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 lobbyAugust 14th, 2013
Frank Schubert, the national political director for National Organization for Marriage (theirs, not yours) and the architect of the campaign for Proposition 8 and other anti-gay amendments, has a new article on Red State, There is Only One Gender, in which he derides the idea of gender identity. Using the “what’s visible is all there is” argument, he claims that gender-identity is no more real than ethnic-identity.
You might look at my Caucasian features and wonder why I am claiming to be an African American. I may not be a natural descendent of African American lineage, but I feel black and have thus decided to identify as African American. Since I identify as African American, I am African American, and you must accept me as such. Because I claim my identity as an African American, I demand that the law recognize me as such and afford me all the rights and obligations of that ethnicity.
You may think that my decision to claim an African American identity is ridiculous. You would be right. Ethnicity is determined by ancestry and genetic lineage, not by someone’s identified perceptions and “feelings.” But it’s no more ridiculous than the latest craze from the left concerning something they call “gender identity.”
…
The truth, however, is that there is no such thing as “gender identity” any more than there is “ethnic identity.” There is only gender.
Well, no, I would not necessarily think that someone who looks white but who is claiming African American identity is ridiculous. Irrespective of whatever imaginary “rights and obligations” I might think come with being African-American, I understand that I don’t get to pick who is and who is not.
Perhaps it’s partly because I don’t live in a sheltered environment surrounded only by those who are just like me. Perhaps it’s because I know people who have a non-obvious ethnic identity. Perhaps because I’ve had all sorts of ethnicities assumed about me by other people.
But mostly it’s because of a personal experience.
Many years ago, I was working as an internal auditor for a major air and space company. As part of my job, I was assigned the task of auditing the company’s EEOC program to make certain that it was complying with regulations and policy.
I was working along with my randomly selected sample of employee files when I came across the file of a coworker in my own department. And while the paperwork seemed intact, there was one glaring problem. I knew this girl. And though she had checked “African American”, clearly she was not! Perhaps Latina. Perhaps some other ethnic mix or non-Western-European origin, but this girl wasn’t black.
Uncertain what to do, I discussed the problem with my supervisor, who clearly was black. And I learned something interesting, something that might have seemed counter-intuitive but made perfect sense. As far as the EEOC was concerned, race and ethnicity are not determined purely by the origins of one’s ancestors or the color of one’s skin. Culture, how one was raised, the people who you consider family, and many other factors come into play.
How one identifies is the preferred method under EEOC rules:
If I think I know an employee’s ethnicity, can I just write that in on the report?
A. No. The preferred method of identification is self-identification. Employers need to provide employees the opportunity to self-identify their own ethnicity. If an employee then refuses to do so, employment records or visual observation must be used.
Of course one must have a good reason for the ethnicity or race one adopts. And there is one exception; to legally be a Native American one has to trace to the Indian Rolls (which, due to politics dating back to the Trail of Tears, I cannot, but that’s another story).
But in this case, looks were deceiving. My supervisor knew my coworker’s family and although she “didn’t look African-American” her brothers did.
And as time went on, I met many other people who would not fit well in Schubert’s paradigm. I knew mixed race children adopted by all-white families. I knew two siblings, one of whom identified as German and the other as Black. And I learned that many of the people I meet in Los Angeles are as likely to have grandparents with four different ethnic identities than just one.
Perhaps in Frank Schubert’s world, things are segregated. Perhaps white is very easy to distinguish from black, good people from bad people, male from female. Perhaps he has limited his experiences to those which only fit his expectations.
But when he tries to discuss the real world in the terms of his own limitations, he reveals how truly ignorant he is.
August 14th, 2013
This is the 90 year old grandmother of a gay man, both living in the People’s Republic of China. She’s asking the government to support marriage equality.
August 14th, 2013
I never thought I’d see the day when Pat Buchanan would argue that the United States of America should throw out the First Amendment and emulate Russia:
Only yesterday, homosexual sodomy, which Thomas Jefferson said should be treated like rape, was outlawed in many states and same-sex marriage was regarded as an absurdity. Was that America we grew up in really like Nazi Germany? In the Catholic schools this writer attended, pornography – let alone homosexual propaganda – would get one expelled. Was this really just like Kristallnacht?
As Father Regis Scanlon writes in Crisis Magazine, in 2005, Pope Benedict XVI reiterated Catholic doctrine that homosexuality is a “strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil,” an “objective disorder.” That homosexual acts are unnatural and immoral remains Catholic teaching. Thus, if we seek to build a Good Society by traditional Catholic and Christian standards, why should not homosexual propaganda be treated the same as racist or anti-Semitic propaganda? We can no longer even agree on what is good and evil.
…Putin is trying to re-establish the Orthodox Church as the moral compass of the nation it had been for 1,000 years before Russia fell captive to the atheistic and pagan ideology of Marxism.
“The adoption of Christianity,” declared Putin, “became a turning point in the fate of our fatherland, made it an inseparable part of the Christian civilization and helped turn it into one of the largest world powers.”
Buchanan titles his post, “Which Side Are You On?” Good question, Buchanan. Which side are you on? America’s or Russia’s?
August 14th, 2013
In a legal filing on Monday by lawyers for the Pennsylvania’s state Health Department and Gov. Tom Corbett (R), lawyers argued that the actions of Montgomery County Clerk D. Bruce Hanes’s decision to begin issuing marriage licenses “risks causing serious and limitless harm” and is a violation of the separation-of-powers in the state of Pennsylvania. The Corbett administration is asking the court to order a halt to the issuing of marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
“There is no limit to the administrative and legal chaos that is likely to flow from the clerk’s unlawful practice,” the administration’s lawyers wrote.
The administration said Hanes has a duty to follow state law that defines marriage as between a man and a woman – and argued that county officials who flout the law “may be guilty of a misdemeanor for each act of neglect or refusal.”
…”Ours is a government of laws, not one of public officials exercising their will as they believe the law should be or will be,” the administration argued, adding that only courts can declare a law unconstitutional and suspend it.
Hanes began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples following the Supreme Court’s decision striking down the Defense of Marriage Act and State Attorney General Kathleen Kane’s (D) announcement that she wouldn’t defend the state’s ban on marriage equality in court. The state’s statute limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples is being challenged in court by the ACLU.
August 14th, 2013
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Allentown, PA; Brooklyn (Bedford Stuyvesant), NY; Columbia, MO; Kelowna, BC; Madison, WI; Montréal, QC; New York, NY (Black Pride); Ottawa, ON; Prague, Czech Republic; Reno, NV; San Jose, CA; Sligo, Ireland; Taos, NM.
AIDS Walk This Weekend: Reno, NV.
Other Events This Weekend: Ascension Beach Party, Fire Island, NY; Dunas Festival, Gran Canaria, Spain; Tropical Heat, Key West, FL; London to Paris Cycle for Terrence Higgins Trust, London/Paris; Schwules Straßenfest, Munich, Germany; Camp Camp, Portland ME; Provincetown Carnival, Provincetown, MA; Vancouver Queer Film Festival, Vancouver, BC.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
60 YEARS AGO: “Sexual Behavior in the Human Female” Published: 1953. The first half of what is collectively and colloquially known as “The Kinsey Report” appeared in 1948 with the publication of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (see Jan 5). That volume revealed that the human male in America was having a hell of a lot of sex: pre-marital sex, extra-marital sex, self sex, oral sex, masochistic sex, sadistic sex, and gay sex. The book was controversial, but somewhat less so than you might imagine. After all, boys will be boys, even in 1948, and sexual experiences were more or less seen as coming with the territory. Sure, there were criticisms: it wasn’t statistically rigorous, the sample wasn’t representative, he relied to much from questionnaires distributed among prison populations. And while the “how many” and “how often” is what was talked about most, the fact that there was any kind of data on a common activity which everybody did but nobody talked about, helps to explain the first volume’s reception among the general public. Now, all of the sudden everyone was talking about it — as science, not smutt, which made all the difference in the world.
The reception for the second volume, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female in 1953 was very different. Kinsey anticipated some of its criticisms based on methodological complaints about the first volume. He purged the inmate and other atypical populations, and he listened more carefully to what statisticians were telling him. But he couldn’t correct all of his shortcomings. Clyde Klucknohn, a Harvard University anthropology professor, in a book review for The New York Times, said the book was “a brilliant and arguable contribution for which we are all in their debt,” but it was nevertheless “not a definitive treatise.” “The honest title would have been: ‘Some Aspects of Sexual Behavior in American Females (Primarily Educated, Protestant, Regionally Localized, Adolescent through Middle-Aged).'”
Time, August 24, 1953.
But other criticisms of Sexual Behavior in the Human Female went way beyond the statistical, largely because this time, we’re not talking about boys just being boys, but the fairer sex. Discovering that more than 90% of women had indulged in sexual petting, 66% dreamed about sex, 62% masturbated, about half gave blow jobs, half had had premarital sex, a quarter had cheated on their husbands, and a sixth had had sex with another woman at least once in their lives (also: “Homosexual contacts are highly effective in bringing the female to orgasm.”)– all of that was seen as an attack on the sanctity of the American Mom and her apple pie, and Kinsey was branded an enemy of religious propriety and American values. Rep. B. Carroll Reece (R-TN) chaired a House committee to investigate alleged ties between Kinsey and the Communist Party. The Rockefeller Foundation, which had provided funding for Kinsey’s studies, cut him off. Kinsey spent the next two years trying to find another benefactor to fund his studies, and the stress took its toll. He died in 1956 at 62 following years of declining health. The fallout from the two volumes would have a chilling effect on large scale statistical studies of human sexuality for the next 40 years. When AIDS appeared on the landscape in 1981, the Kinsey reports, flawed as they were, were still the only significant source of information on human sexual behavior on which to base a response.
But the reception of Sexual Behavior in the Human Female wasn’t universally negative. A few found the volume’s titillation entertaining, and it certainly cut a wide swath through popular culture. But most importantly, many women found comfort in discovering that they weren’t sexual freaks, that many other women enjoyed sex in all of its various forms as much as they did. The book finally drove home the fact that women were sexual beings. And both volumes, together, provided ammunition for the reform of the nation’s antiquated morality laws criminalizing adultry, homosexuality, and a number of other sexual activities between consenting adults, often even consenting married adults. And despite their many methodological shortcomings, the Kinsey reports revealed an entire field of study that was ripe for exploration. Pioneers often get things wrong; Columbus died believing he found a western route to the East Indies. But pioneers do one thing very well: they point the way for other explorers to carry on the work of discovery.
Nineteen Arrested in Miami Bar Raids: 1954. Miami’s anti-gay hysteria showed no signs of letting up (see Aug 3, Aug 11, Aug 12). It was only the day before (see Aug 13) when Florida’s governor threatened to replace Dade County sheriff Thomas J. Kelly for allegedly permitting “wide open” gambling in the county and for “failing to prevent the concentration of sex perverts in the county which had become emphasized recently.” It’s unknown what actions Sheriff Kelly took to curb gambling, but it only took him a day to put together a raid on several of the city’s suspected gay bars. Nineteen were arrested, and a photo of one of the drag queens (sans wig) was splashed onto the front page of The Miami News:
Front page news.
Raiders Seize 19 in Pervert Roundup.
Nineteen suspected perverts were arrested early today in Miami and Miami Beach by raiding deputy sheriffs. The men were booked on vagrancy charges and held for a venereal disease check. One suspect was released in custody of his attorney. Deputies did not name the suspects.
Sheriff Thomas J. Kelly said his deputies had been watching bars where perverts had been seen and had made floor plans of each place to be visited.
Deputy Gerald Butler said Dr. M.J. Takos, Dade County Venereal Disease Control director, checked each person brought in by deputies. Dr. Takos decided which men were to be held.
Places on the list included the Good Hotel, Stockade Bar, Echo Club, El Morocco Bar, Sambo Bar, Circus Bar, Charles Hotel Bar, DeMarco Bar, Alibi Bar, Shanticleer Bar, Leon and Eddies, the Little Club, and Singapore Lounge, Butler reported.
Deputies taking part in the raids included Earl Venno, Bill McCrory, Bob Thomas, Paul Huizenga, Dick Shelton, Al Hickland, Frank Cilencion, and Joe Gorman.
Butler said the deputies were warned against “unnecessary rough stuff.”
Sheriff Kelly said “we don’t want perverts to set up housekeeping in this county. We want them to know that they’re not welcome.”
Kelly said he had been told by the health unit that five cases of primary syphilis have been reported in male homosexuals this months and the figure was considered “alarming.”
Los Angeles Passes AIDS Non-Discrimination Ordinance: 1985. The Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved an ordinance protecting people with AIDS from discrimination in employment, housing and health care, making L.A. the first major city in the U.S. to pass such a measure. Before the vote, Councilman Joel Wachs, who introduced the measure, told the council, “We have an opportunity to set an example for the whole nation, to protect those people who suffer from AIDS against insidious discrimination.”
Wachs said that discrimination was a pressing problem. “There are a large number to cases of discrimination out there, where people are being fired, evicted and can’t get into an apartment because they have AIDS,” he said. Wachs also noted that half of the people with AIDS who file complaints die before their complaints are investigated. The city council opted for civil penalties instead of criminal penalties because civil proceedings are much faster. The ordinance provided for compensation for actual damages, costs, and attorney fees, and also provided for punitive damages. Councilman Ernani Barnardi hoped that the ordinance would have the effect of educating the public and calming the hysteria.
Wachs served on L.A.’s city council from 1971 to 2001. He came out in 1999 as he was preparing a 2001 run for the Mayor’s office.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Richard von Krafft-Ebing: 1840. The Austro-German psychiatrist’s principal work, Psychopathia Sexualis was more than just the Kinsey Report of 1886; it single-handedly established sexology as a serious field of study. The last edition, his twelfth, included 238 case histories of human sexual behavior, and popularized such terms as sadism, masochosm, fetishism, and the newly-coined word, homosexuality (see May 6). It was written specifically for psychiatrists, physicians, and judges in a dense academic style in order to discourage its purchase by lay readers. The most sorded parts, he wrote in Latin to further discurage casual reading.
A native of Baden, Germany, Krafft-Ebing studied medicine and psychiatry at the University of Heidelberg. He taught at the Univiersities of Strasbourg, and then at Graz, where he also served as superintendent of the Feldhof mental asylum. When he arrived at the asylum, he found that it was operated more as a dungeon than a treatment facility, and he fought for its reform, a fight which was ultimately unsuccesful. But it led him to publish the Text-Book of Insanity in 1879n to promote therapy rather than imprisonment for the mentally ill.
In Krafft-Ebing’s study of insanity, he often encountered sexual practices which were routinely characterized as causes of insanity or dismissed as vile criminal practices, but which were otherwise little studied. This deficiency in the scientific literature led to what would turn out to be his life’s work. Psychopathia Sexualis catalogued a wide range of sexual practices, from masturbation, impotence, fetishisms, necrophilia, lust-murder — you name it. The practices were carefully categorized as paradoxia (sexual desire at the wrong time of life), hyperaesthesia (excessive sexual desire), anaesthesia (absence of sexual desire) and, the largest, paraesthesia (which he called the perversion of the sexual instinct).
Krafft-Ebing’s notable achievement with Psychopathia Sexualis is that it allowed psychiatry to claim authority over sexual knowledge, where previously it was seen as a religious or criminal problem. Before Psychopathia Sexualis, sexual behavior which was not directed toward procreation — especually promiscuity and masturbation — was believed to be the cause of insaniy. Psychopathia Sexualis flipped that understanding around, and argued that “deviant” sexual behaviors were the result of a more fundamental mental disorder. For homosexuals in particular, he concluded that gay people were suffering from a kind of a biologically-based anomoly, one which occurred sometime during gestation, which resulted in a “sexual inversion” of the brain.
Despite Krafft-Ebing’s efforts at objectivity, he was never able to escape the nineteenth-century assumptions which regarded recreational sex as a perversion of the sex drive. But in his later years, Krafft-Ebing’s opinions became more lenient toward gay people. He was among the first to sign Magnus Hireschfield’s petition for the repeal of Germany’s Paragraph 175, which criminalized sexual behavior between men. In his last article on homosexuality, published in Hirschfeld’s <em[Yearbook for Intermediate Sexual Types], Krafft-Ebing described his earlier views of homosexuality as pathological as being one-sided, and advocated instead that gay people should be treated with sympathy and compassion. However condescending that viewpoint was, it was also, at least, an improvement. But in the end Krafft-Ebing’s work had the practical effect of extending Victorian morality for most of the next century by merely replacing religious moralism with a scientific gloss. It would take nearly nine decades after Psychopathia Sexualis’s apperance before the American Psychiartric Association would finally cut through that gloss once and for all.
The 1894 English translation of Psychopathia Sexualis, which is credited with introducing the word “homosexuality” into the English language, is available for free at Google Books here.
Sibilla Alleramo: 1876. Reared outside of Milan where her father managed a glass factory, young Rina Faccio was unable to continue her education beyond the elementary level. At fifteen, she began seeing a man ten years her senior, who raped her at her father’s factory. Rina didn’t tell her parents what happened, and instead wound up marrying him. A year and a half later, she had a son, and eight years later she left her husband and moved to Rome. Her new lover, the journalist Giovanni Cena, convinced her to turn her story into a ficitonalized memoir, Una Donna (A Woman), which she published in 1906 under the pen name of Sibilla Aleramo.
Alleramo became active in politics and the arts, which is how she came to meet the Italiam feminist Lina Poletti at the First National Congress of Women in Rome. The two women entered what is described as a volatile relationship, even as Alleramo remained with Cena. In her letters to Poletti, she wrote that she didn’t feel at all guilty about being in love with both of them at the same time; Poletti answered that the dual relationsips threatened Alleramo’s samity. Alleramo’s relationship with Poletti ended after a year. Alleramo went on to become one of Italy’s leading feminists, and Una Donna is now considered an Italian classic as the first outspokenly feminist Italian novel. She remained active in feminist politics until her death in 1960.
Horst B. Horst: 1906. The German-American fashion photographer was born Horst Paul Albert Bohrmann in Weißenfels-an-der-Saale, Germany. He studied at Hamburg’s Kunstgewerbeschule before going to Paris to study under Le Corbusier. That’s where he met Vogue photographer Baron George Hoyningen-Huene and became his photographic assistant and lover. In 1931, Horst began working with Vogue directly, and in 1932 he had his first exhibition in Paris. It was a sensational success, and in the next two years he would photograph Bette Davis, Marlene Dietrich, Noël Coward, Cole Porter, Daisy Fellows, and a whole passel of European royalty and near-royalty.
In 1937, Horst made a move to New York, where he met Coco Chanel. He would photograph her fashions for the next three decades. The following year, he met the British diplomat Valentine Lawford, and they would build a life together as a couple until Lawford’s death in 1991. Horst also adopted a son.
The Mainbocher Corset (1939)
Horst’s 1939 photo of the exceptionally controversial Mainbocher Corset is perhaps his most famous photo. The Corset itself created a furor in pre-war Paris, where it marked an abrupt break from the past due to its radical silhouette and its reintroduction of an article of clothing that is more associated with the Victorian era. Horts’s photo of the Corset however was anything but Victorian.
In 1941, Horst applied for U.S. citizenship, and in 1943 he joined the U.S. Army as a photographer, three months before he took the oath of citizenship when he officially became Horst P. Horst, partly, it is said, because his surname sounded too much like top Nazi official Martin Bormann’s. After the war, Horst’s photos illustrated international high society for Vogue. Subjects included every First Lady beginning with Bess Truman, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Oscar de la Renta, Andy Warhol, Yves Saint Laurent, Doris Duke, Cy Twombly, and just about every European royalty still in existence. Madonna’s 1990 music video for her song “Vogue” recreated many of Horst’s photos, including the Mainbocher Corset, much to the displeasure of Horst who was displeased that she didn’t seek permission to use his photos nor acknowledge his work. His last photograph for British Vogue was in 1991 with Princess Michael of Kent. He died in 1999 at the age of 93.
Mark Pocan: 1964. Pocan became active in local politics in Madison soon after graduating and opening his own print shop, when he was gay-bashed by two men with baseball bats as he was leaving a gay bar. He worked in the local LGBT community before winning a seat on Dane County’s Board of Supervisors frin 1991 to 1996. In 1998, he succeeded Tammy Baldwin when she gave up her seat in the Wisconsin State Assemby to run for U.S. House of Representatives. In 2013, Pocan against succeeded Baldwin when she vacated her seat in the House of Representatives and was sworn in as Senator. As a result, Pocan made history by becoming the first openly gay representative to take over a House seat from another openly gay representative. This also made Wisconsin the first state to send openly gay representatives to both Houses of Congress. In 2006, Pocan married his partner in Toronto, even thuogh their marraige is not recognized in Wisconsin.
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?
August 13th, 2013
Nick Symmonds is a straight ally and a middle distance runner who is in Moscow right now for the World Track and Field Championships. He took the silver medal in the men’s 800 meters, and told R-Sport (which is part of RIA Novosti, Russia’s state-owned news agency) that he was dedicating his win to his gay and lesbian friends back home. RIA Novosti said his statement made him “the first athlete to openly criticize Russia’s controversial anti-gay law on the country’s soil.”:
“As much as I can speak out about it, I believe that all humans deserve equality as however God made them,” he told R-Sport after running a 1:43.55 at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium. “Whether you’re gay, straight, black, white, we all deserve the same rights. If there’s anything I can do to champion the cause and further it, I will, shy of getting arrested.”
…”I respect Russians’ ability to govern their people,” he said Tuesday. “I disagree with their laws. I do have respect for this nation. I disagree with their rules.”
Symmonds had earlier said that he wouldn’t criticize Russia during the games.
August 13th, 2013
Our community has gradually gained support in Mainstream Christianity, to the point where some more liberal denominations and pastors are taking up the mantle of advocacy in areas where there are not strong gay political action groups. And the support of churches has proven to be invaluable in such situations as the Minnesota marriage battle.
But we have, until recently, seen a sharp divide between liberal churches or the nominally Christian on one side, and the hard-core, pew-warming, born-again, biblical literalists on the other. But a study out of Baylor University has identified a new group which they call Evangelical Ambivalents who are starting to stake out a central position. (phys.org)
For their study—”How the Messy Middle Finds a Voice: Evangelicals and Structured Ambivalence towards Gays and Lesbians”—researchers analyzed national data from the 2010 Baylor Religion Survey, a random sample of 1,714 individuals across the country. Researchers found that 24 percent of evangelicals fit into the ambivalent category, supporting gay civil unions even though they are morally opposed to homosexuality. The survey, designed by Baylor University scholars and conducted by The Gallup Organization, included more than 300 items dealing with religion and the attitudes, beliefs, and values of the American public.
And these are not Easter Sunday Christians or liberals displaced in an evangelical church. They are part of the conservative evangelical fold who are finding a way to balance both their church and their social conscience.
Other research findings about Ambivalent Evangelicals:
They are similar in biblical literalism and religious practice to those who oppose civil unions, while the 35 percent who are Culture Progressives—with positive attitudes toward homosexuality—are less involved in such activities as church attendance, although they pray privately.
Ambivalents are not as politically conservative as Gay Rights Opponents, but they are more politically conservative than Cultural Progressives.
They are more likely to be married, have lower levels of education, be biblical literalists, and attend church frequently than Cultural Progressives.
They are more likely to believe that sexuality is innate than Gay Rights Opponents, but less likely than Cultural Progressives to do so.
They are more likely to identify themselves as “born-again” than Cultural Progressives are.
If, as this study suggests, one quarter of evangelical parishioners are finding themselves in support of gay rights, the end to our biggest struggle is not far off.
UPDATE: The Atlantic takes on a similar theme, discussing the change in the way that religion in American interacts with gay people.
August 13th, 2013
As many of you know, Thomas Peters, the Director of Communications for the National Organization for Marriage (theirs, not yours), was critically injured in a swimming accident about a month ago. I’ve followed his progress on a website set up by his family to notify those interested in Thomas’ progress. It has been slow with tiny milestones measured in hours off a respirator and ice chips eaten. I don’t think anyone expects a full recovery.
I know that Peters has been an active and vociferous opponent of equality and an enemy of the belief that one should treat others with the respect you would appreciate. Nevertheless, he is a fellow human undergoing a tragic circumstance, and I believe that the harm he has caused has, ironically, come from a desire to do good. I fight his activism, but I wish him well personally.
Today he went into surgery to remove a broken vertebra in his neck, insert a metal replacement, and fuse it to the adjoining vertebrae. This is a challenging situation and a great concern to those who love him. If you pray, please include Thomas Peters in your prayers today; if not, please send him best wishes.
…
[I will be limiting comments on this thread to those that are positive and supportive]
August 13th, 2013
It’s important to understand the particular nature of Russian homophobia if we ever hope to address it. In the U.S., much of our anti-gay politics emmanates from a politically influential religious class, and so it would be reasonable to assume that Russia’s anti-gay animosity springs from a similar source. And while the Russian Orthodox Church is virulently anti-gay, Masha Lippman says it would be a mistake to try to address Russian homophobia on religious grounds.
The country may appear to be fairly conservative, if one looks at its widespread homophobia or public condemnation of irreverence toward Russian Orthodox Church. Yet when it comes to other social habits, such as divorce, abortion, or birth rate, the picture is very different. Russia has one of the world’s highest rates of both divorce and abortion, and some of the most liberal laws on the latter. Russia’s birth rate is not dissimilar from that of secular cultures of western Europe. Premarital sex and single motherhood are fairly common; in one survey, a mere fourteen per cent of respondents said they believed a single parent can’t raise a child properly. And while a large majority of Russians identify themselves as Orthodox Christians, the proportion of those attending services or observing religious rituals in Russia is not dissimilar from many European countries.
A partial explanation of this discrepancy can be found in Soviet history. The early Soviet period involved a radical rejection of the ancien regime, a forced modernization by the Bolsheviks that included universal literacy and suffrage (along with the elimination of political choice, of course), as well as brutally imposed secularization, among other things. But the Soviet Union mostly missed the later, post-war stages of the Western social modernization, and especially the gay-rights movement. In the U.S.S.R., it was a crime to be a gay man. The atmosphere grew much freer for gays in the post-Communist period, yet gay rights have not become a nationwide issue until now, as the government has abruptly moved toward social conservatism.
This diary over at Daily Kos goes into it deeper, where Russian homophobia is seen in the context of Russian nationalism and distrust of foreigners. This is not the first time I’ve seen this; a number of Russians and citizens of former Soviet countries themselves have said this over the years:
In every way the homophobic tendency in contemporary Russia is riding the coattails of a decade’s worth of ethnic violence and xenophobia. Even the horrific videos of Russians torturing young people because of their perceived sexual identity are a recent addition to an already crowded field of anti-immigrant videos, in which Russian neo-Nazis beat up, and in some cases kill, people they suspect of being non-ethnic Russians. They share these videos on the internet for fun. (If you can bear it, this short documentary on anti-immigrant crime is as eye-opening as it is horrific.) On their own, these are the acts of fringe neo-Nazis like Maxim Martsinkevich (a major player in the torture video genre, who takes shirtless pictures and sexually violates LGBTs… read into that what you will.) Taken more broadly, once you throw in mass unemployment, frustration, and malaise, you start to see these hateful, exclusionary beliefs drift more and more into mainstream discourse.
Another important aspect of this is still-widespread nostalgia for the USSR – not the totalitarian policies per se, but the feeling that, for a couple of decades, Russia was an unchallenged world superpower, secure in its central place in international politics. Not for nothing did Putin call the collapse of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” This is all of a part with Russia’s attempts to assert itself on the national stage – think oil pipelines, Syria, etc. – as a pathetic echo for the glory days of Soviet power. The gap between Russia’s (belief in its) former greatness and the inability to assert itself in the contemporary world has led to an ideological vacuum, conveniently filled with desperate nationalism.
Later, he adds:
No exaggeration here: there is a sadly widespread belief that the LGBT movement is a CIA-funded operation à la MKUltra. For a local example, check out the current wiki page on Patriarch Alexy II, cached here, and note the section on his opposition to homosexuality.
That’s been one of the challenges in dealing with anti-gay politics in Africa, the belief that LGBT rights and that gay people themselves are a product of foreign meddling. Those charges find fertile ground in Africa where European colonialism — and its import of sodomy laws — still casts a long shadow. That is why public threats of cutting foreign aide (as distinguished from private diplomatic engagement in which the same messages have been delivered) have sometimes been much more disruptive than helpful to LGBT advocates on the ground. The same potential effect could conceivable play out in Russia, where an attack on its laws, however repulsive and oppressive to human rights they may be, is seen as an attack on Russian sovereignty itself. This is where foreign protests can backfire.
That’s not to say that I’m against, for example, the Russian vodka boycott. I personally think it’s been a smashing success, although you won’t be able to measure it in economic terms. I don’t think you will see any impact on Russian vodka producers’ balance sheets, but you do see it in how people are suddenly talking about what’s happening in Russia, and their doing it on a daily basis. The so-called “anti-propaganda” law has been on the books since June, but it wasn’t until Dan Savage issued his call for a vodka boycott a month later that the media decided to take a look. And it has been a daily topic ever since.
Recognizing that this kind of pressure can exasperate Russian nationalism at the expense of LGBT people there doesn’t mean that we should suspend the boycott and call off all protests against Russia’s gross violations of human rights. I don’t see how we can cater to a culture’s xenophobic biases any more than than its homophobic ones. But I do think that there are some smart ways to go about it, and that we should consider following the lead of Russian LGBT activists who know their country and culture far better than we do. I think these examples are good ones to keep in mind:
In responding to the charge that queerness is a Western import, the St. Petersburg advocacy group Vykhod (“Coming Out”) put together an astute set of advertisements aimed at dismantling the rhetoric of Western cultural imperialism by showcasing various figures from Russian history. It’s hard to argue that homosexuality is a CIA plot when so many famous Russians, particularly in the reasonably relaxed culture of the early 20th century, left such a prominent legacy on their culture while living quasi-openly as gay, lesbian, and bisexual. (Transgender history is less prominent but no less there, especially during the early Soviet years and, surprisingly, the 1960s.) Tchaikovsky is of course the usual starting point, but actively open and out Russians included a diverse slate of artists, politicians, scientists… names like Georgy Chicherin, Marina Tsvetaeva, Sergei Diaghilev, Sophie Parnok… The list is very long, because turn-of-the-century Russia’s queer history is actually richer than anything contemporary in the West, where it was handled with much more euphemism. … For their troubles Vykhod was labeled a “foreign agent” and fined 500,000 rubles. So there’s that.
Quite a lot of Russian LGBTs have not kept silent, risking arrest and condemnation in order to make their existence known. One worth getting to know is the “404” movement (like their FB page here), a Russian spin on the “It Gets Better” web presence. Celebrity culture, so vital in turning around attitudes in America, has been considerably more muted, but there are exceptions: e.g. actor Aleksei Panin came out as bisexual in an interview earlier this year in order to draw attention to the widespread cultural intolerance; socialite and media figureKsenia Sobchak has been very outspoken against the homophobic law; news anchor Anton Krasovsky came out on air and was immediately fired, etc. My first and most important piece of advice is this: get to know these people, share their stories, and don’t let them disappear into the memory hole.
August 13th, 2013
TODAY IN HISTORY:
Thirty-Five Arrested in Miami Beach Raid as Governor Threatens to Replace Sheriff: 1954. The wave of anti-gay hysteria in Miami continued apace (see Aug 3, Aug 11, Aug 12), with Florida’s acting governor, Charley E. Johns, getting in on the act. The Miami News reported that Johns was looking for an excuse to replace Dade County sheriff Thomas J. Kelly for allegedly permitting “wide open” gambling and for “failing to prevent the concentration of sex perverts in the county which had become emphasized recently.” The News continued: “Public indignation over two recent sex murders and police revelations that Miami is host to a colony of some 5,000 homosexuals might be used to accuse the sheriff of lax law enforcement.”
(Johns became acting governor when Gov. Dan McCarty died in 1953. He would later return to the State Senate, where he headed 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.)
Meanwhile, The Miami News that same day also reported that Miami Beach Police conducted a raid on a section of the beach the day before:
Two of six suspected homosexuals arrested by Miami Beach police in a raid on the 22nd Street bathing area were convicted of disorderly conduct today and ordered to pay $10 fines.
Beach police arrested 35 men yesterday afternoon in a raid planned by Police Chief Shepard. All but six were released after questioning at headquarters. The six kept in custody were charged with disorderly conduct by reason of failure to give a good account of their actions.
City Judge Lawrence Hoffman dismissed cases against four of the six today but warned them to stay away from the 22nd Street bathing area.
“Chief Shepard intends to make good his plan to make Miami Beach undesirable to homosexuals,” Judge Hoffman told the suspects.
ONE magazine, quoting an unnamed news source (perhaps The Miami Herald), paraphrased the Miami Beach action this way:
Miami Beach Police Chief Romeo Shepard personally led a “flying squad of raiders” who fearlessly “swooped down on the public bathing area at 22nd street and the ocean and herded 35 males to headquarters for questioning.” Two headed for the deep sea but were pulled in by lifeguards … “The raid was executed with all the advance planning and secrecy of an amphibious landing”; … Romeo explained there’d been “numerous complaints” of “males who ‘act mighty like girls.'” Six were booked for disorderly conduct for failing to give a good account of themselves. (What does that mean? A cash transaction, perhaps? — L.P.) The rest released after questioning. Charges later dropped against all but two, who were fined $10 each. Some had worn bathing suits “that caused snickers from police” — bikinis and such, “shocking pink, daring cerise and leopard skin pattern.”
A Disease Worse than Alcohol: 1954. On the same day that The Miami News printed the front-page article about acting Gov. Charley Johns’s threat to remove the Dade County sheriff because he let too many queers settle in Miami, and the same day that the same newspaper reported on the nineteen such queers who had been arrested in Miami Beach, The Miami News still wasn’t finished. Across the bottom of the front page was the third of a series of three articles purporting to inform the general public about the “condition” of homosexuality. Titled “Psychiatrist Looks At Deviates: A Disease ‘Worse Than Alcohol’,” the article featured Dr. Paul Kells, a “noted Miami psychiatrist, whom The Miami Daily News asked to supply answers to questions regarding sexual deviates.” The News introduces the subject this way:
In the past few days Miamians have learned that this community has become infected by a large colony of sexual deviates. The word “infected” is used advisedly, since homosexuality is a social disease. It can be worse than drug addiction or alcoholism. There is little hope for returning the established homosexual to a socially acceptable pattern.
Most of the article follows a Q&A format, with the first question appearing to draw some sort of a line between homosexuals and “sexual psychopaths.” What line exactly is drawn however is anybody’s guess:
Q Are all homosexuals potential child molesters, sadists (those who enjoy causing others pain) and masochists (those who enjoy pain and humiliation for themselves?)
A. No. The sexual psychopath, of which homosexuality is only one form, is the extreme sex deviate classification from which emerges the child molester and sadist. The sexual psychopath has no feeling of social responsibility, much in the manner of the hardened criminal who has no understanding or regard for the law, the psychiatrist explained.
The sexual psychopath preys on both sexes. He or she might consort with homosexuals as a means of getting money or any other objective. The psychopathic personality frequently has a feeling of great superiority over others, disregarding at all times the need of conforming to social laws.
As for whether homosexuals were born that way:
No. …”It is usually a matter of experience which makes a person a homosexual,” the doctor stated. “It’s ‘possible’ for anyone to become a homosexual, but people are not born to be such.”
It is in this statement that Miamians can clearly see their problem. In a community where there are only a few homosexuals, the chance for exposure to such practices are negligible.
Not all homosexuals want to gain converts, but those who do can be extremely aggressive, the doctor explained. The most aggressive is the psychopathic personality, who also lacks understanding of social responsibility.
“The shy homosexual has a sense of social responsibility and will go to great extremes to conceal his plight,” said the psychiatrist. “This type lives in constant fear of being exposed and will marry and have families to conceal its sexual behavior.”
… Dr. Kells pointed out that “normal” homosexuals are acceptable to society when their sex behavior is not known. “The sexual psychopath is never acceptable,” he said. “And there is the important question involved in creating laws. The ‘normal’ homosexual should be separated from the sexual psychopath.”
Q. Do perverts tend to congregate in the same area or town?
A. Yes, but only certain types.
San Francisco Police Arrest 103 In Tay-Bush Inn Raid: 1961. San Francisco Mayor George Christopher faced a serious challenge to his re-election in 1959 from city Assessor Russ Wolden, Jr., who planted a story under a banner headline, “Sex Deviates Make San Francisco Headquarters,” in the October 7, 1959 edition of the weekly San Francisco Progress. That story charged that “the number of sex deviates in this city has soared by the thousands… while other communities in this area have virtually eliminated them.” Wolden charged that Christopher allowed “this unsavory wicked situation … to fester and spread like a cancerous growth on the body of San Francisco.” If Wolden hoped he would bring the entire city up on arms, he was successful beyond his dreams– but not in the way he planned. Over the next three weeks, San Francisco’s three dailies investigated the story and backed the incumbent, condemning Wolden for acting “beyond the pale of decent politics.” The concern wasn’t that Wolden had attacked a persecuted minority, but that he had “stigmatized the city” and “degraded the good name of San Francisco.”
Christopher won re-election by a landslide, but he was determined that he would never again be susceptible to the charge of being soft on vice. The city’s Alcohol and Beverage Control Board stepped up their persecutions of gay bars during his second term. This culminated in what has been called the largest vice raid in the city’s history when 89 men and 14 women were arrested at the Tay-Bush Inn just a few bocks northwest of Union Square. Witnesses reported that police first allowed “respectable looking” and politically connected customers to leave quietly before beginning the round-up. Hal Call, the San Francisco gay rights activist who headed the Mattachine Society, recalled, “Ethel Merman just missed getting busted on that night by about fifteen minutes. She was staring in Gypsy, and she’d gone up to the Tay-Bush with some gay friends after the show.”
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, three paddy wagons made seven trips between the after-hours bar and the city jail. It was, the Chronicle said, “vaguely reminiscent of leading sheep from a packed corral.” Police arrested 89 men and 14 women, but authorities complained that another 139 intended detainees managed to slip away. Those arrested included actors, actresses, dancers, a state hospital psychologist, a bank manager, an artist and an Air Force purchasing agent. The San Francisco Examiner listed the names, addresses, occupations and employers of those arrested.
Prosecutors later told the court, “The majority of the mails affected swishy-hipped walks, limp-wristed gestures, high-pitched voices and wore tight pants…. The women were mannish.” All of those arrested were charged with frequenting a disorderly house. About one out of every five or six were given an additional charge of lewd conduct, because they were seen to be dancing together or kissing. Because five or six couples were dancing, the Tay-Bush Inn was fined $400. The Mattachine Society raided its own purse to hire lawyers for those arrested. In the end, charges for visiting a “disorderly house” were eventually dropped for all but two. Mayor Christopher responded, “We found as always that some arrests are very difficult of prosecution because Courts demand total, complete, and unequivocal evidence, but we think we’re on the right track.”
[Sources: Hal Call. “Calling Shots.” Mattachine Review 7, no. 9 (September 1961): 12-14.
Del Martin. “Editorial: Fire Hoses Next? The Ladder 5, no. 12 (September 1961): 14-15.
Edward Allwood. Straight News: Gays, Lesbians, and the News Media
Eric Marcus. Making History: The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Equal Rights, 1940-1990. An Oral History
“No Obits”: 1996. For the first time in more than seventeen years, the San Fransisco weekly Bay Area Reporter made the news because of a lack of news: there were no obituaries of AIDS victims in the August 13, 1996 edition. The rate of obituaries had been declining for the previous two years following the introduction of the so-called “AIDS cocktail,” which surprised scientists and AIDS advocates alike for its effectiveness in halting and even reversing the health declines of those on medications. According to an AP article at the time, “The few days leading up to Monday’s deadline for submitting obits were tense at the newspaper. In the previous two weeks, none had been delivered until the last minute. ‘It was like watching a no-hitter in baseball unfolding,’ (news editor Mike) Salinas said. “We didn’t really want to discuss it until it became obvious that it was going to happen. We held our breath waiting.'” But the obit never came by the time the deadline arrived, and the paper celebrated with a front-page headline proclaiming “No Obits.”
Australia Amends Marriage Law To Ban Same-Sex Marriage: 2004. The opposition Labor party joined the governing right-of-center Liberal Party to pass an amendment to Australia’s marriage law to ban same-sex marriage. The amendment specified:
Marriage means the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life. Certain unions are not marriages. A union solemnised in a foreign country between: (a) a man and another man; or (b) a woman and another woman; must not be recognised as a marriage in Australia.
The bill’s critics challenged the government’s priorities, asking why there was a such a rush to ban same-sex marriage when the proposed anti-terrorism law hadn’t been voted on yet. Government and Labor responded by switching the schedule for the two bills and passed the anti-terrorism law first. Then both parties joined to cut off debate in the Senate. Democrat leader Sen. Andrew Bartlett condemned the move: “This is just an absolute disgrace … (you are saying) we have to do it now, otherwise society will crumble and the world will end. You are saying, ‘It is urgent that we take away as many freedoms and rights from people as possible and do it really quickly before they notice and get a chance to be upset about it’.” But that is exactly what they did, and the measure passed the Senate by a vote of 38-6.
Bills to provide marriage equality have been introduced in Australia’s Parliament in 2006 and 2009, but they have gone nowhere. In May 2013, then-former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who had previously opposed marriage equality, announced that he had changed his position and now supports it. Rudd then ousted Prime Minster Julia Gillard, who had been a staunch opponent of marriage equality, as head of the Labor Party on June 27. Rudd’s Labor is currently leading in the polls in the run-up to the September 7 federal election.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Gluck: 1895. The British painter was born Hannah Gluckstein, but she insisted on being known only as Gluck” — “No prefix, suffix, or quotes.” She resigned as vice president of an art society when her name appeared on the letterhead as “Miss Gluck.” And just as she kept her identification simple, her style of painting was also not part of any particular artistic school. Gluck established herself as a painter of floral arrangements which became popular among interior decorators, including floral designer Constance Spry, who would be Gluck’s lover from 1932 to 1936.
Gluck’s Medallion, 1937
But it was Gluck’s portraits that would establish her reputation, beginning with her own 1925 self portrait, where she depicted herself smoking a cigarette while wearing a shirt, tie, suspenders and beret. Her best known painting, Medallion, is a dual portrait of Gluck and Nesta Obermer, who became Gluck’s partner after her relationship with Spry ended. She painted it in 1936 to commemorate what she called her marriage to Obermer on May 25. Gluck referred to it as the “YouWe” painting, and it was later used as the cover of the Virago Press edition of The Well of Loneliness.
In 1944, Obermer decided to end her relationship with Gluck, complaining that Gluck had become too demanding and possessive. Gluck then entered a tumultuous thirty-year relationship with Edith Shakelton Head, the first female reporter in Britain’s House of Lords. Gluck’s emotional health deteriorated as she descended into depression, and her painting suffered because of it. But she managed to reviver herself in the 1950s when she became alarmed at the declining quality of paints and canvases. With the backing of two important museums and the Arts Council of Great Britain, she embarked on a decade-long campaign to raise the quality of art supplies. She finally won when the British Standards Institution agreed to establish new standards for cold-pressed linseed oil, canvases, and the naming and defining of pigments.
With that success behind her, Gluck returned to the easel using special handmade paints supplied by a manufacturer who agreed to meet her exacting standards. She painted several more paintings, including one of a decomposing fish head on the beach titled, Rage, Rage against the Dying of Light. She mounted a successful solo show in 1973, her first since 1937. It would be her last; she died in 1978.
Herb Ritts, self portrait.
Herb Ritts: 1952. The fashion and celebrity photographer is probably known more for who he photographed than for his photos themselves, which is a shame considering the quality of his work. His trademark was in his highly geometric, classic style, often evoking Greek classism. But his access to superstars came naturally, having grown up in Brentwood where many of them were either neighbors or friends of neighbors. His subjects ended up including just about everyone in Hollywood, beginning with photos of his friend, Richard Gere, taken before either of them were famous. When Gere used those photos for publicity, Ritt’s reputation was set. He photographed Brooke Shields for the cover of Elle in 1981, and he shot the cover photo for Olivia Newton-John’s album Physical that same year.
Ricard Gere, 1977
In addition to shooting every star and starlet in Hollywood, Ritts photographed the Dalai Lama, Michael Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan, and Stephen Hawking. His fashion photography included books for Giorgio Armani, Ralph Lauren, Versace, Calvin Klein (including Marky Mark’s famous underwear shoot), Donna Karen, Valentino, and many more. He also directed music videos for Madonna, Janet Jackson, Michael Jackson, Chris Issak, Mariah Carey, and Jennifer Lopez.
In 1989, Ritts published MEN/WOMEN
In the 1980s and 1990s he also threw himself into fundraising for HIV/AIDS groups like anfAR, and he did so long before Elizabeth Taylor made it fashionable. Always open about his own HIV-positive status, Ritts died in 2002 of pneumonia.
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?
August 12th, 2013
Scott Long dug into Russia’s social media to uncover the story behind the stories of neo-Nazi gangs abusing (and perhaps killing) young gay men and posting their videos on VK, Russia’s version of Facebook.
Maxim Martsinkevich is probably the place to begin. Nothing about the 29-year-old would-be architect’s page at VK, Russia’s answer to Facebook, suggests a particularly distinctive skinhead. He goes by his nickname, “Tesak,” variously translated “machete,” “cleaver,” or — my favorite — “slasher.” He likes steroids, protein shakes, pointless displays of masculinity (three videos show him having a tooth pulled minus anesthetic), and Adolf Hitler. Yet he’s quite innovative as Nazis go. Early in the Putin years, he was the driving force behind Format18, a violent group that called itself the “armed wing” of Russia’s National Socialist party.
Format18 regularly assaulted immigrants and dark people. Its creativity lay in deciding that visibility — movie cameras coupled with social media — was not its enemy, but its friend. It filmed the attacks, turning them into imitation music videos that went viral on YouTube and VK. Google “Format18” and “funny” and you’ll figure out why: their savage sense of humor. “Lol, I love those videos,” one European neo-Nazi says. “It’s funny when they beat people up then burn their passports.” Some of the videos showed murders.
Still from a video of a 12-year old (R) being threatened and abused in Tambov; faces not blurred in the original. (Via Scott Long)
The neo-Nazi’s call themselves “Occupy Pedophilia,” in accordance with the mindset that equates homosexuality with pedophilia. While many of the victims in these videos are in twenties to fifties, some of those so-called “pedophiles” appear to be quite young. In fact, the thugs really don’t care about the distinction, but they’re happy to play up the confusion. It’s all a trope to stir hatred against pretty much everyone:
In Kamensk, the online news source Lenta.ru interviewed Occupy Pedophilia members. “Homosexuals are almost sacred in this country,” one leader complained. “We are against pedophiles, but we also do not like homosexuals. I don’t know why homosexuals protect pedophiles.” He added:
Some representatives of homosexuals came to my home recently … They said we mock people. They asked why we hate them. They said they feel oppressed. It just happened that they both somehow jumped into the garbage cans.
“If you see two young men walking down the street and holding hands, what would you do?” the reporter asks. The answer: “Interrogation. And then it all depends on them.”
That slippage between gays and predators is a common enough prejudice, in Russia as elsewhere. On the other hand, when Western activists redefine the men simply as “gay” victims, they should be aware they’re just reinforcing a widespread Russian belief that gays are identical to pedophiles. They need to note the nuance and stress the difference, not just confirm the belief.
Some may argue that these neo-Nazi groups are criminal fringe groups and in no way represent Putin’s Russia. But that argument evaporates when we see Dmitri Kisilev, the anchor Vesti, the most popular news program on state-owned Russia 1, say that the “gay propaganda law doesn’t go far enough:
“I think that just imposing fines on gays for homosexual propaganda among teenagers is not enough. They should be banned from donating blood, sperm. And their hearts, in case of the automobile accident, should be buried in the ground or burned as unsuitable for the continuation of life.”
August 12th, 2013
Click to view the full broadsheet.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
180 YEARS AGO: Captain Nichols Hanged for “Buggery”: 1833. Yes, that was the actual British legal term for homosexual activity, and it was a capital offense until 1861, when the laws were finally relaxed to allow for life imprisonment. But that change came almost thirty years too late for Captain Henry Nichols. In 1833, the London Courier printed the following account:
Captain Henry Nicholas Nicholls, who was one of the unnatural gang to which the late Captain Beauclerk belonged, (and which latter gentleman put an end to his existence), was convicted on the clearest evidence at Croydon, on Saturday last, of the capital offence of Sodomy; the prisoner was perfectly calm and unmoved throughout the trial, and even when sentence of death was passed upon him. In performing the duty of passing sentence of death upon the prisoner, Mr. Justice Park told him that it would be inconsistent with that duty if he held out the slightest hope that the law would not be allowed to take its severest course. At 9 o’clock in the morning the sentence was carried into effect. The culprit, who was fifty years of age, was a fine looking man, and had served in the Peninsular war. He was connected with a highly respectable family; but, since his apprehension not a single member of it visited him.
You can also read a different account from another popular broadsheet by clicking the above image.
[via ExecutedToday.com, which goes to show that there really is a blog for everything!]
Miami News Reports On Trial of Gay Informant: 1954. That summer, greater Miami was swept up by an unprecedented wave of anti-gay hysteria, triggered, in part, by the murder of a male Eastern Airlines flight attendant earlier in August (see Aug 3, Aug 11). Meanwhile, bars and beaches were being raided and gay men were being convicted under Florida’s sodomy law. The Miami News on August 12 reported on one such case involving a gay man and a reputed police informant who was apparently himself gay. Because The News’s report leaves open far more questions than it answers, I will just repeat it in full.
Informant Escapes Jail Term in Pervert ‘Turnabout’ Trial.
By Larry Birger
Miami Daily News Staff WriterA self-styled police informer escaped trial on sex charges today when a convicted homosexual refused to press a complaint which he had filed at the suggestion of City Judge Cecil C. Curry.
Odom’s photo from the Miami News
The case against truck driver Leonard M. Odom, 24, of 3523 SW 14th Ter., was dispatched so quickly that the name of the complainant’s attorney escaped reporters.
The convicted homosexual, Walter G. Quester, changed his mind and dropped charges against Odom of committing lewd and lascivious acts.
Judge Curry asked the unidentified attorney for Quester: “Why did you drop the charges?”
“I don’t know,” the lawyer replied. “I wasn’t here yesterday.”
The attorney was referring to the unusual court session at which the judge had turned on the chief witness against the defendant at Quester’s hearing on charges of lewd and lascivious acts.
On the basis of Odom’s testimony, concerning a “date” he claimed he’d had with Quester to get information for the police, Quester was convicted and sentenced to 60 days in jail.
Then Curry told Odom, “It looks to me as if you’re just as guilty as the defendant.” He suggested to Quester that he file counter-charges against Odom, which was done.
Before today’s hearing Odom’s lawyer, Morey A. Rayman, said he would move that Curry disqualify himself as presiding judge on grounds he had prejudged the defendant.
This report raises all sorts of questions. Was Odom really working as a police informant? Or did he decide to try to claim that’s what he was doing in order to try to get out of being charged himself? What — or who — led Quester to drop the charges against Odom? And with Odom’s name, address, and photo published in the paper, what happened to him after the trial was over?
It really is quite possible that there were two victims in the sordid mess, each one trying to make the best of a very bad, no-win situation. These are the kinds of stories that appear briefly in newspapers across the country and then, just as quickly, disappear. These are also the kinds of stories I would love to be able to track down. In searching Ancestry.com, there was a Walter G. Quester who died in 1987 in Broward County, Florida, and a Leonard M. Odom who died in Madison, Florida in 1997. Were these the guys mentioned in this article?
45 YEARS AGO: “Gay Is Good” Adopted As National Homophile Slogan: 1968. The North American Conference of Homophile Organizations (NACHO), an umbrella group with representatives from twenty-six local and national gay rights organizations, was formed two years earlier, and from the very beginning they were hampered squabbles between the member groups. At the core, they were hampered by a lack of a unifying vision of where the gay community needed to concentrate its meager resources and energies. When they finally met in Chicago just a few weeks before the contentious Democratic National Convention, a whole host of fault lines had emerged, along generational lines with younger members being influenced by civil rights and anti-war protests, along gender lines as lesbians became increasingly impatient and distrustful as the dominant male leadership gave short shrift to their concerns, and along geographic lines between the more “militant” East Coast and the less confrontational West Coast factions.
Although the delegates failed to form a unified national organization, they did manage to accomplish two things. First, they passed “Homosexual Bill of Rights”, which consisted of these five points:
But it was their second accomplishment which proved to be more enduring, when they formally adopted Frank Kameny’s “Gay is Good” slogan as the official slogan of the movement. The full resolution read:
BECAUSE many individual homosexuals, like many of the members of many other minority groups suffer from diminished self-esteem, doubts and uncertainties as to their personal worth, and from a pervasive false and unwarranted sense of an inferiority and undesirability of their homosexual condition, and from a negative approach to that condition; and
BECAUSE, therefore, many individual homosexuals, like many of the members of many other minority groups, are in need of psychological sustenance to bolster and to support a positive and affirmative attitude toward themselves and their homosexuality and to hae instilled into them a confident sense of the positive good and value of themselves and of their condition; and
BECAUSE it would seem to be very much a function of the North American Homophile Conference to attempt to replace a wishy-washy negativism toward homosexuality with a firm no-nonsense positivism, to attempt to establish in the homosexual community and its members feelings of pride,self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-worth, in being the homosexuals that they are and have a moral right to be (these feelings being essential to true human dignity), and to attempt to bring to bear a counter-vailing influence against negative attitudes toward homosexuality prevalent in the heterosexual community; and
BECAUSE the Negro community has approached similar problems and goals with some success by the adoption of the motto or slogan: Black is Beautiful
RESOLVED: that it is hereby adopted as a slogan or motto for NACHO that
GAY IS GOOD
The vote was unanimous, perhaps the only point of unanimity in the convention. Kameny saw his slogan’s adoption as being a critical step toward changing the internal self-perceptions that many in the gay community had of themselves. Just a few years earlier, he persuaded his own group, the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., to pass a resolution declaring that homosexuality was not a mental illness (see Mar 4), a vote that was very controversial locally and nationally. This showed Kameny that if the gay community wanted psychiatry to stop regarding gay people as mentally ill, then gays and lesbians themselves would have to change how they saw themselves:
In order that we might hear something good to offset all this negativity, I came up with the slogan “Gay is good” in 1968, in parallel with the slogan “Black is beautiful” coined around the same time for similar psychological reasons. Upon careful analysis, it quickly became clear that as long as we were classified by organized psychiatry as being mentally ill or emotionally disturbed, we were never going to be granted any kind of remedy for the cultural ills besetting us. Society was not going to offer protection to a bunch of “loonies,” which is what psychiatry of that day made of us…
Psychiatry would eventually change its mind about five years later. For countless millions of gay people, it would take longer. But Kameny didn’t just fight to change how the laws pr psychiatry treated gay people. He fought so that gay people to see themselves as fully equal to everyone else as people. In 2007 when his papers and artifacts were accepted by the Smithsonian Institution, Frank reflected in an email to me:
I’ve said, for a long time, that if I’m remembered for only one thing, I would like it to be for having coined “Gay is Good.” But never did I expect that that would make its way to the Smithsonian. I feel deeply contented.
[Sources: Ronald Bayer. Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnosis 2nd ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987):89-91.
Frank Kameny. “How It All Started.” Journal of Gay & Lesbian Mental Health 13, no. 2 (2009): 76-81.]
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Radclyffe Hall: 1880. Influenced by the writings of Havelock Ellis, Radclyffe Hall described herself as a “congenital invert,” typically dressing in masculine clothing and living her lesbian on her sleeve. Her nickname “John” was bestowed on her by her first partner, the German singer Mabel Batten. When Batten died in 1916, Hall had already fallen in love with Batten’s cousin, the sculptor Una Troubridge, and the two of them would remain together for the rest of Hall’s life. Hall’s first novel, the long and dreary The Unlit Lamp, didn’t sell well. But her next books — a comedy titled The Forge, a more serious volume titled Unlit Lamp
But it would be her 1928 novel The Well of Loneliness
Radclyffe Hall (right) with Una Troubridge
Hall and Troubridge were important figures in lesbian circles in London, Paris and elsewhere in Europe, where Hall would be easily recognized by her tailored jackets, ties, socks and close-cropped hair. Her appearance wasn’t particularly shocking in the 1920s, where androgynous appearance among women was considered tres chic. But as the decades wore on, it became her most consistent visual identity in keeping with her self-identification as a member of “the third sex.” Britain’s sensational press was only too happy to play up that image. During the height of the furor over the British obscenity trials, newspapers routinely published photos of her which depicted her in the most masculine way possible, often cropping the photo above her waist on the many occasions when she wore a skirt with a man’s jacket.
The Well of Loneliness would be the only source of information about lesbianism for many women right on through the 1960s. Hall herself said that she had received more than 10,000 letters about her novel, many of them thanking her from grateful lesbians. When she died in 1943 of colon cancer, The Well of Loneliness had been translated into fourteen languages and was selling more then 100,000 copies per year. Nineteen-fifties editions of The Ladder, the newsletter for the Daughters of Bilitis, often wrote of The Well of Loneliness in reverential tones, and many anonymous letters to the editor from across America citing the book as a lifeline for many women coming to terms with their own sexuality.
Gladys Bentley: 1907. The Harlem Renaissance blues singer was known as “Brown Bomber of Sophisticated Songs.” Her “sophisticated songs” were obscene parodies of famous blues standards and popular songs, which she sang in the speakeasies of Harlem, often while brazenly flirting with the women in the audience. She was famous for her powerful voice, her girlfriends, and her manner of dress, in her signature tuxedo and top hat. In the 1930s, she headlined at Harlem’s Ubangi Club, an “exotic” (read: gay) club where she performed with a chorus line of drag queens as backup. She was successful enough to acquire a Park Avenue apartment, a fancy car, servants, and, she claimed at one time, a white wife in New Jersey.
But by 1937, the popularity of Harlem began to wane, so she moved to Los Angeles to be with her mother. She continued to carve out a place for herself there in the underground gay scene, performing at such popular lesbian bars as Joquins’ El Rancho in Los Angeles and Mona’s in San Francisco. But when the straight-laced fifties came around, Bentley abandoned her trademark tuxedo, began wearing dresses, and, in a 1950 article for Ebony, claimed to have cured her lesbianism through hormone treatments. She also claimed that she married J. T. Gibson, a newspaper columnist, who later denied that they had ever met. She did marry a man who was sixteen years her junior, although they eventually divorced. In 1960, she was on the verge of being ordained a minister for the Temple of Love in Christ when she died of pneumonia at age 52.
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August 11th, 2013
It appears that a boycott of either Stoli or the games in Sochi is unlikely to affect real change in Russia. On top of that, athletes competing in the games can’t, according to IOC rules, wear rainbow shirts, pins, etc. So, what to do? Why not something more subtle but ultimately more powerful, an image that would be broadcast silently across the globe, an unmistakable, but politically neutral act: same-sex hand holding. Regardless of orientation, athletes from around the world can grab the same-sex hand next to them and hold it. While waiting for their turn on the slopes or the bobsled or while receiving their medals — regardless of nationality or orientation, this is something all athletes in the games can do and it would be difficult for the IOC to do anything about it. It’s not a kiss or an obvious political sign, it’s just two people, of the same sex, holding hands.
What better way to show solidarity with lgbt teens across Russia and the world? It’d make for some pretty great images that could go viral across the globe.
Maybe Paul McCartney can show up and sing along. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bg8EQdcud7Q
August 11th, 2013
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations Today: Antwerp, Belgium; Fargo/Moorhead ND/MN; Moscow, ID; Reykjavick, Iceland; Rochester, NY (Black Pride); Wakefield, UK; Windsor, ON.
Other Events Today: World Outgames, Antwerp, Belgium; Northalsted Market Days Street Fair, Chicago, IL; Rendezvous LGBT Campout, Medicine Bow National Forest, Wyoming; Toronto Leather Pride, Toronto, ON.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
Miami Police Detective Calls On City to “Face Pervert Problem”: 1954. The murder earlier this month of William T. Simpson, a 27-year-old Eastern Airlines flight attendant (see Aug 3) blew open another round of frantic anti-gay hysteria in Miami, particularly after the Miami Daily News claimed to discover “a colony of some 500 male homosexuals, congregating mostly in the near-downtown northeast section and ruled by a ‘queen’.”
Not to be outdone, the Miami Herald jumped into the fray with a front-page article by Miami police detective Chester Eldridge titled, “Official urges society to face pervert problem.” He said that Miami had been lucky, but only so far: “We are extremely fortunate that there have been no more violent crimes in Miami involving them. The sex pervert or deviate is an individual who has reached the age of reason, yet knowingly disregards the idea of reproduction. They compromise a group that ranges from relatively harmless homosexuals to the fierce sadist who horribly mutilates and tortures his victims.” He estimated that there were somewhere from five to eight thousand homosexuals in Miami, and urged the state to build more psychiatric hospitals “so they can be removed as a social blight and become useful citizens.”
[Source: Edward Alwood. Straight News: Gays, Lesbians and the News Media
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August 10th, 2013
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Antwerp, Belgium; Eugene/Springfield OR; Fargo/Moorhead ND/MN; Glasgow, UK; Hampton Roads, VA; Indianapolis IN (Black Pride); Mannheim, Germany; Moscow, ID; Reykjavick, Iceland; Rochester, NY (Black Pride); Santa Ana, CA; Swindon, UK; Wakefield, UK; Windsor, ON.
AIDS Walk This Weekend: Denver, CO.
Other Events This Weekend: World Outgames, Antwerp, Belgium; Rainbow Days At Six Flags Over Georgia, Atlanta, GA; Northalsted Market Days Street Fair, Chicago, IL; Rendezvous LGBT Campout, Medicine Bow National Forest, Wyoming; Toronto Leather Pride, Toronto, ON.
THIS MONTH IN HISTORY:
125 YEARS AGO: Transman Discovered In Iowa Prison Hospital: 1888. A regular column in the nineteenth century journal The Medical Standard included a roundup of items submitted by doctors from each of the 38 states, several territories and a number of Canadian provinces. Many of the notices amounted to little more than gossip: the practice of a “voodoo doctor” in Georgia, a doctor in Illinois who was charged with criminal assault “by a hysterical female,” a “magnetic healer” in Kentucky “who is is ‘curing’ hypochondriacs and hysterical females in great numbers at Bowling Green” — women are almost universally “hysterical” in these notices. You get the picture. Anyway, the journal’s editor found this case in Iowa worth mentioning:
A case of sexual perversion has been discovered in the Ft. Madison penitentiary. A woman from her early youth had dressed in male attire, was universally regarded as a man, married and lived with a woman as a husband. She was recently arrested for horse-stealing and sent to the penitentiary; in the hospital of which her sex was discovered.
[Source: “State Items.” The Medical Standard 4, no. 2 (August 1888): 58-63. Available online at Google Books here.]
He’s 420 in dog years.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
60 YEARS AGO: Mark Doty: 1953. “I’ve always been a poet who wrote about urban life because I love the layers and surprises and the jangly complexities of cities,” he once said. “I feel at home in cities, being a gay man. It’s a place of permission and possibility.” He is the author of several collections of poetry, notably his 1995 award-winning Atlantis, which was inspired by his partner’s death from AIDS the year before. 1997’s Heaven’s Coast: A Memoir
In 2008, he won the National Book Award with Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems
50 YEARS AGO: Andrew Sullivan: 1963. The British transplant to America is an author, political commentator and a seminal blogger, having begun blogging before blogging was cool, with The Dish being one of the highest trafficked blogs on the net. Sullivan describes his views as politically conservative — he supports a flat tax, privatizing social security, and supports free markets in health care. If you read him with 1995 in mind, you’d pretty much agree: he’s conservative. And he has developed conservative arguments against the use of torture, his opposition to capital punishment, his concerns over the growing influence of “Christianism” (as he distinguishes it from Christianity) in American politics, his grudging support for Obamacare, and his strident advocacy for same-sex marriage.
Because conservatism has changed to such a radical extent in America, those positions have opened him up to accusations of being a raving liberal. He supported George W. Bush in 2000, but went with Kerry, reluctantly, in 2004 over disagreement with Bush’s conduct of the wars and his position on the Federal Marriage Amendment. In 2008, Sullivan enthusiastically supported Obama and developed a fixation on Sarah Palin. He supported Obama again in 2012, even as he continues to find reason to hope for a re-made GOP. Earlier this year, he took The Dish completely independent, financially and technically, from the Daily Beast.
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Featured Reports
In this original BTB Investigation, we unveil the tragic story of Kirk Murphy, a four-year-old boy who was treated for “cross-gender disturbance” in 1970 by a young grad student by the name of George Rekers. This story is a stark reminder that there are severe and damaging consequences when therapists try to ensure that boys will be boys.
When we first reported on three American anti-gay activists traveling to Kampala for a three-day conference, we had no idea that it would be the first report of a long string of events leading to a proposal to institute the death penalty for LGBT people. But that is exactly what happened. In this report, we review our collection of more than 500 posts to tell the story of one nation’s embrace of hatred toward gay people. This report will be updated continuously as events continue to unfold. Check here for the latest updates.
In 2005, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that “[Paul] Cameron’s ‘science’ echoes Nazi Germany.” What the SPLC didn”t know was Cameron doesn’t just “echo” Nazi Germany. He quoted extensively from one of the Final Solution’s architects. This puts his fascination with quarantines, mandatory tattoos, and extermination being a “plausible idea” in a whole new and deeply disturbing light.
On February 10, I attended an all-day “Love Won Out” ex-gay conference in Phoenix, put on by Focus on the Family and Exodus International. In this series of reports, I talk about what I learned there: the people who go to these conferences, the things that they hear, and what this all means for them, their families and for the rest of us.
Prologue: Why I Went To “Love Won Out”
Part 1: What’s Love Got To Do With It?
Part 2: Parents Struggle With “No Exceptions”
Part 3: A Whole New Dialect
Part 4: It Depends On How The Meaning of the Word "Change" Changes
Part 5: A Candid Explanation For "Change"
At last, the truth can now be told.
Using the same research methods employed by most anti-gay political pressure groups, we examine the statistics and the case studies that dispel many of the myths about heterosexuality. Download your copy today!
And don‘t miss our companion report, How To Write An Anti-Gay Tract In Fifteen Easy Steps.
Anti-gay activists often charge that gay men and women pose a threat to children. In this report, we explore the supposed connection between homosexuality and child sexual abuse, the conclusions reached by the most knowledgeable professionals in the field, and how anti-gay activists continue to ignore their findings. This has tremendous consequences, not just for gay men and women, but more importantly for the safety of all our children.
Anti-gay activists often cite the “Dutch Study” to claim that gay unions last only about 1½ years and that the these men have an average of eight additional partners per year outside of their steady relationship. In this report, we will take you step by step into the study to see whether the claims are true.
Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council submitted an Amicus Brief to the Maryland Court of Appeals as that court prepared to consider the issue of gay marriage. We examine just one small section of that brief to reveal the junk science and fraudulent claims of the Family “Research” Council.
The FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics aren’t as complete as they ought to be, and their report for 2004 was no exception. In fact, their most recent report has quite a few glaring holes. Holes big enough for Daniel Fetty to fall through.
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