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 lobbySeptember 14th, 2013
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Boulder, CO; Burlington, VT; Cherry Hill, NJ; Dallas, TX; Derby, UK; Humboldt/Eureka CA; Outer Banks, NC; Savannah, GA; Spartansburg, SC.
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Amherst, NS; Chatham, ON; London, ON; Ottawa, ON; Peterborough, ON; Prince George, BC; Regina, SK; San Antonio, TX; Springhill, NS; Sydney, NS; Yorkton, SK.
Other Celebrations This Weekend: Folsom Europe, Berlin, Germany; Out in the Park Six Flags, Gurnee, IL; BUPA Great North Run, Newcastle, UK; International Bears Week, Sitges, Spain; Out in the Park Six Flags, Springfield, MA.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
Disgusting Depravity: 1822. The following notice appeared in the September 14, 1822 edition of The Times of London:
DISGUSTING DEPRAVITY — On Monday last Benjamin Candler, late valet to the Duke of Newcastle, was committed to Lincoln Castle by Sir R. Heron, Bart., charged with an unnatural offence. On the same day was committed to the same place by the Alderman of Grantham, William Arden, Esq., of Great Pultney-street, Golden-square, London, charged with the same offence; and on Tuesday was committed to the Castle , by the Alderman of Grantham, John Doughty, of Grantham, joiner, charged with the same. A discovery of the abominable intercourse which had been carried on it, it is stated, was made through the circumstance of a letter from Rantham, intended for the valet at Clumber, but accidentally not addressed on the outside, falling into the hands of the Duke of Newcastle. His Grace, on discovering the nature of the contents, proceeded with due caution for furthering the purposes of justice, and the consequence has been the commitment of the above persons to Lincoln Castle for trial at the next assizes. The person committed as an Esquire, was apprehended in London after the first examination of the others at Grantham, and was brought down in safe custody in one of the mail coaches on Sunday morning. We understand that he had apartments at Grantham during the last hunting season.
The “unnatural offence” was a capital crime, and the three men were hanged at Lincoln Castle on March 21, 1823.
ACT-UP Protests At NY Stock Exchange: 1989. Chaining themselves to a banister at the New York Stock Exchange and unfurling a sign reading “SELL WELLCOME,” five AIDS activists protested the price set by Burroughs Wellcome for AZT, the only drug that had been approved in the U.S. to fight AIDS. Burroughs Wellcome had been charging from $7,000 to $8,000 per year for the drug, which was far beyond the ability for many people to pay. Four days later, Burroughs Wellcome announced a twenty percent reduction in the wholesale price of the drug. A spokesman denied that the announcement was connected to the high profile protest.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
David Wojnarowicz: 1954. In November of 2010, G. Wayne Clough, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, made the executive decision to remove a short silent film A Fire in My Belly by David Wojnarowicz from the National Portrait Gallery’s exhibit “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture.” The film, which included a twelve-second scene of ants crawling over a crucifix, was denounced by the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue as anti-Catholic “hate speech.” Clough removed the video after complaints from soon-to-be House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), but he neglected to consult co-curator, gay activist and art historian Jonathan David Katz, about the decision. “It was an incredibly stupid decision. I am flabbergasted that they rose to the bait so readily,” he said in an interview after the video was removed. The irony, which was not lost on anyone, is that the whole point of “Hide/Seek” was to highlight the role of sexual difference in American portraiture, including the effects of marginalization (hence, the “hide”). Katz saw history repeating itself:
In 1989 Senator Jesse Helms demonized Robert Mapplethorpe’s sexuality, and by extension, his art, and with little effort pulled a cowering art world to its knees. His weapon was threatening to disrupt the already pitiful federal support for the arts. And once again, that same weapon is being brandished, and once again we cower.
Untitled (One Day This Kid…), 1990. Click to enlarge.
Wojnarowicz, who at 37 died of AIDS in 1992, wasn’t one to cower, although he certainly had the kind of life experiences which might have encouraged him to do so. Born in Red Bank, New Jersey he grew up with an exceptionally cruel and abusive father. After his parents divorced, he and his siblings were bounced back and forth between parents — at one point, his father kidnapped them and took them to Rural Michigan — until they finally ended up with their mother in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen. By the time he was sixteen, he ran away from home and was living on the streets. He supported himself through prostitution and became fascinated with the social outcasts he met in abandoned warehouses and on street corners. His graffiti soon morphed into elaborate paintings on the walls of abandoned buildings. At one point, he spent some time in Paris with his sister, where he became more serious about photography and painting. When he returned to New York, his unique brand of confrontational street art found an audience alongside other underground artists like Keith Haring (who Wojnarowicz didn’t get along with).
Wojnarowicz had a combustable personality. When one gallery damaged one of his paintings and refused to repair it, Wojnarowicz retaliated by taking a tire iron to the gallery’s pristine white walls. In 1989, Wojnarowicz wrote a blistering essay, “Postcards form America: X-rays from Hell,” which blasted several public figures, Cardinal O’Connor in particular (“this fat cannibal from that house of walking swastikas”). The essay appeared in an exhibition catalogue, prompting the National Endowment for the Arts to rescind its funding for the show. This made Wojnarowicz the newest bogeyman for the religious right. But when the American Family Association’s Donald Wildmon copied, distorted, and disseminated Wojnariwicz’s image in a pamphlet as part of a campaign against the NEA, Wojnarowicz sued the AFA and won a historic Supreme Court case which is forever enshrined as David Wojnarowicz v. American Family Association.
Which, of course, makes the Smithsonian’s actions in 2010 all the more relevant two decades later. Here is the version of A Fire in My Belly which led the Smithsonian to crumple like a bad suit against Donohue’s charges of blasphemy. This same video was also projected onto the exterior walls of the National Portrait Gallery during a protest over the Smithsonian’s censorship.
David Wojnarowicz’s life is chronicled in Cynthia Carr’s definitive biography Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz, which was released in 2012.
Another one for his fans.
35 YEARS AGO: Ben Cohen: 1978. The former England Rugby Union player for Northampton Saints and Sale Sharks, Cohen was already a well-liked gay icon before retiring from professional rugby in 2011. He often speaks highly of his gay following, a fan base which he has rewarded by almost never wearing a shirt. In 2010, he released this video as part of the “It Gets Better” project and, since retiring, he has devoted his time to the Ben Cohen StandUp Foundation, which he established as the world’s first foundation dedicated to combating anti-gay bulling and homophobia. He was inspired by two things in his life: his father was killed when he stood up for an employee who was being attacked, and Cohen’s clinical deafness (he has about a 33% hearing loss in each ear) has made him keenly aware of how being different can make someone stand out.
If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).
And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?
September 13th, 2013
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Affirmation Annual Conference: Salt Lake City. Affirmation, the LGBT-affirming group for members and former members of the Mormon faith, will begins its annual conference today. This year’s theme is “New Frontiers,” which is “about expanding our vision around the unknown possibilities and opportunities for LGBT Mormons… We will discuss how we can support each other in realizing our full potential as children of God, be empowered to make valuable contributions within and outside of the Church, and find purpose and integrity in our unique journeys.” The conference opens tonight with a reception and a screening of Families are Forever, about a Mormon family with a 14-year-old gay son. The special guest speaker for Saturday night will be Steve Young, the Hall of Fame Quarterback for San Francisco 49ers who was awarded MVP honors when he took the team to a Super Bowl victory in 1994. The conference will take place at the University of Utah Guest House and Conference Center, and will continue through Sunday.
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Boulder, CO; Burlington, VT; Cherry Hill, NJ; Dallas, TX; Derby, UK; Humboldt/Eureka CA; Outer Banks, NC; Savannah, GA; Spartansburg, SC.
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Amherst, NS; Chatham, ON; London, ON; Ottawa, ON; Peterborough, ON; Prince George, BC; Regina, SK; San Antonio, TX; Springhill, NS; Sydney, NS; Yorkton, SK.
Other Celebrations This Weekend: Folsom Europe, Berlin, Germany; Out in the Park Six Flags, Gurnee, IL; BUPA Great North Run, Newcastle, UK; International Bears Week, Sitges, Spain; Out in the Park Six Flags, Springfield, MA.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
“Inter Christianos Non Nominandum”: 1892. Talking about homosexuality in the nineteenth century was extremely difficult for one simple reason: if you wanted to talk about it in English, words literally failed. In other words, there was no such word as “homosexuality” or anything else resembling it. Sure, words like “buggery” and “sodomy” were available, but they suggested a criminal or sinful view of homosexuality. And because the emerging medical and psychological professions wanted to approach the subject from an objective, scientific standpoint (or, more precisely, a ninetheenth-century approximation of an objective, scientific standpoint), they avoided those words as much as possible. The problem though was that there were no other words to turn to. Where English failed, sometimes Latin would suffice: “peccatum illud horribile, inter christianos non nominandum, or “that horrible crime not to be named among Christians.” But even that was unacceptable, since it still referred to that thing as a “horrible crime.” What they really wanted was something that would uphold the illness model that was beginning to gain acceptance among the more enightened elements of learned society. But nothing came, at least not in English. And so or the better part of a century, it remained unnamed — or at best, awkwardly named — among clinicians, doctors, sociologists or anthropologists either.
During a meeting of the Medical Society of Virginia held at Alleghany Springs on September 13, 1892, Dr. Irving C. Rosse, professor of Nervous Diseases at Georgetown University took his stab at this problem during his lecture, “Sexual Hypochondriasis and Perversion of the Genesic [procreative] Instinct.” Those listed perversions included many things, including what he called, “the superannuated subjects of spermatorrhÅ“a (nocturnal emission) and venereal excesses now relegated to quacks and the advertisements of religious newspapers.” It was those quacks and advertisements which, he felt was the real cause of the “sexual hypochondria” he was seeing. Through much of the nineteenth century, non-procreative sex (and any discharge of semen in non-procreative activity, including nocturnal emissions) was widely beleived to be the cause of all sorts of mental and physical ills. These beliefs came from many sources, but in the minds of many in the medical and mental health fields, those beliefs were confirmed by observing that a lot of people in insame asylums masturbated. Because this belief was so widespread, doctors saw all kinds of people in their offices who feared that they may go mad unless their impulses were cured (see Sep 4, for example).
Hence the unnecessary “sexual hypochondria” that Rosse believe that was increasing in the population, and he laid the blame for the hypochondria on ignorance and sexual superstitions that plagued society. Rosse contended that leaving the entire field of discussion to nonscientists set a dangerous course. “The ManÅ“uvers of either sex to produce the venereal orgasm independently of the conditions of normal coitus, and known comprehensively as genital abuse, merit the scientific study of the psychiatrist and neurologist, owing to the prevalence and spread of sexual crime and the fact that legal medicine calls for clearer knowledge upon this point.” Rosse tried to add to that “clearer knowledge,” although he too was hobbled by a number of superstitions that were accepted as scientific fact. He described several case studies, personal observations and newspaper accounts, including several accounts of homosexuality among various tribes, cultures, a few infamous clubs in New York City. He even described two male elephants in a zoo which he observed caressing each other in a manner “prohibited by the rules of at least one Christian denomination.” But Rosse lamented that medical professions, who were “clearly the only persons qualified to give trustworthy information in regard to sexual matters,” were hobbled by their timidity in addressing the topic in plain English.
So squeamish are some English-speaking people on this point that they have no terms to designate the “nameless crime” that moves in the dark. Many of the Continental writers, however, make no attempt to hide the matter under a symbolic veil, and deal with it in terms as naked and unequivocal as those used by the old historians, from whom hundreds of citations might be made, and this too without incurring the reproach of pedantry.
In fact, it would be Continental writers who would eventually provide the English language with the words that we would eventually use to talk about all sorts of sexual matters. The German word “Homosexualität” finally made its English appearance at around 1894, but it was slow to catch on as the anglicized “homosexuality” (see May 6). Rosse pointed to other words which he felt might be useful: “irrumation” and “fellatrice,” as he rendered them in a quasi-English form. I don’t know whether he paused during his talk to define them, but when Rosse’s lecture was published in the November 1892 edition of the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, he helpfully provided these definitions in the footnotes:
These terms not being Englished the following definitions are given:
Irrumare: penem in os arrigere.Fellatrix: dicitur ea quæ vel labris vel lingua perfricandi atque exsugendi officium peni præstat.
That’s right, like the peccatum illud horribile, Rosse reverted to Latin for his definitions of what we now know as active and passive fellatio. Rosse’s protestations notwithstanding, the lifting of the symbolic veil among English language writers would have to wait another generation before sexuality would cease to be inter christianos non nominandum.
[Source. Irvine C. Rosse. “Sexual hypocondriasis and perversion of the genesic instinct.” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 17, no. 11 (November 1892): 795-811. You can find contemporary discussions of his lectures published in other medical journals here, here and here.]
FBI Memorandum Calls for Information on Gay Government Employees: 1951. As Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s (R-WI) twinned Red and Lavender Scares continued to wreck havoc with thousands of innocent lives across America, Herbert Hoover’s FBI was determined not to be left behind in the contest to see who could be more anti-Communist or anti-homosexual. On September 13, 1951, the FBI issued another of its many regular Bureau Bulletins to its field offices with that week’s set of instructions. Bulletin Number 38 touched on a number of topics: the interstate transportation of stolen cattle, new rules on intra-bureau correspondence, changes to travel regulations, charges for long distance calls, a request to provide information “on any Communist Party member or sympathizer (who) is contemplating travel abroad,” and a lengthy request for information on any known or suspected homosexuals among government employees:
(F) SEX DEVIATES IN UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT SERVICE — The Seat of Government has been receiving an increasing number of reports, arrest records, and allegations concerning present and past employees of the United States Government, who assertedly are sex deviates. The Bureau has no investigative jurisdiction over sex deviates, but when an allegation is received that a present or former civilian employee of any branch of the United States Government is a sex deviate, such information is furnished to the Un1ted States Civil Service Commission. If the person is presently employed by the United States Government, the employing agency is likewise furnished a summary of the information. Information concerning members of the National Military Establishment 1s furnished to the Intelligence Unit of that particular agency.
All of the police departments throughout the country were notified in the May, 1950,issue of the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin and again by letter dated July 26, 1950, to place a notation on the arrest fingerprint card that the subject was an employee of the Federal Government. They were also requested to set forth the name of the Department or Agency and the position occupied. Hence, it will be unnecessary to solicit this information from the police departments. Normally, a fingerprint card with the above-described data on it will suffice if the fingerprint card has been furnished to the Bureau’s Identification Division.
Whenever information is received in the field, either from the police, a complainant, or through any other sources of information, it w111 be necessary to consolidate the information and transmit it to the Bureau by letter captioned as above. This letter should include (1) the name of the alleged sex deviate as well as the name of any other alleged deviates with whom he assocIated, (2) the date and place that the alleged act of sexual perversion occurred, (3) the identity of the individual’s United States Government employment, (4) any other pertinent facts, including the [illegible] where the person 1s arrested.
Your letter should specifically point out the source of the information, whether or not that information should be treated as confidential, or whether the name of the source may be used by the Bureau in disseminating the information to the United States Civil Service Commission and the employing agency.
Whenever information of this nature is received during the course of a regular Bureau investigation, such should, of course, be incorporated in the regular investigative report and it will be unnecessary to furnish the information to the Bureau by supplemental cover letter.
With specific reference to Loyalty of Government Employees cases, it has been the Bureau policy to accept information of a derogatory nature relating to the character and personal habits of an employee if volunteered. Such information has been reflected in an investigative report as information volunteered and no attempt has been made to develop this data by supplemental inquiry. This policy is now changed to the following extent: when information is received during the course of a full field loyalty investigation or a preliminary inquiry indicating the person under investigation is a sex deviate, this allegation should be completely and fully developed and the facts reported. This procedure must be placed in effect immediately and followed closely.
[Source: “FBI records regarding Sex Offenders Foreign Intelligence; Sex Degenerates and Sex Offenders; Sex Perverts in Government Service, 1950 – 1966.” Response to a Freedom of Information Act request from GovernmentAttic.org (Dated May 6, 2009, posted Aug 21, 2009): 28-29. Posted online here (PDF: 2MB/42 pages).]
Broward County Fires Employee with AIDS: 1984. In January 1984, Todd Shuttleworth learned that he had AIDS. Eight months later, he was fired from his job as budget analyst for Broward County, Florida. News reports at that time indicate that it was already well known that AIDS could not be casually transmitted, but his boss, John Canada, defended the firing, saying, “We just couldn’t take the chance of anything happening to employees or to anyone visiting the office.” The following January, Broward County fired a second employee, mail clerk Donald Fanus. County Administrator Floyd Johnson defended that firing on the same grounds: “I have wrestled with it. I have a responsibility to protect all of Broward County’s workforce, and the general public that is served by the workforce.”
Fanus, who had developed Kaposi’s sarcoma, declined to appeal his firing, but Shuttleworth chose to fight. As he explained in a 1986 op-ed published in the Sun-Sentinel, he had nothing to lose:
Every young gay who learns to accept him or herself has more guts, courage and moral strength that all the Bible-thumping bigots and fag-bashing punks combined.
One does not choose to be gay or, I presume, “choose“ to be straight. But there are many choices that have been made by many people during the AIDS crisis. Broward County officials chose to ignore their own doctor`s advice and decided to fire me. They chose not to bother to contact the acknowledged AIDS experts at the AIDS clinic in Miami, at the Centers for Disease Control, or at state or national public health departments. They denied my request for a hearing to present medical and scientific evidence to show that my dismissal was based on their irrational fear rather than rational decision-making, or the facts.
A few months ago, when the Human Relations Board first ruled that my firing as a budget analyst due to AIDS was unwarranted, County Administrator Floyd Johnson responded by saying that he had always tried to be fair to employees with AIDS. The choices he`s made in this effort included immediately terminating my health insurance and firing me without severance pay. The educational benefits I needed to complete the few hours left for my master`s degree were discontinued and it took my former employers more than a year to replace a lost paycheck despite numerous letters and phone calls and an obviously desperate need.
My life insurance was cut off and I was informed by the insurance company that in order to be eligible for extended coverage my former employer would have to initiate the required paperwork. Twenty-six months, and several phone calls and letters later, my former employers never displayed the common decency of even acknowledging my request. Only recently, nearly a year after the Human Relations Board first ruled against the county and county officials were forced to change their AIDS policy, did I receive an offer of back pay and reinstatement.
Surely that is not fair.
With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, Shuttleworth sued the county, which was the only known public employer in a major metropolitan area to declare an official policy to fire people with AIDS. Nancy Langer, spokesperson for Lambda Legal, remarked, “This is the first time I’ve ever heard of a government being so stupid as to put down in black and white a policy of discrimination.” Noel Pfeffer, Broward’s deputy general council and author of the policy, countered, “The chances of transmission to other county employees appear to be somewhat remote. On the other hand, you’re not transmitting a common cold.”
More than two years later, and just before the case was to go to trial, Broward County offered Shuttleworth his job back. But the window to accept the offer was exceptionally brief. Shuttleworth was in San Francisco undergoing treatment, and could not make it back to Fort Lauderdale in time to answer the offer. ACLU lawyer Larry Corman told reporters that the job offer shows that the county realizes it made a mistake. “Everybody recognizes the county is acknowledging that Todd doesn`t represent a health risk to the people with whom he has casual contact,” he said. “I will never understand why it took so long for them to recognize this and try to minimize their losses.” But the county’s attorney, Gordon Rogers, admitted that the offer was a cynical ploy to “(cut) off any obligations to him” for any future insurance claims. With his AIDS being a pre-existing condition, he would not have been reinstated. Shuttleworth
In December 1986, just three days before Shuttleworth’s $15 million lawsuit was to go to trial, he and Broward county settled out of court. Shuttleworth got his job back along with $190,000 in compensation, medical costs and legal fees. Broward county refused to admit wrongdoing, but agreed to follow federal regulations barring discrimination in future cases. Unfortunately, Shuttleworth’s health had deteriorated in the intervening two years. After a week at work, he became ill again and returned to San Francisco for treatment. On July 25, 1987, Shuttleworth died at the age of 34.
Jerry Falwell Blames Gays For 9/11: 2001. The ashes were still smoldering at the site of the World Trade Center, the western facade of the Pentagon, and an abandoned strip mine in rural Pennsylvania. The relatives, friends and co-workers of three thousand dead were still grappling with their loss, and three hundred million Americans were still numb from shock. The search for victims had just barely begun, the search for heroes led to the first responders in New York and Washington, D.C. and the 33 brave passengers of United Airlines Flight 93, and the search for the guilty case a glare on Islamists extremists. At least that’s the reaction of normal people. For others obsessed with a wider net of enemies, that wasn’t enough. On Thursday, September 13, 2001, Jerry Falwell appeared on Pat Robertson’s 700 Club, and together they accused a wide assortment of enemies responsible for the worst tragedy to strike American soil since Pearl Harbor:
Falwell: What we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be miniscule if in fact God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.
Robertson: Well Jerry, that’s my feeling. I think we’ve just seen the antechamber to terror. We haven’t even begun to see what they can do to the major population.
Falwell: The ACLU’s got to take a lot of blame for this.
Robertson: Oh, yes.
Falwell: And I know I’ll hear from them for this but throwing God out successfully with the help of the court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools… The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way — all of them who have tried to secularize America — I point the finger in their face and say, “you helped this happen.”
Robertson: Well I totally concur.
The next day, Falwell reportedly apologized in a phone call to CNN, but it wasn’t much of an apology. “I would never blame any human being except the terrorists, and if I left that impression with gays or lesbians or anyone else, I apologize,” he told CNN, before citing scripture to back up what he originally said. “I do believe, as a theologian, based upon many Scriptures and particularly Proverbs 14:23, which says ‘living by God’s principles promotes a nation to greatness, violating those principles brings a nation to shame,” he said.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Randy Jones: 1952. The Village People’s original cowboy, Jones grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina where he was the founder of his high school’s drama club. It was his exposure to theater which gave Jones a leg up with Jacques Morali decided to hastily assemble a permanent group of singers to tour in support pf a surprise hit for what was, until then, a non-existant band of disco singers. Until then, the Village People were simply Victor Willis (the cop) and five dancers in costumes. Jones replaced Dave Forrest in 1978 (two others were replaced with more seasoned performers at the same time) and the Village People was born. Jones remained with the Village People from 1978 to 1980, and then rejoined the group in 1987 through 1991. Since then he has recorded several solo albums and continues to perform in New York and elsewhere. Today Jones will be gettin’ hitched to his podner of 29 years, Will Grega, as part of a three-day celebration in New York City.
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?
September 12th, 2013
It’s been a while since we’ve discussed NOM’s Dump General Mills project (it just seemed the kind thing to do). But now there’s news to report.
Back in July 2012, the National Organization for Marriage (theirs, not yours) decided that they would boycott General Mills due to its opposition to an anti-gay marriage amendment in Minnesota. They asked for concerned Americans to pledge to “look for substitutes” to General Mills products.
NOM held a publicity event and the American Family Association pushed the project on their “news” network, and immediately Dump General Mills got 14,000, then 18,000 and then as many as a stunning 23,054 by mid July. And we stopped counting at that point.
But now that more than a year has passed, they’re back in the news. Now Tony Perkins has become a part of NOM’s big dump. (FRC)
At Betty Crocker, the only thing they’re mixing up is their priorities. Hi, I’m Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. If you ask conservatives, Betty Crocker’s latest promotion is a recipe for disaster. This summer, the famous dessert line decided to jump on the same-sex “marriage” bandwagon-and bring cakes to celebrate. In Minnesota, where parent company General Mills is headquartered, Betty Crocker decided to donate wedding cakes to the first homosexual couples who exchanged vows on the first day that counterfeit marriage was legal. “Betty celebrates all families,” said manager Laura Forero. “We don’t want to be old fashioned,” the company explained. Unfortunately for General Mills, the majority of Americans think natural marriage is anything but old fashioned. And they’ve made it tough on companies like Target, Starbucks, and JC Penney who disagree. Know where your money is going. When you’re at the store, think outside the Betty Crocker box! For a full list of products that are undermining marriage, check out DumpGeneralMills.com.
With Perkins’ tremendous influence over the nation’s cereal buying habits, the Big Dump is likely to heap high. But so as to truly measure Tony’s impact, let’s see where they are today.
Clearly NOM has really made a push, because since last year they’ve added 3,393 names to the pile, for a staggering total of 26,447. Numbers like that strain the imagination. Why, that’s nearly a quarter of the population of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. It’s more than half the number of people in the US who bought a Yugo in 1987. It’s astonishing that General Mills does not quake at the notion that one-fortieth of a million people have pledged to see if their grocery store has a bargain-brand substitute for their usual purchases.
But undoubtedly, now that Tony’s on board, he will really make a difference. With his help, I’m sure NOM will be able so squeeze out support that will make NOM’s Big Dump truly colossal, perhaps record breaking. Look out, General Mills, because with Perkins’ help, NOM with be able to really apply pressure.
We will, of course, let you know how it all comes out.
September 12th, 2013
Supporters of marriage equality in Australia may be a bit down after last week’s election put Liberal Party leader Tony Abbott into power (in Australia, the Liberal Party is the more conservative of the two largest parties). While Labor leader Paul Kevin Rudd had promised to hold a vote on marriage equality within 100 days if reelected, Abbott has been a staunch opponent of equality under the law.
But there is good news. A positive omen. A promise of better times.
Because on their NOMblog, Brian Brown from the National Organization for Marriage (theirs, not yours) has this to say:
“Sank Like a Stone” — that’s how same-sex marriage faired (sic) in Australia this past week.
Australia held elections for Prime Minister the other day, but it was as much a referendum on whether the Aussies would redefine marriage or not. Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd nailed his hopes of winning to a promise of introducing legislation to redefine marriage within the first 100 days of returning to office.
As was reported, the pro-marriage platform of the former Prime Minister “sank beneath the waves” of the pro-marriage majority down under.
You may remember I had traveled to Australia in August for the World Congress of Families, and I could not be happier for the friends I made on that trip and our pro-marriage and family allies there.
It’s a great victory for marriage, and a win worth celebrating across the globe. It also serves as a reminder that when people are given the right to vote on marriage, they invariably vote to preserve the true and intrinsic nature of marriage as an institution binding one man to one woman for life in order to love and care for one another and for any children born of their union.
To cement this great victory, the people of Australia should insist on the right to a national referendum to preserve marriage. That’s the best way to capitalize on the momentum of the victory, and only an amendment will protect marriage from the unceasing efforts of gay-‘marriage’ activists and the politicians who rely on them for support. It’s the only way to ensure that the people — and not politicians or judges — control the definition of marriage in Australia.
Okay, let’s ignore for a moment the fact that the election was most certainly not a referendum on marriage, with 57% of voters saying that the candidates’ positions on marriage were “not important at all” to their vote. And let’s not giggle too loudly about NOM’s call for a public referendum on an issue which has the support of two-thirds of voters. Instead let’s look at what this means on a grand cosmic scale.
When NOM starts gloating, something magical happens. It’s an omen more accurate than pig entrails, astrological forecasts, and Pat Robertson’s Hurricane Watch combined. When NOM is on your side, you are certain to lose.
Look at Maine and Minnesota in November. Look at the New York elections this week. Look at France!!
Ah yes, NOM is joyous. And this is good news indeed.
September 12th, 2013
Cocktails Lounge, on Cleveland’s West Side, has been the scene of at least two designated hate crimes in less than a week and at least six attacks on patrons since spring. Two weeks ago, Jared Fox was surrounded by a gang of juveniles, beaten and robbed while they shouted anti-gay epithets. These things are the kind of attacks that can happen in any American city, but they’re happening in Cleveland now, where the City’s Director of Public Safety, Martin Flask, is on the case: he sent a letter to the bar’s owners demanding that they stop calling 911 so often:
Our records indicate from September 02, 2012 through September 01, 2013 Cleveland Police Officers and/or Dog warden have been dispatched and responded to your property located at 9208 Detroit Avenue inns for various Calls for service. Repeated calls to the same property place an and inappropriate burden on the taxpayers of the City of Cleveland and on our safety forces. The estimated cost for the city safety forces to respond to your property is approximately $100.00 per call for service.
l am confident that we share the same goal and that you will take the necessary steps to eliminate the repeated calls for police services to your property. Therefore, within 10 days of the date of this letter, you will be required to submit your action plan to the First District Neighborhood Police Commander (623-5105), outlining your strategy to eliminate the problems at this location.
Cocktails Lounge manager James Foster was appalled at the letter.
Foster said what’s most frustrating is that the majority of those police calls didn’t have to do with the lounge itself. Instead, managers and patrons called about incidents happening near the lounge.
“It’s your neighborhood bar, everybody knows everybody, everybody’s got nicknames,” said Mary Wishar, a regular at Cocktails who describes the lounge as friendly and safe.
Outrage erupted on social media yesterday after the letter went public. City Councilman Jay Westbrook, who represents the ward where Cocktails is located, said, “Just when we thought we were turning a corner with these incidents, the safety director shot us in the foot.” Mayor Frank Jackson ordered Flask to rescind the letter:
“If I had to do it over again, I would have handled this particular situation differently,” Flask said. “After reviewing this issue with Mayor (Frank) Jackson, he has directed me to rescind the letter and instead set up a meeting with the District Commander and the property owners so that we can work together to address the issues raised by the calls for service to 9208 Detroit Avenue.”
Lyons could not be reached for comment Wednesday night. The letter said 13 police reports were filed over the one-year period for everything from fights to robbery. None of the calls, Flask said, involved hate crimes currently being investigated by police.
“(I)t is an early warning letter that the Department of Public Safety sends to property owners to help prevent a location from becoming a ‘nuisance property'” Flask said. “224 such letters have already been sent to various property owners this year.”
Cleveland was selected to host the Gay Games in 2014.
September 12th, 2013
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Boulder, CO; Burlington, VT; Cherry Hill, NJ; Dallas, TX; Derby, UK; Humboldt/Eureka CA; Outer Banks, NC; Savannah, GA; Spartansburg, SC.
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Amherst, NS; Chatham, ON; London, ON; Ottawa, ON; Peterborough, ON; Prince George, BC; Regina, SK; San Antonio, TX; Springhill, NS; Sydney, NS; Yorkton, SK.
Other Celebrations This Weekend: Folsom Europe, Berlin, Germany; Out in the Park Six Flags, Gurnee, IL; BUPA Great North Run, Newcastle, UK; International Bears Week, Sitges, Spain; Out in the Park Six Flags, Springfield, MA.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
John Vassall Arrested for Spying: 1962. No one ever bothered to ask how a low level British Admiralty clerk earning £908 a year was able to afford a home in London’s Dolphin Square apartment complex, which had been home to such illustrious residents as Charles de Gaulle, C.P. Snow and Sir Oswald Mosley. Nor did they pay much attention to his 36 Savile Row suits, three cashmere overcoats, tailored silk shirts, exotic holidays.
They should have, particularly since the Vassall held a Top Secret clearance with the Royal Navy. But British investigators didn’t begin poking around until December 1961, when a KGB agent, Anatoli Golitsin, defected to the United States and spilled the beans about Soviet agents working in the West, including two spies in the Admiralty. MI5 agents decided that one of them might by Vassall, but didn’t act for more than a year. Then in June of 1962, until another KGB agent, Yuri Nosenko, began providing further evidence of Vassall’s spying. Even then, MI6 held off for three more months, until September 12, 1962, when Vassall was finally arrested and charged with spying for the Soviet Union.
Vassall confessed immediately: about the spying, about the cameras and films hidden in his apartment, about the documents that he stole, and about how he got into the spying business for the Soviets. It began in 1952 when he was a member of the Naval Attaché at the British Embassy in Moscow, where he found himself socially isolated on several fronts: a Brit in Moscow, a common civil servant among upper-class officers and diplomats, and, crucially, a homosexual at a time when it was illegal both in Britain and in the Soviet Union. Through a Polish worker at the embassy, Vassall became connected with Moscow’s gay underground. In 1954, he was invited to a party — which was actually a classic “honey trap” set up by the KGB — where Vassall was encouraged to become extremely drunk, and where he was photographs in compromising positions with several men. The Soviets used those photos to blackmail Vassell, and he became their agent for the next eight years.
In 1956, Vassall was assigned to the Admiralty, where he photographed secret documents and passed them to his KGB handlers in exchange for money. The documents he photoed included specifications for British radar, torpedoes, nuclear weapons, anti-submarine equipment, and tactics. When Golitsin defected in 1961, the Soviets ordered Vassall to stop working and return his camera. But after Nosenko began providing information to the CIA in Geneva, the Soviets gave Vassall his camera back and ordered him to resume spying. It is now suspected that Nosenko, who never defected and whose information about other spies proved to be unreliable, may have set Vassall up to protect a more valuable spy at the Admiralty. When Vassall made his full confession following his arrests, he insisted that he had not stolen some of the documents that Golitsin said he stole.
Vassall was sentenced to 18 years years imprisonment, of which he served ten. A public enquiry in the following year, known as the Vassall Tribunal, was set up to investigate who in the Admiralty was to blame for the lax security oversight. Tam Galbraith, Civil Lord of the Admiralty, who was Vassall’s boss, was singled out for special scrutiny amid rumors that the he and Vassal had been lovers. Galbraith was declared innocent on all accounts, as were his other superiors in the Admiralty.
Vassall’s arrest also reignited the debate over Britain’s criminalization of male homosexuality. Five years earlier, the Wolfenden Commission had recognized that making gay men criminals exposed them to blackmail and extortion, and recommended that criminal penalties be lifted (see Sept 4), but Parliament refused to act. Now, it seemed that the time was right to revisit that decision. Peter Black, writing for the Daily Mail in 1963, argued:
The point is that though homosexuals are no more inclined to treachery than you are. the law as it stands gives the Communists a lever against them which they have over nobody else. If Vassall had not been a homosexual, and subject to this law, the Russians might have got him anyway. I think he had a predisposition to treachery. But they could not have blackmailed him into it.
Homosexuals are specially vulnerable to blackmailers because they cannot appeal to the protection of the law. The blackmailer threatens him with exposure. It he goes to the police exposure is what he’ll get anyway; for the police can, and sometimes do, charge the victim for participating in the offences he is being blackmailed about. So the law sharpens the threat of exposure and sharpens the wits of those vulnerable to it.
Those arguments however went nowhere, and homosexual relations between men remained a criminal act until 1967 (see Jul 28).
After Vassall’s release from prison in 1972, he wrote Vassall: The Autobiography of a Spy, which was published in 1975. He then changed his surname to Phillips and lived out the rest of his life in obscurity. He died in 1995 of a heart attack at the age of 71 in St. John’s Wood, north London. In 2006, details of his confession were released by the National Archives.
Gay Liberation Front Protests Village Voice: 1969. More than two months had passed since the landmark Stonewall uprising, but New York’s news media was still unable to grapple with what that night of defiance really meant. On the day following the riot, The New York Times buried its story on page thirty-three, where it didn’t even bother to mention why the patrons of the Stonewall Inn were fighting. The New York Daily News reported the whole thing, on page thirty, from the police’s point of view (“3 Cops Hurt As Bar Raid Riles Crowd”). The Daily News followed on July 6 with their infamous report, “Homo Nest Raided, Queen Bees Are Stinging Mad.”
If it weren’t for the Village Voice’s extensive coverage, much of what we know about Stonewall might have been lost to history. The Voice did have one advantage that New York’s more powerful media didn’t: it was located on Christopher Street, just a few doors down from the Stonewall. The July 3 edition of the weekly newspaper featured two front page stories about the riot: “Gay Power Comes to Sheridan Square” by Lucian Truscott IV, who reported what took place outside of the Stonewall. A second reporter, Howard Smith, arrived at the scene during the first raid just as police were loosing control of the crowd. Smith got caught up inside the bar where police had retreated for protection from the crowd. Smith described that experience in “From the Inside: Full Moon Over The Stonewall.”
While the Voice’s reporting on the rebellion was the most thorough and detailed of all the city’s news outlets, it wasn’t above the kind of mocking tone and prejudicial stereotypes that were typical at that time. Truscott wrote of “the forces of faggotry,” the “blatant queens” with “limped wrists and primed hair” battling police, which he described as “the city’s finest.” Smith’s report was less colorful, yet he couldn’t resist calling one lesbian a “dyke.” In his July 10 Voice column, Walter Troy Spencer called the riot “the Great Faggot Rebellion,” and laced his entire column with sneering disdain (“… a lot of that weekend swishy cruising on the streets around the Stonewall had gotten flamboyant and aggressive…”).
Immediately following the riot, the gay community began to organize. In August, the newly formed Gay Liberation Front tried to place two small ads in the free Bulletin Board section of the Village Voice to publicize its community dances. Newspaper staff deleted the word “gay,” arguing that it was obscene — even though they routinely accepted, without question, ads for apartments from landlords specifying “no gays.” The Voice saw itself as one of the most liberal papers in the country, and it defined its liberalism as allowing its writers to say anything they wanted, which meant that writers were allowed to write about “faggots” and “blatant queens with the full support of editors and management. even though no writer would have dreamed of using derogatory language to describe blacks or other minority groups. But that freedom ended at the Voice’s Bulletin Board section, where the Gay Liberation Front was barred from using the word “gay.”
The Gay Liberation Front struck back with a protest at the Village Voice on Friday morning, September 12 at 9:00 a.m, demanding a meeting with publisher Ed Fancher. The protest went on all day as Fancher stubbornly refused to meet with the group. Later that afternoon, a protester tried to place a classified ad reading, “The Gay Liberation Front sends love to all Gay men and women in the homosexual community.” That ad was rejected. But soon after, Fancher agreed to meet three of the protesters’ representatives. He angrily defended his writers right to use derogatory language, but agreed to rescind the ban on accepting ads with the words “gay” and “homosexual.” The Voice’s next edition didn’t see fit to report on the protest at its front door, but the GLF ad did appear in that issue’s Bulletin Board.
Village Voice, Sept 18, 1969, “Bulletin Board” on page 2: The Gay Liberation Front ad that was so “obscene” (Click to enlarge.)
[Additional source: Edward Alwood. Straight News: Gays, Lesbians and the News Media
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September 11th, 2013
Sandy Rios, one the Right’s more dense opinionators, has now weighed in on why an attack on Syria is a bad idea. It’s cuz John Kerry’s a liar and cuz, well, cuz of TEH GHEYYYYY!!!: (Raw Story)
“There’s a second reason and that is military readiness,” she continued. “When I looked at those battleships going into the Mediterranean, supposedly getting ready for battle in Syria, I couldn’t help think about all the stories I’ve read about how women now are in the ranks of the Navy, getting pregnant at exponential numbers.”
“When I think about the folding in and the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and the homosexual takeover, really, of our military,” Rios added, “I’m not sure how effective those naval ships will be.”
Poor delusional Sandy. And I bet you a nickel that you could never get her to understand the inherent bigotry, superiority, and hatred in that absurd statement.
September 11th, 2013
The stain of Russian homophobia is seeping into its Baltic neighbor and former possession, Lithuania, whose Parliament, according to Pink News, is set to take up five separate anti-LGBT bills later this year. The bills would:
In 2009, Lithuania’s Parliament passed a law prohibiting “public dissemination” of information favorable to LGBT people. After objections from the European Parliament, Lithuania amended its code with a “ban to spread information that would promote sexual relations or other conceptions of concluding a marriage or creating a family other than established in the Constitution or the Civil Code.” Vilnius officials used that code to try to ban a Pride celebration in Vilnius in 2010. Lithuania’s High Court overturned that ban and allowed the country’s first Pride to take place that year. In 2013, Vilnius was host to Baltic Pride, an annual event which rotates through the three Baltic states.
September 11th, 2013
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Boulder, CO; Burlington, VT; Cherry Hill, NJ; Dallas, TX; Derby, UK; Humboldt/Eureka CA; Outer Banks, NC; Savannah, GA; Spartansburg, SC.
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Amherst, NS; Chatham, ON; London, ON; Ottawa, ON; Peterborough, ON; Prince George, BC; Regina, SK; San Antonio, TX; Springhill, NS; Sydney, NS; Yorkton, SK.
Other Celebrations This Weekend: Folsom Europe, Berlin, Germany; Out in the Park Six Flags, Gurnee, IL; BUPA Great North Run, Newcastle, UK; International Bears Week, Sitges, Spain; Out in the Park Six Flags, Springfield, MA.
Dr. Karl Bowman explaining Kinsey’s 1948 study on KQED’s “The Rejected.”
TODAY IN HISTORY:
KQED Airs “The Rejected”: 1961. The year was a monumental one as American opened itself to the modern world in ways that it hadn’t done before. The youngest president in history had just taken the oath of office, succeeding the oldest president then in history, Hollywood relaxed its ban on overt displays of homosexuality, and Jess Stearn’s book, The Sixth Man, provided the sensational claim that one in six men in America was “affected” by homosexuality. KQED, San Francisco’s public television station, had a reputation for tackling controversial subjects, and now the time was ripe to tackle what was perhaps one of the most controversial topics of all.
The idea for a documentary on homosexuality came to John W. Reavis, Jr., who spent several months researching and conducting background interviews with experts with backgrounds in medicine, anthropology, religion, law, government and business. He also sought the participation of members of the Mattachine Society. Initially titled “The Gay Ones,” Reavis tried to sell the documentary to the major networks. But finding no backers there, Reavis found a ready reception with KQED’s co-founder Jonathan Rice and general manager James Day.
Over the objections of one of the board members who threatened to resign, Reavis’s documentary project, now renamed “The Rejected,” went forward with a $100 budget and filmed segments featuring interviews anthropologist Margaret Mead (her own lesbianism wasn’t revealed at that time) and Mattachine members Hall Call (see Sep 20), Don Lucas and Les Fisher, who spoke openly as gay men. Episcopal Bishop James Pile spoke of gay people as being just like “anyone else with an illness,” deserving compassion and care. San Francisco psychiatrist Karl Bowman countered the idea that homosexuality was an illness, let alone that it was curable. “The attitudes of some people is to try to treat it in an entirely punitive way,” he said. Albert Bendich, a lawyer and former ACLU attorney called statutes seeking to outlaw same-sex conduct “not enforceable.”
Mattachine Society executive director Howard Call and secretary Don Lucas, during a filmed interview for “The Rejected.”
Harold Call explained that part of his group’s aims was “to dispel part of this stereotyped picture” and to change the law against homosexuality. Reavis shared the goal of dispelling stereotypes, carefully constructing the program to establish a gay stereotype in the minds of viewers and then methodically destroying that stereotype. According to Reavis’s original proposal for the documentary, “the viewer should be left, if anything, with a feeling he is confused and that society as a whole is confused about homosexuality.” One brief segment was even filmed at San Francisco’s famed Black Cat bar (see Aug 28)
The hour-long documentary aired at 9:30 p.m. on Monday, September 11. Typical of most programs about homosexuality, “The Rejected” did not include lesbians. But it was perhaps the first scripted documentary to discuss homosexuality from a calm and rational point of view. Response was mostly positive. KQED was inundated with letters following the broadcast, with many of them requests for transcripts. Only a tiny minority, 3% according to station officials, wrote to complain. “The Rejected” also received critical acclaim, with the San Francisco Chronicle saying “KQED handled the subject soberly, calmly and in great depth.” It also received national notice, and was broadcast on several other public TV stations between 1961 and 1963, including in Tucson, Los Angeles, Portland and New York. Despite that, no film of the program is known to exist. Only the transcripts and news reports remain.
[Sources: Edward Alwood. Straight News: Gays, Lesbians and the News Media
Bob Connelly. “A television coming out story from 1961.” The Advocate (September 21, 2011): available online.
Stephen Tropiano. The Prime Time Closet: A History of Gays and Lesbians on TV
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Marc-André Raffalovich: 1864. Born in Paris to Russian Jewish emigrés, Raffalovoch studied in Oxford and settled in London in 1882, where he opened a salon in the 1890s. It seemed only natural for him; his mother kept a successful salon in Paris, attracting such notable figures as Sarah Bernardt, Colette, and Gustave Moreay. But Oscar Wilde found found the younger Raffalovich’s events wanting. “Dear André! He came to London to found a salon and only succeeded in opening a saloon.” Raffalovich, in turn, was uncomfortable with what he took to be Wilde’s wild sexuality.
Raffalovich published several works poetry and fiction between 1884 and 1896. Few were notable except for their ommision of gender when describing the gender of the object of his desires. It was in his non-fiction that Raffalovich established his mark on history. In 1896, he published Uranisme et Unisexualité, which established him as an expert on homosexuality. It is also where Raffalovich laid out his argument that homosexuality was only pure and noble when practiced by a “sublime invert” — who fulfills his desires not through his sexuality but through artistic endeavors and spiritual friendships. This naturally put him on a collision course with other gay advocates such as Edward Carpenter and Magnus Hirschfeld, the latter who Raffalovich accused of advocating for moral decline and the destruction of whole generations. In 1897, Raffalovich started work in Annales de l’unisexualité, and Les Chroniques de l’unisexualité, in which he embarked on an ambitious effort to document everything ever published about homosexuality. These works remain useful to historians to this day, and they remain perhaps his most important work.
But soon after, Raffalovich turned away from the subject. In 1892, he met John Gray (See Mar 2), a young poet in Oscar Wilde’s circle of friends (some say Gray was the inspiration for Dorian Gray). Raffalovich followed Gray into Catholicism, and after Gray was ordained a priest and assigned to a parish in Edinburgh, Raffalovich followed him there, too, purchasing a home nearby and provided important financial support for the parish. Raffalovich established another salon there where guests included novelist Henry James, art scholar Herbert Read, and sculptor Aelred Whitacre. Raffalovich and Gray maintained separate homes, but their friendship was known as something more than that of “just friends,” despite being very formal with each other in public. When Raffalovich died suddenly in 1934, Gray was devastated. He became ill and died just four months later.
Kristy McNichol: 1962. Born and raised in L.A., she got her start in acting with the help of family friend Desi Arnaz. In 1976, she was cast for the part of Buddy Lawrence for the ABC drama series Family, which was one of those oh-so-earnest “real life issues” dramas that made 1970s television so unwatchable. McNichol’s Buddy (in my opinion) was perhaps the only thing that made to program bearable, for which she earned two Emmies for Best Supporting Actress. (There must have been something in the water on the Family set; the program also featured Meredith Baxter (see Jun 21).) It helped that her off-screen personality was as engaging as her actiing skills, making her a popular guest on talk shows and Battle of the Network Stars. She began her film career in 1978 in The End, starring Burt Reynolds, before moving on to more notable turns in 1980’s Little Darlings and 1981’s The Nights the Lights Went Out in Georgia. She also earned a Golden Globe nomination for her role in Neil Simon’s Only When I Laugh.
It looked as though McNichol was going to be one of those rare child stars to successfully navigate the treacherous transition to adult acting, when her behavior become erratic and her attendence on sets unreliable. Rumors swirled that she was using drugs, but it turns out that she was actually suffering from bipolar disorder. when she was diagnosed in 1992, she decided to retire from acting. Since then, she’s been teaching acting at a private school in L.A., and she’s been active in local charity work. Earlier this year, she surprised almost no one when she decided to come out as a lesbian after reading about several suicides of LGBT teens.
If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).
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September 10th, 2013
Gov. Neil Abercrombie (D) has announced that he will call the state legislature back into special session on October 28 to take up a same-sex marriage bill:
State House Democrats have met over the past two weeks to count votes and determine if support existed to pass a measure. Senate Democrats are scheduled to meet later this week, although leaders have said they have enough votes to pass the Marriage Equity Bill.
Abercrombie had previously said he was waiting for a clear signal from the Legislature before calling the lawmakers back for a special session. Last week, he said he believed he had all the information he needed to make his decision.
You can find the full text of the bill here. Gov. Abercrombie cites the recent Supreme Court ruling striking down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act as a reason to take up the issue because of how the court’s decision affects taxes for same-sex couples. Hawaii currently allows civil unions, which are not recognized at the Federal level. Left unsaid in Abercrombie’s announcement is the fact that Hawaii is a major romantic wedding destination, either as a location for the wedding itself or for the honeymoon. Weddings are already a big business in Hawaii, and with marriage equality unavailable in 38 states, there are a lot of couples looking around for an interesting and romantic setting for saying “I do.” I’m sure many of them would prefer exchanging their vows on a beautiful beach at sunset over, say, Minneapolis.
September 10th, 2013
THIS MONTH IN HISTORY:
Boston Resident Congratulates Beacon Hill for Its Tolerance: 1965. Residents of Boston’s historic Beacon Hill prided themselves on gentility, openness and tolerance, even as those virtues were being challenged in the tumultuous 1960s. But residents were determined to steer through the shoals of discord with characteristic Beacon Hill aplomb and dignity. And they had no compunction about patting themselves on their collective backs as they did so, as exemplified in a letter to the editor that was published in the September edition of the neighborhood’s newsletter, The Beacon Hill News:
The only people I would consider as being so-called undesirable elements are the “immature set”… The so-called odd-balls, beatniks, and homosexuals give the Hill the charm it has today, along with the elderly ladies and gentlemen who have been living in this area for so long.
It is amazing how the rich, poor, the young, old, the students, beatniks, and homosexuals can be so compatible within this little community in the heart of Boston. Eliminate the immature, who are included in all types, and you have the most prejudice-free community, where everyone minds his own business and lives side by side in almost complete harmony. This is an example of the way all communities should be in America. This is Beacon Hill. This is America.
I’m sure that those odd-ball students, beatniks and homosexuals may have had a different perspective on their fellow neighbors’ tolerance, but the mere fact that a welcome mat for homosexuals could appear in the prestigious neighborhood’s newsletter (“Where the Lowells speak only to the Cabots, and the Cabots speak only to God”) ought to count for something.
[Source: “Cross-Currents” The Ladder (December 1965): 12.]
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
80 YEARS AGO: Karl Lagerfeld: 1933. Opinions. The outspoken fashion designer in the black glasses and high starched collar has a million of them, which he dispenses for free without asking. In 2009, he defended his use of animal fur in his designs this way: “In a meat-eating world, wearing leather for shoes and clothes and even handbags, the discussion of fur is childish.” He also has a thing about skinniness, criticizing supermodel Heidi Klum as “too heavy and has too big a bust” to be a runway model. He also called the singer Adele “a little too fat” in 2012, a remark for which he had to apologize. Adele, for her part, responded that she never wanted to look like a model. “I represent the majority of women and I’m very proud of that,” she said. A year later, Lagerfeld was at it again, saying that he never called Adele fat, but just a “little roundish. “But for such a beautiful girl, after that she lost eight kilos [17.6 pounds] so I think the message was not that bad.”
The German-born son of a wealthy businessman grew up privileged during the hardships of World War II. After attending private school, he moved to Paris, got an education in drawing and history, and began designing haute couture collections in the mid-1950s. His first collection was booed by the press, and his short skirts for the 1960 spring season also weren’t well received either. In 1963, he moved to Rome and worked for Tiziani until 1969, where he picked up Elizabeth Taylor, Doris Duke and Principessa Borgheses as customers. He also designed freelance for the French fashion house Chloé, and Italian houses Curiel, Fendi, and the American jeans brand Diesel. He is currently head designer and creative director for Chanel, Fendi, and his own fashion house. He lives in a Paris mansion which he shares with his Siamese cat, Choupette, who he said he would marry if it were legal.
Jeff Marx: 1970. The composer and lyricist began life as a lawyer looking for clients in the entertainment industry. The only reason he joined a musical theater workshop was to meet potential clients. “I didn’t tell them I was just there to meet clients and had no designs on being a songwriter,” he later confessed. But to stay in the workshop, he had to do the work. That’s where he met Richard Lopez, and the two of them started writing music for what would become the Broadway Musical Avenue Q, for which they won the 2004 Tony Award for Best Musical and Best Score.
That was it. Marx never went back to practicing law. He and Lopez, with Debra Fordham, wrote four songs for a critically-acclaimed musical episode of the NBC sitcom Scrubs, which aired in 2007. One of their songs, “Everything Comes Down To Poo,” was nominated for an Emmy. Marx has written songs for the Disney Channel and the theme song for Logo TV’s animated series Rick & Steve: The Happiest Gay Couple In All the World. Marx currently lives in Los Angeles where he is also a member of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles.
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September 9th, 2013
This tells you everything you need to know about Russia’s inability to cope with free debate:
The head of the Sochi Olympics asked the IOC on Sunday to help “stop this campaign and this speculation” related to the anti-gay law that has been overshadowing preparations for next year’s Winter Games in Russia.
The IOC would like all worldwide athletes to shut up and behave like good Russian patriots:
(IOC marketing commission chairman Gerhard) Heiberg raised the issue of concerns among sponsors.
“Lately there has been a lot of discussion, especially in Western Europe and in the United States, and I’m being pushed by several of the sponsors asking what will happen with this new law in Russian in connection with the gay community,” he said. “We are not to try to change anything over the laws in Russia. We will of course accept this as internal Russian decision. But what will the consequences be?”
Heiberg cited Rule 50 of the Olympic Charter, which says “no kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas.”
“We have to be prepared,” he said. “We can see many ways this could happen. I heard a lot from the sponsors, especially the American sponsors, what they are afraid of could happen.”
Rogge said athletes would soon be reminded about their responsibility to abide by the IOC regulations related to protests in the charter.
According to the AP, IOC President Jacques Rogge said he “satisfied” with Russia’s explanations so far. What’s particularly chilling, if Heiberg’s words are to be taken at face value, is that Olympic sponsors’ fears about “fallout” from potential demonstrations appear to be resulting in pressure on the IOC and Russian officials to make sure they don’t occur.
September 9th, 2013
TODAY IN HISTORY:
Reuters Reports Government Routinely Spied On Gay Groups: 1982. Information wants to be free, and the Freedom of Information Act allowed a trove of documents from the FBI and the Pentagon to finally see the light of day. Reuters obtained documents which showed that the government routinely spied on gay rights groups throughout the 1950s through the early 1970s. An FBI spokesman said that surveillance ended in the mid-1970s under new rules requiring evidence of a crime before an investigation can begin. But two members of Congress, Reps. Philip Burton and Henry Waxman (both D-CA) demanded an investigation of the agencies involved. According to Reuters, “Among the documents is a December, 1965, memorandum from the late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover titled ‘Homosexual Hangouts Throughout the United States.’ It instructs agents to obtain a copy of ‘The Address Book,’ a publication that lists such hangouts, ‘in order to conduct thorough interviews and for use in getting … leads.’ Another document said a 53-page list of homosexuals and persons ‘identified as having homosexual tendencies (or) as associates of homosexuals’ had been added to the files in the San Francisco FBI office.”
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September 8th, 2013
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Las Vegas, NV; Limerick, Ireland; Lincoln City, OR; Stavanger, Norway; Torquay, UK.
Other Events This Weekend: Womenfest, Key West, FL; Run to the Beat, London, UK; London to Brighton Cycle for Clarence Higgins Trust, London/Brighton, UK; Newfest Film Festival, New York, NY; Bears on Ice, Reykjavic, Iceland; North Louisiana Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Shreveport, LA; International Bears Week, Sitges, Spain.
Jeannie Sullivan and Tommy Vasu.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
San Francisco Police Raid Tommy’s Place: 1954. Tommy Vasu, one of the owners of Tommy’s Place, was the first known lesbian to have an legal ownership stake of a bar in San Francisco. Wherever she went, she attracted attention: dressed in double-breasted suits, wide tie and a fedora, she loved to gamble and was known as a risk taker. Vasu, with her girlfriend Jeanne Sullivan, Grace Miller and Joyce van de Veer, opened Tommy’s Place at 520 Broadway in 1952. Tommy’s Place attracted a mixed crowd of artists, prostitutes, bohemians and, of course, lesbians. Vasu and Sullivan also operated 12 Adler Place; its entrance was just around the corner and the two clubs, which shared a single liquor license, were connected inside by a split-level mezzanine. Because Vasu had a police record, her name could not appear on a liquor license. She put the license in Sullivan’s name, and she listed Miller and van de Veer as owners of 12 Adler Place so they could serve as bartenders.
In 1954, the McCarthy “Lavender Scare” was still in full swing, and whenever elections loomed in San Francisco, the police department would unleash another round of raids to “clean up the city.” In June, The Examiner, owned by William Randolph Hearst, published a series of articles decrying the “marked influx recently of homosexuals” into San Francisco: “The condition (of the city) is marked by the increase of homosexuals in the parks, public gathering places and certain taverns in the city. It is a bad situation. It is a situation that has resulted in extortion and blackmail. Even worse, these deviates multiply by recruiting teen-agers.”
Police Chief Michael Gaffey announced a new campaign to “clean the homosexuals from the streets, the public rooms and the parks where their actions have become intolerably offensive.” That month, police raided five bars in the Tenderloin “suspected of being frequented by sex deviates.” While those cases drew headlines, those raids were quickly forgotten. The big raid was still in the planning phase. In July, Police were three months into an investigation involving a dozen high school girls who “donned mannish clothes and frequented pool halls.” On September 1, they raided the home of Jesse Joseph Winston, who they determined was hosting parties for teenage girls where he allegedly provided them with marijuana and Benzedrine, and supposedly schooled them in “sexual rebellion.” As part of that investigation, police determined that Winston met these supposedly “innocent girls from good families” at Tommy’s Place, where he invited them over to his place after the bars closed. The fact that Winston was African-American and the girls were white only added to the city-wide panic which ensued. Winston was charged with three counts of providing marijuana to a minor and one count of possession of marijuana.
Grace Miller, behind the bar at Tommy’s Place. (Click to enlarge.)
A week later, Police turned their attention to Tommy’s Place and 12 Adler Place, where they arrested Grace Miller and Joyce van de Veer, who were working as bartenders that night. They were charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor. According to news reports, Tommy’s place was targeted because:
The bar, police said, has long served as a happy hunting ground for a group of adult debauchees, who recruited school girls into their academy of dope addiction and sexual perversion. “At least a dozen” teen-age girls have been ensnared, according to Inspector L.G. Etherington and taken from the bar to other places in the Latin Quarter for a full education in abominable practices.”
One former patron later remembered the raid at Tommy’s Place:
“They (Miller and van de Veer) were framed as part of this harassment of gay bars. Two of her [Tommy’s] bartenders were arrested. … One of them is a good friend of mine. She did six months. They were accused of serving minors, and the girls were minors but they had forged IDs. It sort of escalated, and the PTA got involved. Then the police planted some drugs in the ladies’ room, some heroin and the works or something like that, and they pretend to find it. … The Examiner just ran with it. At that time it was a real sensational tabloid.
Indeed it was. The day after the raid, The Examiner’s front page screamed with alarm: “School-girls’ vice, dope revealed in S.F. Bar Raid.” and “S.F. Teen-age Girls Tell of ‘Vice Academy’.” The raid on Tommy’s Place, pumped by The Examiner’s sensational headlines, sparked a city-wide panic, which led to more crackdowns on gay bars. News of Tommy’s raid even reached Washington. In October, the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, which had been holding hearings in various cities across the country, arrived in San Francisco, where the Tommy’s Place raid was the main focus.
As for the three who were arrested, Joyce Van de Veer was acquitted. Grace Miller was found guilty of serving alcohol to a minor and served six months in the county jail. Winston was convicted and sentenced to a term of one to twenty years at San Quentin. Eventually, the state of California revoked the liquor license, and Tommy’s Place and 12 Adler Place were forced to close. The building which housed Tommy’s Place is now a straight strip club called “The Garden of Eden.” The entrance to 2 Adler Place (the street has since been re-named William Saroyan Place) is now the home of Specs’ Twelve Adler Museum Cafe, a hard-to-find hipster dive bar which has been described both as “chaotically-themed” and “virtually unchanged.”
[Source: Nan Alamilla Boyd. Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965
Time Magazine’s “I Am A Homosexual”: 1975. Technical Sergeant Leonard Matlovich’s picture on the cover of Time with the caption announcing “I Am a Homosexual” posed a direct challenge to the pre-“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” ban on gays serving in the military. As Time reported, he was the perfect test case: “The tall, red-haired sergeant has an impeccable twelve-year military record, no known psychiatric problems, and a Bronze Star and Purple Heart won on one of his three tours in Viet Nam.” A five-member Air Force review board heard his case the following week. He lost that case, and he was excommunicated from the Mormon Church a month later.
But on this date in 1975, he became the face of the gay community as Time devoted several pages to the rising gay rights movement. By then, twelve states had eliminated their laws making homosexuality a crime, and the American Psychiatric Association and American Psychological Association recognized that homosexuality was not a mental disorder. AT&T and the Civil Service Commission had announced that they were willing to hire openly gay employees, and one major educational journal wrote that gay teachers should come out to their students. Time covered the usual ground for stories of this kind: gay activism, the problems gay people face, the requisite tour of the raunchier gay establishments (New York’s Eagle gets a mention, along with an introduction to the handkerchief code and bathhouses), and yet the article manages to present gay people as real people — something quite rare for 1975. The word “gay” is used in about equal measure as “homosexual,” and the word “militant” appears only three times in the 5,400 word article. It did however end on a down note, warning that homosexuality become more widespread if anti-gay discrimination were to end:
Says Psychoanalyst Herbert Hendin: “‘Anything goes’ is a legitimate attitude for consenting adults toward each other, but for a culture to declare it as a credo is to miss entirely the stake all of us have in the harmony between the sexes and in the family as the irreplaceable necessity of society. This is a society that is increasingly denying its impotence by calling it tolerance, preaching resignation and naming all this progress.”
It’s worth noting that while both APA’s (the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association) had declared that homosexuality was not a mental disorder, the American Psychoanalytic Association was much slower to reach that conclusion. It wasn’t until 1991 when the APsaA formally declared that homosexuality was no longer a barrier to becoming a psychoanalyst. It’s also worth noting that most conversion therapy today is still rooted in older psychoanalytic theories. And, it’s worth noting further that the argument that increased acceptance for gay people today will create more gay people tomorrow is still a staple of anti-gay and ex-gay rhetoric.
On the whole, Time’s coverage of Matlovich’s case was relatively positive — well, positive-for-1975 positive. Coverage elsewhere wasn’t so tactful. Gay activists targeted San Francisco’s KPIX studios when an anchorman, after reading Matlovich’s story and thinking the microphone was switched off, was heard to say, “I was going to say ‘faggot flier’ but I thought…” — before a technician actually switched the mike off.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Mark Foley: 1954. When the lifelong bachelor Republican from Florida cast his vote for the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, journalist Kurt Wolf decided it was time to out Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) and fellow Republican Jim Kolbe (R-AZ, see Jun 28) from the Congressional closet, first on a New York City radio station, then on a Boston cable-access television show. The Advocate picked up the story and decided to call the two congressmen for comment. Both men hid behind the excuse that their sexual orientation wasn’t relevatn, but a week later Kolbe decided to come out.
Foley didn’t, and the story mostly went away until it was resurrected, briefly, when Foley was considering a run at Sen. Bob Graham’s (D-FL) vacating Senate seat. Ths time, Broward County’s New Times picked it up, leading Foley to call a news conference to denounce what he termed the “revolting and unforgivable” rumors, while simultaneously managing to avoid denying the rumors specifically. A few weeks later, he dropped out and decided to remain in the House.
All was quiet until September 28, 2006 when news reports broke that Foley had sent email messages to a former Congressional page asking the page to send him a photo. That report prompted another page to come forward, who shared sexual explicit AOL instant messages sent by Foley. Confronted by House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL), Foley resigned on September 29 rather than face expulsion from the House.
More pages and former pages came forward, with allegations stretching back at least ten years. It emerged soon emerged that Foley had been warned by another House Republican and the House Clerk in 2005. Subsequent criminal investigations by the FBI and the state of Florida found no eveidence of criminal wrongdoing; the pages were above the age of consent, although Florida investigators complained about “Congress and Mr. Foley denied us access to critical data.” Foley returned to Florida and entered the real estate business in Palm Beach. Foley also came out publicly and acknowledged his partner, Layne Nisenbaum. The two, it turned out, had been together since 1984. Nisenbaum died in 2012.
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And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?
September 7th, 2013
From Uganda’s largest independent newspaper, Sunday Monitor:
Bishop Emeritus for Bukedi Diocese Nicodemus Okile, who retired last year after 28 years of services on Friday accused Members of Parliament of debating issues of less serious consequences at the expense of matters with moral implications on the citizens. “The issue of homosexuality has been shelved. Members of Parliament should learn to deal with one issue at a time instead of haphazardly debating on matters,” Bishop Okile said. …”What about the Bill on homosexuality. Why has it gone silent?” Bishop Okile asked.
Okile made those remarks during the funeral for a fellow Anglican bishop. In 2008, Okile announced that he would no longer recognize Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams as head of the church because of his stance on homosexuality.
The Anti-Homosexuality Bill does appear to have gone dormant. The last time its passage appeared imminent was in late 2012 as Parliament was debating a controversial clause in a proposed Petroleum Bill which granted a presidential appointee exclusive powers to negotiate, approve, and/or revoke lucrative oil exploration and drilling contracts, all with virtually no oversight from Parliament. That measure squeeked through in a last-minute maneuver. Parliament also passed a controversial Public Order Management Bill, which gives the President and police broad powers to break up unapproved opposition meetings, including small gatherings in private homes. While those bills were being considered, the AHB was kept in reserve on Parliament’s official agenda, apparently to serve either as a distraction or as a politically necessary unifying vote. Since the Petroleum Bill’s passage, AHB slowly drifted down from its number one spot under Parliament’s “Business to Follow,” only to disappear altogether at the end of June, 2013.
The AHB remains a part of official business however, and can be brought back at any time. This Sunday Monitor report erroneously suggests that the death penalty has been removed, but Parliament has not actually taken the required vote to do so. You can see our clause-by-clause examination of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill beginning here.
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