret, but the secrecy was dropped in 1994 when he outed himself in Spin after the magazine’s reporter threatened to out him. His memoir, See a Little Light: The Trail of Rage and Melody
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October 15th, 2013
It seems that the military is advising soldiers not to get involved with hate groups, including the American Family Association and the Family Research Counsel. (Fox)
Several dozen U.S. Army active duty and reserve troops were told last week that the American Family Association, a well-respected Christian ministry, should be classified as a domestic hate group because the group advocates for traditional family values.
Which, of course, is nonsense. The designation for hate group is clearly outlined by the Southern Poverty Law Center and it requires far more than advocating for traditional family values, whatever that means. Here’s a small part of their page on AFA.
The AFA has been extremely vocal over the years in its opposition to LGBT rights, marriage equality and allowing gay men and lesbians to serve in the military. The group’s arguments are filled with claims that equate homosexuality with pedophilia and argue that there’s a “homosexual agenda” afoot that is set to bring about the downfall of American (and ultimately, Western) civilization. In one October 2004 article, the AFA Journal suggested that gay influences are leading to a “grotesque culture” that will include “quick encounters in the middle school boys’ restroom.”
For years, until 2010, the AFA had a section on its website that supposedly exposed “The Homosexual Agenda.” There, a reader could find articles and other AFA publications that claimed LGBT people were trying to force the acceptance of homosexuality on children through sex education programs in schools; condemned companies like Disney for supporting LGBT rights and programming; and, also until 2010, featured a particularly noxious booklet the AFA had published in 1994. That booklet, Homosexuality in America: Exposing the Myths, included the bogus research of thoroughly discredited psychologist Paul Cameron as a source. One of the publication’s authors, Richard Howe, used Cameron’s “research” to claim that LGBT people don’t live as long as heterosexuals, that they’re more promiscuous and that the “disgusting details of the homosexual lifestyle explain why so many diseases are present in the homosexual community.” Another claim was that “[p]rominent homosexual leaders and publications have voiced support for pedophilia, incest, sadomasochism, and even bestiality.”
It’s tough getting a “hate group” designation. Very few groups which disagree with marriage equality, gay rights, or the morality of homosexuality make the list. In fact, of the 1,007 hate groups they monitor, only a couple dozen are anti-gay hate groups.
Needless to say, the fact that the Military is now calling the AFA a hate group is sending them into a tizzy.
The soldier said he was “completely taken back by this blatant attack not only on the AFA but Christians and our beliefs.” The soldier said a chaplain interrupted the training and repeatedly challenged the instructor’s assertion that AFA is a hate group, but the instructor refused to back down.
Later in the briefing, the soldiers were reportedly told that they could face punishment for participating in organizations that are considered hate groups.
The American Family Association has received numerous accounts of military installations using a list compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center which wrongfully identifies and defames AFA.
This mischaracterization of AFA is reprehensible and inexcusable. AFA has many military members who support our ministry and know these accusations are false and misleading.
But, of course, they are not so upset that they will consider stopping their lying, defaming, demonizing, and generally being raging aholes.
October 15th, 2013
The state of North Dakota doesn’t recognize your same-sex marriage. The state of North Dakota so doesn’t recognize your same-sex marriage that they created a special tax form, a unique form to be used only by you people in same-sex marriages and nobody else, so you can file your taxes in such a way as to ensure that the state of North Dakota double doesn’t recognize your same-sex marriage.
October 15th, 2013
Stephen Fry’s two-part special “Out There,” in the works for at least a couple of years, premiered last night on BBC2. Sadly, only a few clips are available in North American. “Out There,” as the name compactly describes, explores what it’s like to be “out” there — “there” being mostly outside of the United Kingdom. One segment brings Fry to the United States, where he investigates the ex-gay movement with interviews with NARTH co-founder Joseph Nicolosi and BTB’s Daniel Gonzales (and his cool mom).
Part one also featured Fry’s trip to Uganda. Part two, which airs Wednesday, explores life in Brazil, Russia and India.
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