Box Turtle Bulletin

Anti-gay sports commentator can’t find a job

In February 2012, Craig James was running for the Republican nomination for US Senator from Texas. He figured that as an ESPN Sports Commentator, he had face and name recognition, but the pols (and polls) were against him. So at that time it seemed the smart and bold choice to be as anti-gay as possible, even giving (eventual) Sen. Ted Cruz competition.

During a debate, Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert (also running) was trying to explain that even though he had participated in Dallas Gay Pride, he was not in favor of gay marriage (he just believed in representing everyone in the city) when James saw his opportunity to get some press. (keranews)

Former television sports analyst Craig James then weighed in.

James: I think right now in this country, our moral fiber is sliding down a slope that is going to be hard to stop if we don’t stand up with leaders who don’t go ride in gay parades. I can assure you I will never ride in a gay parade. And I hear what you’re saying, Tom, but leaders – our kids out there people need to see examples.

Moderator: Do you think people choose to be gay?

James: I think it’s a choice, I do.

Moderator: It’s not in the genes?

James: I think that you have to make that choice. But in that case right there, they are going to have to answer to the Lord for their actions. We should not give benefits to those civil unions.

Later Texas Republicans went on to elect Ted Cruz, who has certainly missed no opportunity to advance his opposition to civil rights or equality for gay citizens. David Dewhurst, who came in second, remains as the state’s Lieutenant Governor and Tom Leppert, third, went to work as President of Kaplan, Inc. an education company.

But James, who finished fourth with 4% of the vote, has had trouble returning to his former career.

ESPN said that there wasn’t a place for him at their network after his anti-gay comments. And since then he has been “decompressing” and “been busy with business activities”.

But last Friday it looked like he had a break, a chance to get back on television. It looked like FOX Sports Southwest, targeting good ol’ Texas boys, wasn’t so concerned about his anti-gay statements. (Houston Chronicle)

When FSSW general manager Jon Heidtke, an A&M former student, heard of James’ interest, he approached him about joining that network.

“Jon said he heard I was interested in getting back in, and this came together overnight,” James said. “I think it was the Lord putting us together. I went to the studio (Thursday) for rehearsal, and when I drove past the airport I had a big smile on my face.”

James will work with Erin Hartigan and former Texans quarterback Tony Banks. “Big 12 Live,” which airs at 11 p.m. Saturdays, is hosted by Ric Renner with Gary Reasons.

But it turns out that neither the Lord nor Heidtke had cleared the decision with FOX Sports upper management. And, after only one Saturday, James is out again.

And though James’ shaky reputation among college sports fans may have made it an easier decision, FOX is saying that he was booted because of his phoby antics. (Dallas Morning News)

During the campaign James took a strong anti-gay stance.

“We just asked ourselves how Craig’s statements would play in our human resources department,” said a Fox spokesman. “He couldn’t say those things here.”

No doubt the usual rabble will claim that James is being persecuted and blacklisted because of his stance for traditional marriage. And James will no doubt have a new gig as keynote speaker for the type of dinners that specialize in professional martyrs, where he can rant his bile to appreciative elderly ladies and Peter LaBarbera.

But it won’t be televised. Not even on FOX.

New Mexico Supremes to hear case October 23

NBC

The New Mexico Supreme Court agreed Friday to decide once and for all whether same-sex marriage should be legal statewide after several counties recently began issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples, prompting a legal challenge.

Stepping into an intensifying debate over same-sex marriage in a state where such unions are neither expressly recognized nor prohibited by law, the high court set a hearing for Oct. 23 to consider a request from all 33 counties statewide to settle the matter.

The Daily Agenda for Saturday, September 7

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Austin, TX; Las Vegas, NV; Limerick, Ireland; Lincoln City, OR; Mankato, MN; 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; Queenstown Gay Ski Week, Queenstown, NZ; Bears on Ice, Reykjavic, Iceland; North Louisiana Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Shreveport, LA; International Bears Week, Sitges, Spain.

G Frank Lydston

TODAY IN HISTORY:
There Is In Every Community of Any Size a Colony: 1889. By the late 1880s, the writings of Richard von Krafft-Ebing, the famed Austro-German psychiatrist whose groundbreaking 1886 book Psychopathia Sexualis argued that homosexuality was a biological condition rather than a moral failing, were beginning to have an impact on psychiatry across the Atlantic, particularly as translated excerpts from his book began appearing in English-language journals. One of those who tried to adopt, if rather incompletely, Krafft-Ebing’s new outlook on Contrare Sexualempfindung was a very colorful urologist, surgeon, and professor from Chicago by the name of G. Frank Lydston. In 1889, Lydston delivered a lecture at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Chicago where he seemed to recognize that Kafft-Ebing’s new perspective was a decided advantage to everyone concerned:

The subject has been until a recent date studied solely from the standpoint of the moralist, and from the indisposition of the scientific physician to study the subject, the unfortunate class of individuals who are characterized by perverted sexuality have been viewed in the light of their moral responsibility rather than as the victims of a physical and incidentally of a mental defect. It is certainly much less humiliating to us as atoms of the social fabric to be able to attribute the degradation of these poor unfortunates to a physical cause, than to it willful viciousness over which they have, or ought to have, volitional control. Even to the moralist there should be much satisfaction in the thought that a large class of sexual perverts are physically abnormal rather than morally leprous.

Lydston furthered his argument by quoting directly from Krafft-Ebing himself, who wrote, “As we study into the abnormal and diseased conditions from which this malady results, the ideas of horror and criminality connected with it disappear … [T]he investigations of science will become the means of rescuing the honor and re-establishing the social position of many an unfortunate whom unthinking prejudice and ignorance would class among depraved criminals.” Krafft-Ebing concluded that such an understanding would be “a service to justice and to society by teaching that what seem to be immoral conditions and actions are but the results of disease.”

Considering the draconian criminal penalties that were imposed on those convicted of “crimes against nature,” Krafft-Ebing’s argument was exceptionally enlightened for its day. It was, in essence, this: Don’t throw them into prison; they can’t help what they’re doing. Lydston then set about to described “them”:

There is in every community of any size a colony of male sexual perverts; they are usually known to each other, and are likely to congregate together. At times they operate in accordance with some definite and concerted plan in quest of subjects wherewith to gratify their abnormal sexual impulses. Often they are characterized by effeminacy of voice, dress, and manner. In a general way, their physique is apt to be inferior — a defective physical make-up being quite general among them, although exceptions to this rule are numerous.

Sexual perversion is more frequent in the female; women usually fall into perverted sexual habits for the purpose of pandering to the depraved tastes of their patrons rather than from instinctive impulses. Exceptions to this rule are occasionally seen. For example, I know of an instance of a woman of perfect physique, who is not a professional prostitute, but moves in good society, who has a fondness for women, being never attracted to men for the purpose of ordinary sexual indulgence, but for perverted methods.

When Krafft-Ebing wrote of Contrare Sexualempfindung (Contrary Sexual Feeling), he was describing homosexuality specifically.  But now it must be noted here that when Lydstrom wrote of “sexual perverts,” Lydston had shifted his definitions a bit. He define sexual perversion broadly as “the possession of impulses to sexual gratification in an abnormal manner, with a partial or complete apathy toward the normal method.” He then divided them into three classes: “(a) Those having a predilection (affinity) for their own sex; (b) those having a predilection for abnormal methods of gratification with the opposite sex; (c) those affected with bestiality.” And for all three classes, he departed from Krafft-Ebing, who described sexual “perversion” as the result of biology, by dividing his three classes further according to whether their “perversion” was congenital or acquired:

I. Congenital, and perhaps hereditary sexual perversion.

a. Sexual perversion without defect of structure of sexual organs.
b. Sexual perversion with defect of genital structure, e.g. hermaphroditism.
c. Sexual perversion with obvious defect of cerebral development e.g. idiocy.

II. Acquired sexual perversion.

a. Sexual perversion from pregnancy, the menopause, ovarian disease, hysteria, etc.
b. Sexual perversion from acquired cerebral disease, with or without recognized insanity.
c. Sexual perversion (?) from vice. [Note: the parenthetical question mark is in the original]
d. Sexual perversion from over stimulation of the nerves of sexual sensibility and the receptive sexual centres, incidental to sexual excesses and masturbation.

Lydston then considered the possible causes of “sexual perversion”. This is where Degeneracy Theory came into play (see Sept 3 for a brief introduction to Degeneracy Theory): “In some cases, perhaps, sexual differentiation has been imperfect, and there is a reversion of type; (to) the original bi-sexuality of the ancestors of the race, shown in the rudimentary female organs of the male.”  Because he, like nearly everyone else in the late nineteenth century, believed firmly in Degeneracy Theory, he gave a poor prognosis for the future:

It is probable that few bodily attributes are more readily transmitted to posterity than peculiarities of sexual physiology. The offspring of the abnormally carnal individual is likely to be possessed of the same inordinate sexual appetite that characterizes the parent. The child of vice has within it, in many instances,the germ of vicious impulse, and no purifying influence can save it from following its own inherent inclinations. Men and women who seek, from mere satiety, variations of the normal method of sexual gratification, stamp their nervous systems with a malign influence which in the next generation may present itself as true sexual perversion. Acquired sexual perversion in one generation may be a true constitutional and irradicable vice in the next, and this independently of gross physical aberrations.

Because Lydston believed — as Degeneracy Theory explained — that the sins of the fathers become the biological errors of the sons, he had a particular disdain for those whose “perversions” were acquired. Whatever high-minded purpose he may have had at the beginning of the lecture when he cast the discussion as one between a moralist and a “scientific physician,” this particular physician wound up delivering a fully moralistic condemnation to everyone concerned:

There exists in every great city so large a number of sexual perverts, that seemingly their depraved tastes have been commercially appreciated by the demi-monde. This has resulted in the formation of establishments whose principal business it is to cater to the perverted sexual tastes of a numerous class of patrons. Were the names and social positions of these patrons made public in the case of our own city, society would be regaled with something fully as disgusting, and coming much nearer home, than the Pall Mall Gazette exposures.

The individuals alluded to would undoubtedly resent the appellation of “sexual pervert;” but, nevertheless, in many instances they present the disease in its most inexcusable form: that from vicious impulse. Personally, I fail to see any difference, from a moral standpoint, between the individual who is gratified sexually only by oral masturbation performed by the opposite sex, and those unfortunate mortals whose passions can be gratified only by performing the active role in the same disgusting performance. One is to be pitied for his constitutional fault; the other to be despised for his deliberately acquired debasement.

[Source: G. Frank Lydston. “Clinical Lecture: Sexual perversion, satyriasis, and nymphomania” (Part 1). Medical and Surgical Reporter 61, no. 10 (September 7, 1889): 253-258. The lecture is also available via Google Books here, in an 1895 collection of addresses and essays by Lydston.]

Joseph McCarthy and his “pixie.”

McCarthy’s 145 “Deviates” In The State Department: 1952. Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s (R-WI) anti-Communist hearings are a dark, well-known chapter in American history. His campaign to root out suspected “subversives” from under every bed wasn’t limited to Communists; there was a very strong anti-gay subtext to his witch hunts as well. For the first time, gay men and women were actively rooted out of all levels of government employment. Gays were seen not only as morally suspect, but also a security risk and a dangerous influence in government offices. In 1952, McCarthy published a book titled McCarthyism: The Fight For America, in which he laid out his crusade to rid the country of “Communists and perverts.” As part of his book’s promotion, McCarthy answered several question from the editor of the Milwaukee Sentinel. McCarthy accused several State Department employees by name of harboring Communist sympathies and took credit for their ouster. He also took credit for the removal of 145 “deviates”:

QUESTION — How many sex deviates have been removed from the State Department?

ANSWER — Ninety-one were forced to resign from the State Department prior to 1950 and 54 since that time. The Senate Special Investigating Committee had this to say about those who were allowed to resign: “In most of those cases, these known homosexuals were allowed to resign for ‘personal reasons,’ and no information was placed in the regular personnel files of the state Department indicating the real reason for resignation nor was the Civil Service Commission informed of the true reason for the resignation … Die ot the manner in which these cases were mishandled, 23 of those 91 state Department employees found there way into other departments of government.”

QUESTION — Do you claim that the sex deviates removed from the State Department were all disloyal?

ANSWER — No, but all were considered security risks. One reason why sex deviates are considered by all intelligence agencies of the government to be security risks in that they are subject to blackmail. Is is a known fact that espionage agents often have been successful in extorting information from them by threatening to expose their abnormal habits.

The Special Senate Investigating Committee had this to say about the high percentage of sex deviates in government: “The homosexual has a tendency to gather other perverts around him. Eminent psychiatrists have informed the subcommittee that the homosexual is likely to seek his own kind because the pressures of society are such that he feels uncomfortable unless his is with his own kind. Due to this situation the homosexual tends to surround himself with other homosexuals, not only in his social but in his business life. Under these circumstances, if a homosexual attains a position in government where he can influence the hiring of personnel, it is almost inevitable that he will attempt to place other homosexuals in government jobs.”

The worst irony in all this is that throughout McCarthy’s witch hunts, a young lawyer by the name of Roy Cohn served as McCarthy’s right hand man. During one of McCarthy’s televised hearings into the supposed influence of communists in the U.S. Army, attorney Joseph Welch accused McCarthy of accepting a doctored photo as evidence. Referring to Cohn, Welch asked McCarthy whether the photo “came from a pixie.” When McCarthy asked what a pixie was, Welch replied “a close relative of a fairy.” Cohn would later become a regular fixture, albeit a publicly closeted one, in gay conservative circles. He died of AIDS in 1986.

Mayor Abe Aronovitz

Florida Gov. Appoints Special Attorney to “Eradicate” Gays from Miami: 1954. By the fall of 1954, with the public having had just about had enough with Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s constant and indiscriminate red-baiting, the Senate had begun a series of public hearings on a possible censure of the Wisconsin’s junior Republican. But the Lavender scare which had been building in Florida for the past month showed no signs of abating (see Aug 3, Aug 11, Aug 12, Aug 13 (twice that day), Aug 14, Aug 26, Aug 31, Sep 1, and Sep 2). And now Florida’s acting Governor Charley E. Johns deciding to get into the act. In a letter sent to Mayor Abe Aronovitz, Johns announced that he had appointed Miami attorney Morey Rayman “to aid you and to cooperate with you and your office in the eradication and control of sex deviates. Every law enforcement agency under my jurisdiction has been issued orders to do everything within their power to correct this serious situation which has been called to my attention.”

Florida’s acting Gov. Charley Johns

Johns became acting governor when Gov. Dan McCarty died in 1953. He would later return to the State Senate where he would head up the infamous Johns Committee which revived a statewide Red Scare and Lavender scare, with its investigations of alleged communists, homosexuals, and civil rights advocates among the students and faculty of Florida’s schools and university system. Johns would dominate the state’s anti-gay and anti-communist crusade from 1956 to 1965. By the time the committee was disbanded, it had forced more than 100 professors and deans out of the University of Florida, Florida State University and the University of South Florida.

Aronowitz was the one who made the letter public, and in doing so he criticized City Manager Arthur Evans and Police Chief Walter Headley for their failure to rid the city of homosexuals. The letter from the acting governor was just one way for him to turn up the heat on Evans and Headley, with whom Aronovitz had expressed increasing frustration for quite some time (See Aug 26 and Aug 31). “They had better start looking for other jobs if they don’t deliver the goods on this,” Aronovitz told reporters.

Headley responded that his anti-gay drive, while resulting in precious few arrests (see Sep 2), nevertheless was having its intended effect. “Now we’re getting complaints from other places that perverts are beginning to drift into them. I believe we’re making them uncomfortable,” he told The Miami News. He also revealed that six women suspected by police of being lesbians were arrested at a bar the prior night, questioned and released.

Log Cabin Republicans Refuse to Endorse Bush’s Re-Election: 2004. When Texas Gov. George W. Bush ran for President in 2000, he was eager to avoid the uglier aspects of kind of culture war politics which proved fatally divisive during his father’s failed re-election bid in 1992. The younger Bush’s solution was not to run away from social conservatism altogether, but to put a friendlier, more caring face on it. He was up front about his evangelical belief, even going so far during a primary debate to name as his favorite political philosopher or thinker as “Christ, because he changed my heart.” Certainly, as Governor, Bush had opposed the repeal of Texas’s sodomy law (the same law which was eventually overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003), and he refused to back any pro-gay measures in the state. But when the “compassionate conservative” candidate agreed to meet with members of Log Cabin Republicans in 2000 in Austin, he became the first Republican presidential candidate to do so. Bush didn’t concede any policy changes at the meeting — he still opposed federal hate crimes expansion and same-sex marriage, but he said that marriage should be left to the states. But after meeting, Bush declared “I am a better man” and promised to include gays and lesbians as part of his administration. When Bush took office in 2001, he appointed openly gay employees in his administration, including, most notably, Michael Guest to serve as ambassador to Romania from 2001 to 2004.

The landscape in 2004 was considerably different. Gays were marrying in Massachusetts (see May 17) and, briefly, in San Francisco (see Feb 12). Social conservatives, a vitally important voting block for President George W. Bush’s re-election campaign, were clamoring for a Federal Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to write discrimination permanently into national law once and for all. And Bush’s campaign, eager to avoid the too-close-by-a-chad outcome of 2000, was determined to energize the Evangelical base more directly than they had done in 2000. To placate with his conservative Christian base — and in keeping with campaign strategist Karl Rove’s project to encourage several important states (including, critically, Ohio) to place marriage bans proposals on their ballots as part of a get-out-the-vote effort — Bush declared his support for a the Federal Marriage Amendment (see Feb 24), which, if enacted, would have permanently and nationally banished all same-sex marriages “or the legal incidents thereof.”

Bush’s announcement was taken as a betrayal by those who had met with him in 2000 and were reassured that Bush’s compassionate conservatism would spell an end to divisive politics. And so two months before election day, Log Cabin Republicans announced that they would not endorse President Bush for re-election, specifically because of his support for the Federal Marriage Amendment. “It is impossible to overstate the depth of anger and disappointment caused by the president’s support for an antifamily constitutional amendment. This amendment would not only ban gay marriage, it would also jeopardize civil unions and domestic partnerships,” Log Cabin political director Chris Barron said.

LCR Executive Director Patrick Guerriero explained the decision: “Log Cabin’s decision was made in response to the White House’s strategic political decision to pursue a re-election strategy catered to the radical right. The president’s use of the bully pulpit, stump speeches and radio addresses to support a constitutional amendment has encouraged the passage of discriminatory laws and state constitutional amendments across America. Using gays and lesbians as wedge issues in an election year is unacceptable to Log Cabin.”

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Valerie Taylor: 1913. Born Velma Nacella Young in Aurora, Illinois, she developed scoliosis as a child, which led her to believe that she was unattractive — and which instilled in her an early identification and empathy with the underdog. She began publishing a series of mass market lesbian novels in the 1950s under the pen name Valerie Taylor. Those novels became classics of the lesbian pulp fiction era. She published her first general fiction novel, Hired Girl in 1953, and used the $500 proceeds to acquire a pair of shoes, two dresses, and a divorce against her increasingly abusive husband.

Taylor then became a prolific writer in several genres — poetry as Nacella Young, popular romances as Francine Davenport, and, of course, lesbian pulp fiction as Valerie Taylor, including such classics as Whisper Their Love (1957), The Girls In 3-B (1959), , Stranger on Lesbos (1960), World Without Men (1963), Unlike Others (1963), and Ripening (1988). A member of the Chicago Chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis, she was also a frequent contributor to the organization’s national magazine, The Ladder, as Velma Tate.

Valerie Taylor’s “Whisper Their Love” (1957).

While Taylor’s books might be dismissed as trashy novels, they were taken very seriously by gay women in the 1950s and 1960s. The Ladder didn’t just include them in book reviews, but often dedicated several pages to discussing, analyzing and criticizing them both on their literary merits and, more often, on the way the novels portrayed lesbians to a wider audience. This illustrated how important the lesbian pulp fiction genre really was: for many lesbians, especially those in small towns and rural areas outside the reach of the Daughters of Bilitis or The Ladder, lesbian pulp fiction was often the only medium where lesbians could see other people like themselves, even if those people were imaginary characters in impossibly outlandish situations. These pocket drug-store paperbacks were a treasured lifeline for many women across the country.

It’s fitting then that Taylor herself became very active in gay rights. In addition to her activities with the DOB, she helped to co-found Mattachine Midwest, the Chicago Chapter of the Mattachine Society, in 1965, and she and edited its newsletter for several years. She protested at the 1968 Democratic Convention with other Mattachine members, and she worked for the Women’s International League for Peace.

Taylor met her partner, civil rights attorney Pearl Hart, when the two of them helped to co-found Mattachine Midwest. They remained together for the next ten years until Hart’s death in 1975. Sadly, as Hart lay dying in a hospital, Taylor was prohibited from visiting and saying goodbye to her because Taylor wasn’t considered immediate family. By the time a friend intervened, Hart was already in a coma.

After her partner’s death, Taylor moved to Tucson, Arizona, where she became a Quaker and a member of the Gray Panthers. She and Hart were inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame in 1992. Taylor died in 1997 at the age of 84. Her books have recently found a new audience as younger women rediscovered vintage pulp fiction paperbacks in second-hand stores, and many of her original novels have become prized collectibles. In 2011, several of Taylor’s titles were released on Amazon.com as Kindle ebooks.

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?

PA Gov Hires Law Firm To Defend State’s Ban on Same-Sex Marriage

Gov. Tom Corbett (R) has hired a Chester County law firm to represent the Commonwealth in a marriage equality suit filed in U.S. District Court. The case, Whitewood v. Corbett, was filed in July by the ACLU and challenges the state’s law banning same-sex marriage. (Pennsylvania does not have a constitutional banning same-sex marriage.) William Lamb, who is described as a “super lawyer” by the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Commonwealth Confidential blog, is a former state Supreme Court Justice and district attorney for Chester County:

Corbett’s general counsel James Schultz said the “unique circumstances” of this case compelled the Office of General Counsel to retain expert assistance in this case. “The Office of General Counsel provides comprehensive legal services to numerous state agencies and executives, but we do not typically defend cases that solely challenge the constitutionality of a statute,” Schultz said. “Who better than a former Supreme Court Justice and his firm to assist in addressing this type of fundamental question?”

Schultz continued, “Legal arguments concerning the constitutionality of any state law are a pressing matter for the commonwealth, along with all concerned parties, and it is important that these cases receive a comprehensive defense,” he said. “Justice Lamb and his firm bring a unique set of legal experience and skills to this case.”

The action comes after Pennsylvania’s Attorney General Kathleen Kane announced that she would not defend Pennsylvania’s law restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples, saying that she does not believe the statute is constitutional. The ACLU welcomes the move:

“We appreciate having good counsel on the other side because generally it improves presentation of the competing arguments, which helps the judge reach a sound decision,” (ACLU of Pennsylvania legal director Vic Walczak) said.

SBC bans chaplains from “giving the appearance of accepting the homosexual lifestyle”

We haven’t heard much from the Southern Baptist Convention lately. Onetime players in the Culture Wars, over the past year or so the SBC has pulled back from a political response to the changes in social acceptance of homosexuality and has refocused on its religious response. They decided to treat gay couples much like they would treat heterosexuals who are not living in agreement with the Convention’s sexual teachings.

This is both a pragmatic response to a shifting culture and a theologically sound position. It places the emphasis back where the Epistles held it, within the body, and reminds Southern Baptists that Scripture talks about one’s own failings, not that of one’s neighbor. (And as anyone who has lived in the Bible Belt can attest, Southern Baptists need all the reminding they can get).

But that is not to suggest that the denomination has changed its position. And new guidelines issued to SBC chaplains by the SBC’s North American Mission Board illustrate the extent to which Baptists still continue to theologically oppose homosexuality and gay marriage. (As an aside, I sincerely hope that NAMB does not have branch offices in Louisiana or Los Angeles).

In addition to direction on pastoral care in pluralistic setting, the NAMB placed some pretty severe restrictions on its chaplains, which make up about 15% of Military chaplains. (Baptist Press)

Restrictions — The guidelines state that “NAMB-endorsed chaplains will not conduct or attend a wedding ceremony for any same-sex couple, bless such a union or perform counseling in support of such a union, assist or support paid contractors or volunteers leading same-sex relational events, nor offer any kind of relationship training or retreat, on or off of a military installation, that would give the appearance of accepting the homosexual lifestyle or sexual wrongdoing. This biblical prohibition remains in effect irrespective of any civil law authorizing same-sex marriage or benefits to the contrary.” Chaplains also are prohibited from participating in jointly-led worship services “with a chaplain, contractor or volunteer who personally practices a homosexual lifestyle or affirms a homosexual lifestyle or such conduct.”

No doubt the mission board thinks that these are reasonable restrictions, but in practice I think this will be hard to live by and increasingly so in upcoming months. I suspect that chaplains in the field will either come to ignore these rules or perhaps find other affiliation.

What this says, in effect, is that a chaplain is restricted from offering any relationship counseling to men and women whom they know and work with, and whom they respect and care about. It says that they cannot affirm monogamy, advise consideration for the other partner’s concerns, or present tips and tools for successful negotiation of a relationship. Further, it says that they cannot personally attend the celebrations of a chaplain’s friends.

These are personal restrictions that, while cumbersome, may be understood to be a sacrifice for their stance. However, there are also professional restrictions that may prove to be disastrous to a chaplain’s career, relationships with fellow chaplains, or even ability to perform their duties.

The new restrictions disallow a chaplain to conduct marriage retreats that include same-sex couples. As any such retreats sponsored by the US Military will not allow discrimination, these rules remove an SBC chaplain from conducting or participating in all group relationship training or retreats other than strictly sectarian retreats sponsored by outside groups.

And, though I suspect they did not intend it, the most difficult rule to observe will likely be the restriction on jointly-led worship services. Far far more chaplains – and denominations – “affirm a homosexual lifestyle” than the SBC may consider. If not at this exact moment, then quite soon the vast majority of United Methodist chaplains, United Church of Christ chaplains, Episcopal chaplains, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America chaplains, Presbyterian Church (USA) chaplains, as well as many others will encourage the establishment and maintenance of committed same-sex relationships. They will celebrate, or at least counsel, same-sex marriages. And the restrictions state that SBC chaplains cannot jointly lead worship with them.

This is probably more consequential than many readers realize. To refuse joint worship is to not “be in fellowship” with fellow believers. It is to say that this doctrinal difference is so severe that it severs the body of Christ. It’s a very big deal.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. A demand that SBC chaplains snub their fellow ministers may prove to be a fatal flaw in that denomination’s missionary effort.

The Daily Agenda for Friday, September 6

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Austin, TX; Las Vegas, NV; Limerick, Ireland; Lincoln City, OR; Mankato, MN; Stavanger, Norway; Torquay, UK.

Other Events This Weekend: Pride Night at Kings Island, Cincinnati, OH (Friday Night Only); 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; Queenstown Gay Ski Week, Queenstown, NZ; Bears on Ice, Reykjavic, Iceland; North Louisiana Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Shreveport, LA; International Bears Week, Sitges, Spain.

Schematic diagram of Louis William Max’s device for inducing a powerful electric shock. (Click to enlarge.)

TODAY IN HISTORY:
First Recorded Case Of Electric Shock Treatment for Homosexuality: 1935. The idea had been floated around for quite a while among therapists practicing a brand new, non-Freudian form of psychology known as Behavioral Therapy. The premise for this form of therapy goes back to Pavlov’s dog, which was trained to salivate whenever it heard a ringing bell. Behavioral Therapy used various systems of rewards and punishments — initially, mostly punishments — to instill desired behavior in their subjects. And therapists were always on the lookout for new, effective forms of punishment. Shocking patients with a dose of electricity was seen as one promising avenue, but improperly administered, electric current could be lethal, as prisons from Sing Sing to San Quentin demonstrated on a regular basis.

But by 1935, that problem was solved. At an earlier meeting of the New York branch of the American Psychological Association, New York University’s Louis William Max introduced a new device that he invented to safely administer a painful electric shock to his patient (see Mar 15). Later that year, Dr. Max traveled to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to give a brief talk before the American Psychological Association’s annual meeting about his attempts to cure homosexuality using his new electric shock device. On Friday, September 6th at 2:00 p.m., the APA convened a panel on Abnormal Psychology at the University of Michigan’s Chemistry Amphitheater (room 165, to be exact), where Dr. Max gave his talk. The transcript of the talk itself is not available, but this brief synopsis appeared two months later in the APA’s Psychological Bulletin:

Breaking Up a Homosexual Fixation by the Conditioned Reaction Technique: A Case Study. Louis Wm. Max, New York University.

A homosexual neurosis in a young man was found upon analysis to be partially fetishistic, the homosexual behavior usually following upon the fetishistic stimulus. An attempt was made to disconnect the emotional aura from this stimulus by means of electric shock, applied in conjunction with the presentation of the stimulus under laboratory conditions. Low shock intensities had little effect but intensities considerably higher than those usually employed.on human subjects in other studies, definitely diminished the emotional value of the stimulus for days after each experimental period. Though the subject reported some backsliding, the ” desensitizing ” effect over a three month period was cumulative. Four months after cessation of the experiment he wrote, ” That terrible neurosis has lost its battle, not completely but 95% of the way.” Advantages and limitations of this technique are discussed. [10 min.]

Behavioral techniques to try to “cure” homosexuality took many forms, from electric shock therapy on adults and adolescents, to so-called “mild swats” on four-year-old boys like Kirk Andrew Murphy, who underwent behavioral therapy at the hands of George Rekers. You can learn more about the role of Behavioral Therapy in attempts to “cure” homosexuality in Blind Man’s Bluff, an epilogue to our award-winning original investigation, What Are Little Boys Made Of?, about Kirk’s treatment at UCLA under Rekers.

[Source: Louis William Max. “Breaking up a homosexual fixation by the conditioned reaction technique: A case study.” Psychological Bulletin 32, no. 9 (November 1935): 734.]

William Martin (left) and Bernon Mitchell (center) at the Moscow press conference.

Martin and Mitchell Announce Their Defection to the Soviet Union: 1960. The U.S. was still recovering from its embarrassment over the Soviets’ shooting down of an American U-2 spy plane in Soviet airspace four months earlier when the Soviets staged another dramatic press conference at the Kremlin. This time, the Soviets trotted out two American National Security Agency employees, Bernon F. Mitchell, 31, of Eureka, California, and William H. Martin, 29, of Ellensburg, Washington, who announced that they had defected to the Soviet Union with the intention of becoming Soviet citizens.

“We would attempt to crawl to the moon if we thought it would lessen the threat of an atomic war,” Martin said as he read a statement before television cameras. He then spilled their secrets: that the U.S. had broken the codes of 40 friendly nations and had planted a spy in the Turkish embassy. He denounced the U-2 reconnaissance flights over Soviet airspace and predicted that U.S. policy would lead to World War III. “Perhaps U.S. hostility toward communism arises out of a feeling of insecurity engendered by Communist achievements in science, culture and industry. If this is so, such feelings of insecurity are a poor excuse for endangering world peace,” he said.

The whole saga began on June 24, when they left Fort Meade, Maryland, for what they told family and friends was a vacation to see family in California and Washington. They never appeared at their destinations, and their failure to report back to work in mid-July prompted a massive investigation. On August 1, the Pentagon announced that the two were missing, and four days later, they revealed the “likelihood” that they had “gone behind the Iron Curtain.” Investigators learned that the men had booked a flight for Mexico City and briefly stayed at a hotel there before taking another flight to Cuba on tickets purchased “by someone other than Martin or Mitchell.” From there, they took a freighter to the Soviet Union.

Family members were shocked, and wondered whether they had been kidnapped or were in Moscow “under duress.” The mens’ parents said that the two had been very close friends, since serving together in the navy between 1951 and 1943, and joining the NSA in 1957. Both families recalled them as “normal boys.” The “normal boys,” meanwhile, said that they planned to settle down and start families in the Soviet Union. “Talents of women are encouraged and utilized to a much greater extent in the Soviet Union than in the United States,” Martin said. “We feel that this enriches Soviet society and makes Soviet women more desirable as mates…”

But within days, talk of the “long-time bachelor pals” began appearing in the press. Rep. Francis E. Walter (D-PA), chair of the House Committee on un-American Activities, said that the two were known to their acquaintances as “sex deviates.” Speculation ran rampant that the two were either blackmailed or mentally disturbed. Time reported that a review of security records revealed that Mitchell had visited a psychiatrist and speculated that the reason for the visit was “presumably out of concern for homosexual tendencies.” Attorney General William Rogers feared that the Soviets had a list of gay people to draw on in their recruiting and blackmail efforts. President Eisenhower, who had signed an executive order seven years earlier banning gay and lesbians from federal employment, (see Apr 27), sought a central authority to coordinate a government-wide investigation of gays in the workforce.

But subsequent investigations over the next three years failed to come up with any evidence for Martin’s or Mitchell’s homosexuality. On the contrary, the NSA’s internal investigations uncovered evidence of relationships with women, with Martin sometimes engaging in sex with “multiple female partners,” as well as a running sexual relationship with a Baltimore stripper. A 1961 NSA report found no evidence that the two were gay, let alone lovers as many had assumed. “Martin and Mitchell were known to be close friends and somewhat anti-social, but no one had any knowledge of a homosexual relationship between them,” the report said. In fact, Martin married a Russian woman four months after arriving there, and Mitchell married later.

But lacking any other rationale that would explain the pair’s betrayal, the NSA launched a witch hunt for any other “deviants” on its payroll, leading to the purging of twenty-six employees because of alleged “perversions.” When the House un-American Activities Committee issued its report in 1961, it blamed the pair’s defection on their alleged homosexuality. The press jumped on the same bandwagon, with the Los Angeles Times speculating that Martin and Mitchell were part of a ring of homosexuals who “recruit other sex deviates for federal jobs.” Hearst papers referred to them as “the two defecting blackmailed homosexual specialists” and as a “love team.” The Lavender Scare of the McCarthy era ten years earlier was in full bloom again. For years to come, government officials would point to the Martin and Mitchell case as justification for maintaining its ban on federal employment and security clearances for gay people. The employment ban would remain in place until 1975 (see Jul 3), and it would take an executive order from President Bill Clinton in 1995 (see Aug 5) to finally remove homosexuality as a reason for denying security clearances once and for all.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Sylvester: 1946. Born Sylvester James in Los Angeles, he lived his entire life on the corner of Gay and Black. Like Cher, he dropped his surname when he moved to San Francisco in 1970 and began performing with the gender-queering troupe known as the Cockettes. He also performed in drag in a musical review of Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday songs. He went on to form rock several bands before finally latching onto the disco craze in the mid-1970s as a solo artist. His second album, Step II, yielded his greatest funk/disco hits, “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” and “Dance (Disco Heat)”. In 1979, he appeared in the film The Rose, starring Bette Midler, and in 1983 his Hi-NRG dance hit “Do You Wanna Funk” appeared in the film Trading Places. During the disco era, he was called “The Queen of Disco,” but as he moved away from disco and toward a more Dance/Funk sound, his record company wanted him to butch things up a bit. Sylvester’s response was to attend meetings with the label’s execs in full-on drag. A drag photo shoot that he put together to tweak his record label bosses ended up on the cover art for his posthumous release Immortal. His last hit, 1986’s “Someone Like You,” hit number 1 on the U.S. Dance Chart, and came from his only Warner Brother’s album, Mutual Attraction, which featured cover art by Keith Haring. Sylvester is another of the many giant talents consumed by the AIDS epidemic; he died in 1988, and willed his future royalties San Francisco’s AIDS Emergency Fund and Project Open Hand. Last June, Fantasy Records re-released Mighty Real: Greatest Dance Hits, with proceeds going to Sylvester’s named charities.

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?

San Antonio passes non-discrimination ordinance

There’s nothing particularly controversial about the ordinance being considered today by the San Antonio City Council. It’s virtually identical to ordinances in hundreds of cities around the country – and around Texas.

But for some reason, conservative Republicans and anti-gay activists decided to make this vote their Alamo. So heavy hitters from U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz to the candidates vying for the Republican nomination for governor all put in their two cents about how bigotry should be a perfectly legal reason for San Antonio’s residents to fire and evict their gay neighbors.

And they lost. Badly. (StarTrib)

The 8-3 City Council vote in favor of the ordinance was a victory for gay rights advocates and for Democratic Mayor Julian Castro, a top surrogate of President Barack Obama. Castro has called the ordinance overdue in the nation’s seventh-largest city, where there is a stronger current of traditionalism and conservatism than other major Texas cities that already have similar gay rights protections.

It may well be that, like the Battle of the Alamo, conservatives are counting on shock and horror to propel a powerful backlash. I think they are seriously misunderstood the political climate. Even in Texas.

Marry me in Minneapolis

I’ve always thought “pass marriage equality for your state’s economic benefit” to be a bit of a weak argument. It is nice that there is an economic advantage to providing gay couples with the rights they are already promised in the Constitution, but that should be more of a happy coincidence than a measure of whether one ought to do what is right.

And yes, for so long as some states insult and demean their gay residents, there will be a certain amount of marriage tourism. But you could also get a certain amount of tourism business by building the World’s Largest Rubber Ducky.

So I’ve always seen this argument as a targeted appeal, a position that certain politicians could articulate so as to explain their support of equality to otherwise suspicious constituents who might worry about taking their hard-eared tax money and squandering it on Teh Gheys.

Until now.

For years, the Massachusetts Marriage License hanging over Sue and Sally’s mantle in Boise had great sentimental value. And it might even have been beneficial for Sue adding Sally to her employer’s health plan. And, of course, it had much importance in changing the way that Aunt Thelma understood them.

But it didn’t have much tangible worth when it came to the way they navigated their legal affairs. It was valuable, but perhaps not necessary. And because it is complicated and time consuming to plan a trip to another state to marry, many couples opted not to go, or just indefinitely delayed the chance to say, “We’re legally married in a dozen states, but not our own.”

All that changed with Windsor. Now that the federal government will, for many purposes, recognize legal marriages, Sue and Sally’s marriage license has increased in value. In real tangible dollar value.

And now the time and the cost and the hassle may well be worth it for couples who can benefit from filing taxes as married or from social security inheritance concerns or from veterans benefits. Now the argument about marriage tourism may well prove to be a valid and convincing one.

And at least one mayor is seeking to cash in on the opportunity. Minneapolis’s R.T. Rybak is spearheading a campaign to draw marriage tourism from Minnesota’s neighbors. (Trib)

The mayor of Minnesota’s largest city made a proposal to Chicago’s gay and lesbian community Thursday: Get married in Minneapolis.

The visit launches an ad campaign to attract lucrative wedding business from Chicago and other cities in the area, where same-sex marriage has not been legalized.

Tying the knot in Minneapolis makes financial sense for the city, which reaps tourism dollars, and the couples, who would enjoy federal benefits, said Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak at the ad campaign’s unveiling at the Center on Halsted in the Lakeview neighborhood.

Granted, Des Moines is closer and Iowa also allows same-sex marriage. But Minneapolis is putting out the welcome sign.

This is a smart move. For a license fee of $115, a less financially situated couple could drive six hours, marry and be home the same day. A budget minded couple could get round trip tickets for about $100 each and a decent room for about the same.

But the couples that Rybak is trying to convince are the ones who will make an event of it. They may have friends fly in or drive up (an option less likely for a wedding on the coasts), rent out a hall or restaurant, stay in the honeymoon suite, order flowers for the church, and hire a photographer. It’s close enough that they can make it more than a trip to pick up a piece of paper. And it adds up quickly. (WaPo)

Rybak figures the campaign, if successful, could be extremely lucrative for Minneapolis, profiting on everything from hotel rooms to flowers to caterers.

“Even 20 weddings would be tens of thousands of dollars, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Rybak said.

And the biggest benefit to Minneapolis may not even be in tourism but in same-sex couples who choose to live – and start businesses – in a city and state that has made it clear that they are wanted. Unstated in the slogan, but certainly present in the appeal is “Marry Me in Minneapolis… and don’t go home.”

Russian Lawmaker Introduces Bill to Take Children Away from Gay Parents

Russian State Duma Deputy Akexey Zhuravlev has published a draft bill on Parliament’s web site which would make the “fact of nontraditional sexual orientation” a cause for denying custody for gay parents over their children. According to the Kremlin-backed Russia Today:

State Duma deputy from United Russia parliamentary caucus claims that the recently introduced ban on promotion of non-traditional sex relations to minors should be extended to families. Therefore, homosexual parents have no right to raise their children.

MP Aleksey Zhuravlev submitted the suggested amendments to the Family Code to the State Duma on Thursday. The explanatory note to the bill reads that non-traditional sexual orientation of one or both parents would become sufficient reason to deprive both of them of their parental rights.

“Following the letter of the law that forbids propaganda of non-traditional sex to minors we must restrict such propaganda not only in mass media but also the family,” Zhuravlev wrote. His reasoning is that “if one of the child’s parents indulges in sexual contact with persons of the same sex, the damage to the child’s psyche is immense as a mother or father serves as an example for their offspring.”

The amendments should apply to those whose families have already collapsed because of the non-traditional contacts of one of the spouses and also to the families where non-traditional sex is openly practiced by one of the parents, the note reads. It adds that for cases when a wife simply suspects her husband of non-traditional sex, the court and the Investigative Committee (Russia’s top law enforcement agency created for dealing with especially important and resonant cases), “have specialists trained in everything.” [Emphasis in the original.]

Russia Today also notes that in accompanying supporting documents, Zhuravlev refers the the fraudulent and debunked paper published in 2012 by University of Austin professor Mark Regnerus, whose paper was paid for with a $700,000 from the Witherspoon Institute.

 Russia Today reports that several top Deputies are “very skeptical about the initiative.” RIA Novosti adds:

The idea of stripping LGBT parents of their rights was first aired in June by ultraconservative Duma lawmaker Yelena Mizulina, an ardent backer of the ban on “gay propaganda.”

Mizulina’s proposal prompted one of Russia’s most prominent gay rights champions, liberal journalist Masha Gessen, to leave Russia for the United States. Gessen said she feared the two children she was raising with her girlfriend could be taken away from her.

“As a gay parent I must flee Russia or lose my children,” Gessen, who holds dual Russian-American citizenship, said in an op-ed in The Guardian newspaper last month.

Zhuravlev, a member of Putin’s United Russia party as well as the All-Russia People’s Front, was selected to lead Russia’s newly-reconstituted nationalist Rodina (short for Motherland-National Patriotic Union) party last year.

The Daily Agenda for Thursday, September 5

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Austin, TX; Las Vegas, NV; Limerick, Ireland; Lincoln City, OR; Mankato, MN; Stavanger, Norway; Torquay, UK.

Other Events This Weekend: Pride Night at Kings Island, Cincinnati, OH (Friday Night Only); 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; Queenstown Gay Ski Week, Queenstown, NZ; Bears on Ice, Reykjavic, Iceland; North Louisiana Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Shreveport, LA; International Bears Week, Sitges, Spain.

THIS MONTH IN HISTORY:
The Many Names for Gay: 1998. To demonstrate the persistence of “derogatory language” used to describe gay people in publications that “have the potential to influence popular prejudices, Lisa Bennet analyzed the 356 articles about gays and lesbians that appeared in Time and Newsweek from 1947 to 1997 and published the list of terms she found in her study, “The Perpetuation of Prejudice in Reporting on Gays and Lesbians.” They are:

1947-1959 (23 articles): aberrant, abnormal, abominable, abomination, corrupt, criminal, degenerate, degraded, depraved, deviant, dirty pansy, disgusting, evil, extreme medical disorder, fairy, filthy, horrible, indecent, infamous crime against nature, invert, misdeed, neuropsychiatric case, pervert, psychopath, queer, sex criminal, sex deviant, sex offender, sodomite, undesirable, unmentionable subject, unnatural, unspeakable crime, vice, victim, vile, wicked.

1960s (25 articles): aberrant, abomination, butch, crime against nature, crime of deviation, dandified sissy, detestable, deviant, deviate, effeminate, emotionally immature, fag, gay, hair fairies, homme-femme, homophile, invert, le vice anglais, lesbian, moral malady, pederast, pervert, psychic masochist, psychopath, queen, queer, sodomite, swish, third sex, transvestite, tweedy lesbian, unnatural.

1970s (62 articles): aberrant, abomination, admitted homosexual, avowed homosexual, committed homosexual, confessed homosexual, deviant, drag queen, fag, fairy, flaming fag, fruit, homophile, human garbage, human rot, mental aberration, militant homosexual, queer.

1980s (95 articles): avowed gay, consensual grossness, deviant, deviate, dyke, faggot, faggot bitch, fairy, fruit, homophile, militant gay, militant homosexual, oddwad, pervert, prissy sissy, professed homosexual, queer.

1990-1997 (151 articles): abnormal, acknowledged gay, acknowledged homosexual, avowed gay, avowed homosexual, biker dyke, butch, butt pirate, degenerate, diesel dyke, dyke, fag, faggot, fascist pervert from hell, femme, go-go boys, lipstick lesbian, the love that dare not speak its name, pervert, poofter, professed homosexual, queer, queer dyke bitch, sexual nonconformist, sinner, sodomite, unnatural, vanilla lesbian, wicked, a willful choice of godless evil.

[Source: Lisa Bennett. The Perpetuation of Prejudice in Reporting on Gays and Lesbians: Time and Newsweek: The First Fifty Years. (Cambridge, MA: The Joan Shirenstein Center of the Press, Polics and Public Policy, September 1998). Available online here (PDF: 257KB/24 pages).]

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Freddie Mercury: 1946. When I was a freshman in high school, my classmates and I were just minding our own business in our quiet Appalachian town when all of the sudden “Bohemian Rhapsody” came screaming out of our radios like an alien from outer space. Nobody was quite sure what to make of it — Bismilla! Beelzebub! Will you do the fandango? — it was hard at first to be too enthusiastic about this very flamboyant song. But we always turned it up whenever it came on the radio. And it didn’t take long at all before we were hooked.

Queen had already been very popular in the U.K. for several years, but for most Americans “Bohemian Rhapsody” was our introduction. And we had almost nothing to prepare us for — well, I’ll say it again — the openly flamboyant lead singer. Even the band’s name was provocative. One of my friends bought a Queen teeshirt at a concert in Dayton, but his mother prohibited him from wearing it. It was “too homosexual.” And so was Freddie — maybe. Except he had a girlfriend, as the press went, so maybe he wasn’t. Maybe it was all an act, we told each other (and ourselves). You know, a character like David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust or Alice Cooper or any of the members of Kiss. Whatever he was, he flaunted it, as it went in our vernacular, but as long as it was a character he was flaunting, maybe it was okay. It helped that Queen’s follow-on hits — “You’re My Best Friend,” “Someone To Love” — were sufficiently “normal” while unmistakeably Queen to calm things down a bit. By the time News of the World came out and the testosterone-laden “We Will Rock You/We Are The Champions” became my high school’s unofficial anthem the same year that we won the state AA basketball championship, everyone had chilled. Those of us in that town and school who were easily freaked out over the very possibility of homosexuality — including us homosexuals — were well served by our sometimes willful naiveté. Without it, it would have been socially impossible to enjoy the music.

Freddie hoodwinked those of us who wanted to be hoodwinked, just enough so we could enjoy the music and the spectacle. The hits kept coming: “Fat Bottomed Girls,” Crazy Little Thing Called Love,” “Another One Bites The Dust,” “Under Pressure” (with David Bowie, of course). By the time it dawned on me that he really was gay, I had long since left home and it no longer mattered socially whether I was a fan or not. And by the time it was announced that he had AIDS and would die very shortly, nobody was surprised but everyone was saddened. It seems that there are some people who are too outsized in our world to remain in it for very long, and Freddie was one of them. On November 25, 1991, the day after he died, Britain’s tabloid The Sun carried a very simple headline: “Freddie Is Dead.” It’s hard to believe, but if he had survived he would have turned sixty-five last year.

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?

New Mexico GOP reps. file lawsuit opposing equality

As Jim told you, it’s now a total of eight equality counties in New Mexico. And cuz I like visuals, here’s the map.

Last Friday, as promised, several GOP legislators joined Sen. Bill Sharer in suing the county clerk of Doña Ana County. Although he had claimed support from two dozen fellow Republican legislators, only 7 were part of the original filing. Yesterday another 8 joined.

On Tuesday, as opponents of gay marriage sought to stall momentum toward allowing gay marriage across the state, eight Republican lawmakers joined in a lawsuit filed on Friday by seven other Republican lawmakers against the Doña Ana clerk.

“It’s really a separation of powers issues,” said Rep. Paul Bandy, who Tuesday joined the case filed in district court. “I don’t think the county clerk has the power to make this decision.”

I find it fascinating how far the dialog has shifted on this issue in just a few short years. Missing (other than on Sen. Sharers site of delusional rants) are the appeals to morality and God. Even tradition seems to have dropped from public discussion, leaving Bandy to try and sell his opposition as separation of powers.

And, as of today, only 15 of the GOP’s 47 New Mexico lawmakers have attached their name. That isn’t to say that more – or maybe all – of them will do so, but it does suggest that Sharer is finding that fewer Republicans than he predicted have rushed to add their name to what is likely to be the wrong side of history.

Meanwhile, all of the state’s county clerks have appealed the decision by Judge Malatt to require Bernalillo County Clerk to offer marriage licenses to same-sex couples, and requested that it be heard by the Supreme Court. This does not reflect their political views; some support equality, some do not. But they are all joining the appeal so as to have a state-wide uniform ruling that (since they are all appellants) impacts all counties the same way. County clerks like that sort of thing.

Two More New Mexico Counties Join the Marriage Equality Bandwaggon

Silver City, New Mexico, located in the southwestern corner of the state, is another of those charming former mining communities turned gay-friendly arts destinations which are so delightfully common in parts of New Mexico and Arizona. This morning, Grant County Grant County Clerk Robert Zamarripa said his office will comply with a court order to provide marriage licenses to same-sex couples beginning on Monday.

In a separate case, Los Alamos County Clerk Sharon Stover had announced that she won’t comply with a judge’s order handed down last week that she grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Stover went to court today to ask that the lawsuit put on hold until entire question of marriage equality is addressed by the state Supreme Court. The judge refused her request, and shortly after, a lesbian couple became the first to obtain a marriage license from Los Alamos County.

Grant and Los Alamos Counties join Taos, San Miguel (Las Vegas), Valencia (Albuquerque suburbs), Bernalillo (Albuquerque), Santa Fe and Doña Ana (Las Cruces) Counties in providing marriage equality. Altogether, marriage equality is available in eight of New Mexico’s twenty-three counties, covering nearly 59% of the state’s population.

It Gets Better Because They’re “Not All Like That”

Dan Savage introduces the new project, recalling he often encounters Christians who tell him, “we’re not all like that,” that not all Christians condemn LGBT people. Savage’s response had been: Don’t tell me, tell the anti-gay Christian leaders who claim to speak for all Christians. Now there’s a platform for those  Christians to do just that. Not All Like That was launched this morning, providing a platform for “NALT Christians” to post their videos and demonstration that Christians support LGBT people.

NALT is a joint project of Truth Wins Out and author John Shore, and is supported by:

• Reconciling Ministries Network
• Faith in America
• MIND: Methodists in New Directions
• The GLAD Alliance
• Covenant Network of Presbyterians
• Auburn Seminary
• Many Voices
• Alliance of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists
• The Evangelical Network
• The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry

Here are just a couple of the thirty-seven videos already posted:

Federal Judge Orders Recognition of Second Ohio Same-Sex Marriage

A U.S. District Judge has ordered that the state of Ohio and local officials to recognize the marriage of a male couple who had married out of state. The case involves William Herbert Ives and David Michener, residents of the Cincinnati suburb of Wyoming Township, who had been together for eighteen years and were raising three children. They had married in Delaware on July 22. Ives died suddenly on August 27. Judge Timothy Black ordered the state to recognize the couple’s marriage on the state’s death certificate:

Black ruled that Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine and other state officials are restrained from enforcing Ohio’s voter-approved ban on same-sex marriages. He also ruled that Cincinnati officials cannot accept a death certificate for Ives unless it records his status as married and lists Michener as his surviving spouse.

Judge Black also ruled Michener can join the lawsuit filed by John Arthur and James Obergefell, the Cincinnati couple who had flown to Maryland to marry soon after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act. Arthur is dying of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease). Judge Black issued a temporary restraining order requiring the state to list the couple as spouses in the event of Arthur’s death.

Six Conservative American Organizations Sign On To Support Russia’s Anti-Gay Law

Six American organizations have joined an international coalition in a statement supporting Russia’s so-called “anti-propaganda” law which prohibits persons and organizations from expressing their free speech rights for LGBT people. Of course, free speech rights against LGBT people are fully protected while anti-LGBT violence is officially ignored.

Six American conservative groups have signed on: the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, GrassTopsUSA, His Servants, Linda Harvey’s Mission America, Population Research Institute, and the World Congress of Families, which will hold its next Congress in Moscow in 2014. The statement repeats Russia’s propaganda that the legislation is only meant to “protect (the) innocence and moral formation of children“: (PDF: 68KB/4 pages):