Box Turtle Bulletin

Huh?

A question was posed to Pat Robertson at the 2:30 mark:

I work with two people who have decided that they are females. I know what the Bible says about homosexuality, but is it wrong to refer to them as females since they have had their gender status changed in the eyes of the law?

Robertson’s answer certainly wasn’t what I expected:

I don’t understand all of that but I think there are men who are in a woman’s body. It’s very rare but it’s true. Or women that are in men’s bodies. They want a sex change and that’s a very permanent thing, believe me. When you have certain body parts amputated and you are shot up with various kinds of hormones. It’s a radical procedure. I don’t think there’s any sin associated with that. I don’t condemn somebody for doing that. But if somebody just says “I’m really a woman,” I question the validity of that statement. They say they’re counted as female… You don’t count somebody as female unless they really are, or male unless they really are.

Q: In this instance though this is a person who works with two people, so he doesn’t really know their intention. He doesn’t know their personal medical scenario.

Robertson: It’s not for you to decide or to judge.

The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, July 30

THIS MONTH IN HISTORY:
A Plea From An Invert: 1919. Through the early part of the twentieth century, American medical and psychological writers began taking an increasing interest in homosexuality (or “sexual inversion,” “contrary sexual feeling,” “perverted sexual instinct,” or any number of other terms which they had yet to settle on). It was rare, however, to hear from “inverts” themselves. The July 1919 issue of the Journal of Urology and Sexology carried one interesting letter to the editor that gives some indication of the frustration that many felt due to the severe societal disapproval that was prevalent a the time:

A PLEA FROM AN INVERT

To the Editor:

A plea to be heard before it is too late — will you not listen and perhaps advise me? If you only knew how I need help!

I am a misfit. I am a young man who has never cared for any women. Am I to blame because God has given me a feminine nature? Why should I be shunned by all people, loathed by them!

I am clean and refined, am well educated in the fine arts and have high ideals concerning all things. And yet men who are covered with filthy sores from evil living, who have never had a decent thought or ideal in their lives, sneer at me. I am an outcast; I am lower than the lowest!

What few who are kind to me are women who have praised me for my high ideal concerning life.

Because the custom is not that two men shall marry, is it so wrong? If I love and respect a friend and he loves me, is it not as pure a marriage as between a man and woman; and far more equal?

I wish I had a friend to go and live with, to work out our ideals, and to grow in every way. Yet this has made me accursed among men; I am damned to a living hell!

Must I — who have denied myself almost too much, to become worthy of the highest friendship — must I forever walk alone?

Is there aught but beauty in the love of Marius and Cornelius in “Marius the Epicurian” by Walter Pater? Is Marius to be considered vile, because he had that “feminine refinement” that made him idealize life, that led him finally to the Christian faith and martyrdom?

I am alone and tired. Is it not a sad thing that I and many other young men who are worthy of much, should have but one hope — that Death shall come soon!

I need advice. If some young man among your readers might write to me! Do you not think we would save each other?

You must not believe me physically or mentally deficient — though I am near to suicide I

–Homo.

[Source: Anonymous. Letter to the editor: “A plea from an invert.” American Journal of Urology and Sexology 15, no. 7 (July 1919): 336. Available online via Google Books here.]

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Sean Patrick Maloney: 1966. After earning his Bachelor’s degree in 1988, Maloney spent a year volunteering with the Jesuits in the slums of Chimbote, Peru. He then returned to get his Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia’s School of Law in 1992. He entered politics in 1991, working for Bill CLinton’s first campaign for President, and he returned to work on his re-election campaign in 1996. After that campaign, he was offered a position in the White House staff, where he was senior advisor and White House Staff Secretary from 1999 to 2000. When Matthew Shepard was brutally murdered in Wyoming, Maloney was one of two officials sent by President Clinton to represent him at the funeral. One newspaper note that Maloney was “the highest ranking openly homosexual man on the White House staff.”

After 2000, he became a senior attorney at the law firm which represented the Shepard family. He returned to politics in 2006, first as a member of Governor Eliot Spitzer’s administration, then in Gov. David Paterson’s administration after Spitzer’s resignation as the result of a prostitution scandal. In 2012, Maloney ran for New York’s 18th Congressional district and won, defeating Rep. Nan Hayworth, making Maloney one of six openly gay and bisexual members of Congress. Maloney and his parter, Randy Florke, together since 1992, are raising three adoptive children. Despite New York being a marriage equality state, the two had chosen not to marry because their marriage would not have been recognized under the Defense of Marriage Act. But now that Section 3 of DOMA has been declared unconstitutional, Maloney has said that they may reconsider that decision.

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Where’s the Backlash?

Our victories at the Supreme Court came over a month ago and I’m still waiting for the backlash.

The National Organization for Marriage is obviously hoping for one, and they’ve reported gleefully on France’s violent riots — sorry, inspiring demonstrations — against marriage equality. But nothing like that has happened here. And today we get this graph from Gallup: Read the rest of this entry »

It’s Still 1952 In East Baton Rouge (Updated)

That was the year that Dale Jennings, a co-founder of the Mattachine Society, was arrested in his own home for allegedly soliciting an undercover police officer for immoral purposes. But unlike nearly everyone else who was arrested for trumped up charges regardless of whether the intended sexual acts were between consenting adults in the privacy of their own home, Jennings fought the charges and won. Since then, sodomy laws have been declared unconstitutional and the legal basis for prosecuting consenting adults in their own homes has been absent in all fifty states and territories since 2003, when the Supreme Court declared those laws unconstitutional.

But the sheriff of East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, is still partying like it’s 1952:

As the two men moved their chat to a picnic table, the deputy propositioned his target with “some drinks and some fun” back at his place, later inquiring whether the man had any condoms, according to court records. After following the deputy to a nearby apartment, the man was handcuffed and booked into Parish Prison on a single count of attempted crime against nature.

There had been no sex-for-money deal between the two. The men did not agree to have sex in the park, a public place. And the count against the man was based on a part of Louisiana’s anti-sodomy law struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court a decade ago.

The July 18 arrest is among at least a dozen cases since 2011 in which a Sheriff’s Office task force used the unenforceable law to ensnare men who merely discussed or agreed to have consensual sex with an undercover agent, an investigation by The Advocate has found.

The District Attorney refused to prosecute the cases because no laws were broken. But that doesn’t change the fact that at least a dozen men were arrested, read their rights, handcuffed, taken in, booked, fingerprinted, and posted bond. The dozen arrests were made by the Sheriff’s Special Community Anti-Crime Team, which also investigates prostitution and child predators. The task force took advantage of the fact that most of the men arrested were older and had not come out to their families.

After news of the illegal sting operation broke in the Baton Rouge Metro councilman John Delgado sent an email to Sheriff Sid Gautreaux demanding an explanation and apology. The Sheriff’s office responded in a way to make matters worse by equating private, consensual adult activity with public masturbation:

“The Sheriff’s Office has not, nor will it ever, set out with the intent to target or embarrass any part of our law-abiding community,” the Sheriff’s Office statement says.

“We will consult with others in the legislative and judicial branches to see what can be done to remove this law from the criminal code that each deputy receives and to also find alternative ways to deter sexual and lewd activity from our parks,” the statement says.

Delgado’s email says the Sheriff’s Office’s Sunday statement sensationalizes the matter by using terms like “lewd conduct” and “public masturbation” and suggesting that children were present during the arrests.

“The newspaper article makes it quite clear that nothing of the sort occurred in these 12 arrests,” Delgado says. “These men were arrested even though they were innocent of any crime.”

The sheriff’s office claimed that they were merely enforcing the law that was still on Louisiana’s books, and didn’t know that the law had been struck down in 2003: “To our knowledge, the Sheriff’s office was never contacted or told that the law was not enforceable or prosecutable,” the statement says. The Sheriff’s office says they will meet with District Attorney Hillar Moore III to get a lesson on constitutional law. Equality Louisiana also says that the department will also meet with members of the LGBT advocacy group.

Update: Think Progress’ report quoted from the Original Sheriff’s office statement posted on Facebook. That statement has since been removed. The original statement read, in part:

The Sheriff’s Office has not, nor will it ever, set out with the intent to target or embarrass any part of our law-abiding community. Our goal is to Protect and Serve the public. When we receive calls from the public about lewd activity near our children, we have to respond. Our park operations, conducted at the specific request of the BREC Park’s Ranger, were an attempt to deter or stop lewd activity occurring in the park near children. The deputies in the cases were acting in good faith using a statute that was still on the books of the Louisiana criminal code. […]

We want to reiterate our intent in these cases. It was NEVER to target a certain segment of our population. It was only in response to parents, park officials and members of the public concerned that our parks were not safe. When we receive reports of public masturbation, sex and other lewd activity in a park where children are playing, me MUST take these concerns seriously. Our intent was honorable, our approach, however, is something we must evaluate and change. The Sheriff’s Office is not concerned with what consenting adults do in private residences. We are concerned with what is going on in public, especially a public place frequented by children.

The new statement now reads:

The Sheriff’s office apologizes that the way theseinvestigations were handled made it appear that we weretargeting the gay community. That was not our intent. TheSheriff’s Office also apologizes to anyone that wasunintentionally harmed or offended by the actions of our investigations. While sections of La. R.S. 14:89, Crimes Against Nature, have not been removed from the Louisianalaw code, they have been deemed unenforceable andunconstitutional. The Sheriff’s Office will not use theseunconstitutional sections of the law in future cases. We arecommitted to working with all branches of our government,as well as the LGBT community, to find acceptable ways tokeep our community safe.

The Daily Agenda for Monday, July 29

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
60 YEARS AGO: Tim Gunn: 1953. His role on Project Runway is that of a fashion professor and mentor, in line with his previous life as a member of the faculty at Parson The New School for Design, where he served as the fashion design chair before moving to Liz Claiborne in 2007 to work as their chief creative officer. Meanwhile, he’s been “making it work” at the Bravo reality series which just started its twelfth season two weeks ago. He is an animal rights advocate and speaks out against the use of fur in fashion. He also made an “It Gets Better” video, motivated by his own suicide attempt when he was seventeen. He has generally been a private person, not given to opening his life to public scrutiny, but that began to change in 2006 when, in an interview with Instinct, Gunn said that he hadn’t been in a relationship since the early 1980s, after the end of a six-year relationship with the love of his life, whom he still loves today. He’s been celibate ever since then. In 2012, he wrote a short essay, Shaken, Not Stirred (available only as a Kindle Single) in which he described growing up with a rigid, controlling FBI-agent father who was J. Edgar Hoover’s ghostwriter.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

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The Daily Agenda for Sunday, July 28

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations Today: Halifax, NS; Hamburg, Germany; Latvia, Lithuania (Baltic Pride); London, ON; Peel, ON; Pittsburgh, PA (Black Pride); Raleigh-Durham, NC (Black Pride); Stuttgart, Germany.

Other Events Today: Great Lakes Regional Rodeo, Belleville, MI; Up Your Alley, San Francisco, CA.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Illinois Rescinds Sodomy Law: 1961. On this date in history, the state of Illinois led the nation in becoming the first state in the land to enact a repeal of it’s law criminalizing homosexuality. The repeal was part of a very large omnibus legal overhaul of the state’s criminal code, and much of that overhaul was based on the American Law Institute’s Model Penal Code, which in 1956 recommended the elimination of anti-sodomy laws and other prohibitions against consensual sexual activity between consenting adults. Because the Model Penal Code also touched on a plethora of other criminal statues, it’s likely that most Illinois lawmakers didn’t realize that they were repealing their anti-sodomy law by adopting the Code. Nevertheless, the code was adopted, and the anti-sodimy law’s repeal became effective on January 1, 1962.

For the next decade, Illinois would remain the only state in the union to legalize consensual adult same-sex relationships. In 1971, Connecticut finally rescinded its sodomy law, followed by Colorado and Oregon (1972), Hawaii and North Dakota (1973), Ohio (1974), New Hampshire and New Mexico (1975). The big year was 1976, when California, Indiana, Maine, Washington and West Virginia stopped criminalizing homosexuality. By the time Lawrence v. Texas struck down all sodomy laws nationwide in 2003, thirty-six states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico had eliminated their anti-gay statutes, either by legislative action or by state court decisions. Today, the focus on legal recognition for gay people is on marriage. Only a third of U.S. citizens now live in states which provide marriage equality, but progress on that front is accelerating. But it all began with that first step in the Land of Lincoln.

England, Wales Rescinds Gross Indecency Law: 1967. On July 28, 1967, Queen Elizabeth II gave her Royal Assent to the Sexual Offenses Bill, which marked a significant overhaul of Britain’s laws regulating sexual practices between consenting adults. The Royal Assent was the last act in a long, tortuous path toward finally getting rid of the Gross Indecency statute that had ensnared so many victims like the famous playwright Oscar Wilde and WWII code-breaker and computer pioneer Alan Turing. The law penalized male homosexuality with up to two years in prison; consensual sexual acts between lesbians was not illegal, largely because the phenomenon was unknown when the Gross Indecency statute was last amended in the nineteenth century.

On July 4, Parliament voted 99-14 to approve the Sexual Offenses Bill in a free non-party vote by a tiny percentage of the more than 600-member chamber. The vote took place after an acrimonious eight-hour all-night debate. Home Secretary Roy Jenkins took pains to reassure members that “this is not a vote of confidence in, or congratulations for, homosexuality.” Supporters said that the bill would eliminate one of the most frequent causes of espionage: blackmail of gay diplomats and other officials.

But Labor member Peter Mahon summed up the feelings of those who opposed repeal. “It is by no means unnatural to have a feeling of absolute revulsion against a bill of this kind. Without any lack of charity I say without equivocation it was a bad bill to begin with, it is a bad bill now and will be a bad bill until the end of time. It will be a bad bill throughout eternity because homosexual acts are a perversion of natural function.” Conservative member Rear-Admiral Morgan Giles warned darkly that “decent and reasonable” people of Britain would react violently when they realized what Parliament had done. “It will only encourage our enemies and those who disparage us, and it can only dismay our friends,” he declared. Another Torry MP, Sir Cyril Osborne, said that many peple were tired of democracy being made safe for “pimps, prostitutes, spivs and pansies — and now for queers.”

The law then went to the House of Lords, which gave its approval to the measure on July 21. Lord Arran, the Conservative Whip and longtime supporter of repeal, quoted Oscar Wilde in closing the debate. “We shall win in the end, but the road will be long and red with monstrous martyrdoms.” Lord Arran’s subsequent statement then reflected the ambiguity most politicians felt who supported the bill: “I ask one thing. I ask those who have, as it were, been in bondage for whom the prison doors are now opened to show their thanks by comporting themselves quietly and with dignity. This is no occasion for jubilation and certainly not for celebrations. Homosexuals must continue to remember that while there may be nothing bad in being homosexual, there is certainly nothing good.”

(In a related note, Wikipedia has this anecdote about Lord Arran: “Arran was the sponsor in the House of Lords of Leo Abse’s 1967 private member’s bill which decriminalised homosexuality between two consenting adult males. He also sponsored a bill for the protection of badgers. He was once asked why the badger bill had not received enough support to pass whereas decriminalising homosexuality had. ‘Not many badgers in the House of Lords,’ he replied.”)

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The Daily Agenda for Saturday, July 27

TODAY’S AGENDA (Ours):
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Braunschweig, Germany; Ft. Wayne, IN; Halifax, NS; Hamburg, Germany; Harrisburg, PA; Latvia, Lithuania (Baltic Pride); London, ON; Norwich, UK; Nottingham, UK; Peel, ON; Pittsburgh, PA (Black Pride); Raleigh-Durham, NC (Black Pride); Stuttgart, Germany; Tórshavn, Faroe Islands.

Other Events This Weekend: Great Lakes Regional Rodeo, Belleville, MI; Bereans for Fairness Picnic; Berea, KY; Gay Day at ValleyFair and Soak City, Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN; Up Your Alley, San Francisco, CA.

TODAY IN HISTORY”
“The Well of Loneliness” Published: 1927. The book was so controversial that three publishers turned it down. When it was finally published in England, it appeared in a plain, discreet black cover. It wasn’t particularly racy; the only sexual description consisted of the phrases, “she kissed her full on the lips,” and “that night, they were not divided.” By today’s standards, the book may seem tame, but in 1927 Radclyffe Hall’s novel caused a sensation in Britain. The publisher sent review copies to only a few select newspapers and magazines who he thought could handle the lesbian-themed content. Most reviewers praised the book for its courage or panned it for its dreariness. But only one found it objectionable. James Douglas at the Sunday Express responded by mounting a massive campaign against the novel. “I would rather give a healthy boy or a healthy girl a phial of prussic acid than this novel,” he wrote.

Despite most of the British press’s defending the book, the publisher soon landed in court on obscenity charges. Several authors came to his defense — E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, and James Melville among them — but the judge declared the novel obscene. It wasn’t the story line he found objectionable; it was the novel’s plea for tolerance and acceptance that made it “more subtle, demoralizing, corrosive and corruptive than anything ever written.” He ruled that it would “deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences,” and ordered copies rounded up and burned.

The ban and the massive newspaper campaign against the book only served to increase the public’s curiosity and demand for the book, as these things do. And wherever there’s a demand, there’s a supply. And The Well’s supply was met by a publisher in France who shipped copies surreptitiously to newsstands throughout Britain. That had the effect of lowering British officials’ enthusiasm for banning other lesbian-themed novels that followed. A Home Office memo observed, “It is notorious that the prosecution of the Well Of Loneliness resulted in infinitely greater publicity about lesbianism than if there had been no prosecution.” But it wouldn’t be until 1949 when The Well could be published in Britain again — not because any laws had changed, but because the Home Office simply decided to look the other way. It has remained in continuous publication since then.

A 1951 paperback edition.

Surprisingly, the book’s appearance in the U.S. generated a different reaction. Sure, there were attempts to ban it in the U.S. Customs Court and in New York City, where police seized 865 copies from its American publisher’s offices, but both attempts came to naught. When the court cleared the novel of obscenity, the publisher responded by putting out a “victory” edition, and the ensuing publicity raised demand for the book here as it did in England. And despite it’s high price of $5 (about twice the cost of an average hardback novel), The Well would go through six printings and sell over 100,00 copies by the time it was cleared by the courts. The Well of Loneliness has been in continuous American publication since its 1928 debut, and it has served as an inspiration and comfort for countless women in the ensuing decades.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Martin Block: 1919. His life was in books, from the early years in which he made deliveries for a book store in New York City, to working at a book store in Grand Central Terminal after a stint in the military, to becoming one of the owners of Studio Book Store after moving to Hollywood . It was there, in 1950, that his friend, Rudi Gernreich, invited him to join an organization that Rudi, his lover Harry Hay, and others were forming. Block remembered going to his first meeting of what would become the Mattachine Society:

Everybody was scared. I guess people were rather psychotic about it. But because of my background, this business of being afraid of the FBI or the police was a lot of shit to me at the time, as it is now. You see, my father was a socialist, and my mother was an anarchist. When the time came for the meeting, I think Rudi drive, and we took some sort of circuitous route to avoid being followed. Everybody was very worried about Mr. Hoover’s crazy FBI men. I don’t think anybody was interested in following us, but Rudi was fearful. The whole group was fearful…

Block listened to the discussions at that meeting, the talk about forming a new movement to advocate for gay people — and found that he disagreed with every word that was said. But he enjoyed the company, and decided to become a member. But after a few years, Block and several others became bored. After one particularly dull meeting, Block, Dorr Legg (see Dec 15), Don Slater (see Aug 21), and Dale Jennings (see Oct 21) stayed late and talked about doing something besides talking, something that would be useful for gay people across the country. That something, they decided, would be a magazine they called ONE, from a quote by Thomas Carlyle, “A mystic bond of brotherhood makes all men one.” Martin recalled that ONE’s mission would be a simple one:

We would not attempt to turn anyone in our direction. We weren’t going to go out and say you should be gay, but we said, “YOu can be proud of being gay.” You can be proud of being yourself. You could look yourself in the mirror and say, “I’m me, and isn’t that nice?” That in itself was radical. Nobody put it in words, but that was the underlying thought and underlying feeling behind the magazine.

Block became ONE’s president and its first editor when the magazine debuted in January 1953. But because of demands at his bookstore and other family concerns, gave up his editorship in June and was removed as the organization’s president. He remained involved with ONE in various capacities through the 1950s. Later, he became a regular book reviewer for the Los Angeles Daily News, the Saturday Review, and the New York Times Book Review. After he closed his own bookstore in the late 1950s, Block became the manager for the book department at Robinson’s Department Store in Pasadena. He died in West Hollywood, California in 1995.

[Sources: Eric Marcus. Making History: The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Equal Rights, 1940-1990. An Oral History (New York: HarperCollins, 1992): 37-42.

C. Todd White. Pre-Gay L.A.: A Social History of the Movement for Homosexual Rights (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2009): 29-47.]

Troy Perry: 1940. At fifteen, he was already a Baptist preacher and a self-described “religious fanatic.” He married in 1959 and fathered two sons, but he was not faithful to his wife. He had a few gay dalliances on the side. When the elders at the church he was pastoring found out, they forced him to resign and he moved his family to Southern California and began preaching for the Church of God of Prophecy. While there, his wife found a copy of Donald Webster Cory’s groundbreaking The Homosexual In America hidden in a mattress. That led to an immediate divorce and an end to his preaching career. After a stint in the army beginning in 1965, Perry felt called to offer a place for gay people to worship freely. He placed an ad in The Advocate announcing a worship service designed for gays in Los Angeles. and twelve people turned up on that first Sunday in October 1968. That would be the genesis for the Metropolitan Community Church, the only Christian denomination founded specifically to address the spiritual needs of LGBT people. MCC now has 250 congregations in 23 countries around the world.

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?

NSW Committee may have cleared the state for marriage

Australia has long been restricted from achieving marriage equality by the understanding that marriage was the within the purview of the federal government. And a circus of politics, positions, postures, and pretences have conspired to keep the nation from enacting a policy that has popular support.

But now the Legislative Council Standing Committee on Social Issues in New South Wales, Australia, has determined that the state can pass its own marriage laws – though no one is certain that their determination will hold. (GayNewsNetwork)

The Committee found that while NSW can legislate on same-sex marriage, any laws would be subject to challenge by the High Court and thus marriage equality would be best pursued in Commonwealth legislation.

The Hon Niall Blair, MLC, Chair of the Social Issues Committee said: “This report seeks to clarify the law, including in particular the question as to whether New South Wales can legislate on the topic of same-sex marriage; there is no doubt that it can. But whether the law would stand up to a challenge in the High Court is unpredictable and something that even leading experts in constitutional law disagree about.”

However, there may be sufficient political will to pass the legislation and call the federal government’s bluff. Leaders of all the political parties have expressed support for the position.

Who will oppose Montgomery County marriages? UPDATED

There is debate about whether the decision by Montgomery County (Pennsylvania) Clerk Bruce Hanes to issues marriage licenses to same sex couples is civil disobedience or lawlessness and no one know whether they are truly legal or not, but one question seems to me to be even more confusing: who will oppose him?

When I first heard the news I assumed that the Republican elected officials would step in to halt proceedings. But, so far, that doesn’t appear to be happening and even the expected fiery denunciations appear to be limited to a few fringe legislators.

The County’s district attorney decided that opposing Hanes didn’t fall within her job description: (PhillyMag.com)

Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Ferman, a Republican, said Wednesday evening that a same-sex marriage license wasn’t legally valid under existing Pennsylvania law but “the remedy for issuing an invalid marriage license does not include intervention by the office of the district attorney.”

“The register of wills cannot change the laws of this commonwealth by simply ignoring them,” Ferman said in a statement. “If that change comes, it will be through Pennsylvania courts or the Legislature.”

Pennsylvania Attorney General Katheen Kane, a Democrat, has stated that she will not defend the state’s anti-gay marriage law as she believes it is unconstitutional. And Republican Governor Tom Corbett has, so far, limited his response to a statement from his press officer:

Individual elected officials cannot pick and choose which laws to enforce. All officials are constitutionally required to administer and enforce the laws that are enacted by the Legislature. Only the courts have the power to declare a law to be unconstitutional and to suspend its effects.

But other than tsk-tsking, I can find no evident steps being taken to halt the marriages by those who are empowered to do so. I assume at some point Corbett will make some legal effort or some “family” group will seek to intervene. But I am fairly shocked that marriage licenses have been issued this long without the fierce and angry response that would have been the automatic reaction not so very long ago.

UPDATE:

Joining those who say that Mr. Hanes should not be issuing same-sex marriage licenses is the Registers of Wills and Clerks of Orphans’ Court Association, which has voted unanimously that they will not follow Hanes’ lead. (Patriot News)

Larry Medaglia, the Berks County Register of Wills, who authored the resolution, said all the members present at conference agreed they would not issue licenses to gay or lesbian couples.

“The only way that is going to change given the resolution and the sentiment in the room and all the discussion is if the Legislature and the governor enact a different law or if the courts should overturn it and mandate a change,” said Medaglia, a former president of the association. “We don’t have the authority to do what Bruce Hanes is doing in Montgomery County. Frankly he doesn’t have the authority to do it.”

Behaving exactly how one would imagine an association of county clerks to behave, the issue of whether same-sex marriage should be legal didn’t arise.

But irrespective of the resolution, they have no authority over Hanes or his decision and will take no steps to compel him to stop.

Oregon starts petition drive to reverse state DOMA

Oregon United for Marriage (yeah, yours too) hit the streets and parks today to begin the petition drive to put marriage back on the ballot next fall. (Oregon Live)

The campaign to overturn Oregon’s constitutional ban on gay marriage hits streets Friday, with organizers on a quest to gather more than 116,000 signatures by July 2014.

KOIN

As early as 6 a.m., dozens of volunteers were gathering signatures at a petition booth at Tom McCall Waterfront Park in Portland. The booth is one of several being manned by more than 1,000 volunteers in cities and towns throughout the state this weekend.

This Post Is Illegal in Russia

This story from from Pink News illustrates what LGBT people in Russia are up against:

A Neo-Nazi Russian group has taken to social media to publicise images and videos of gay teenagers lured in on the promise of a date, before torturing them and forcing them to come out to friends and family on video. Gay victims aged 12-16 are reportedly lured in by the group Occupy-Pedofilyay, led by Maxim Martsinkevich, known under the nickname “Cleaver”. Videos are then circulated of the victims being made to come out as gay, with a view to parents, schools, or friends finding out about their sexuality.

An uncensored image of one of the victims holding a sex toy, covered in red paint, and being held down, appeared on the Spectrum Human Rights Alliance blog. The accompanying report also included a video of the torture of one victim who was sprayed with urine in public, however YouTube has now removed the video.

…The group was established with the intention of revealing the identities of paedophiles, but after turning to adult gay men, it has now begun targeting young teenagers. The Spectrum report says that no police action has been taken against the incidents, despite numerous victims, and that over 500 similar groups have been formed across Russia using the VK social networking site.

The Spectrum report is here, and the video is back online.

Short narrative in English: Age of consent in Russia is currently 16 years old. On video one can see allegedly a 15 year old teen lured by an organized Neo Nazi gang of self-proclaimed “pedophile fighters” who posted a fake personal ad from allegedly an older man (named “Uncle Dima”). This teen was forced to give out his full name, address, school name, parents names and etc. They laughed about his sexual preferences, bullied him, poured urine on him and kicked at the end. We would never know what occurred after the camera went out. Naturally, all his personal details were released to the general public and viewed by millions in Russia.

One teen committed suicide in May after having his sexuality was revealed online. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin insists that there is no anti-gay discrimination in his fiefdom, and Russian law makes it illegal for Russians or foreigners in Russia to denounce violence against LGBT people.

Boycott of Russian Vodka Spreads

Buzzfeed on Monday published a photo essay titled “36 Photos from Russia that Everyone Needs to See,” which depicts the violence that broke out during St. Petersburg’s gay pride march last month. That violence took place on the very day that President Vladimir Putin signed a law which effectively bans all advocacy by or on behalf of LGBT people. Dan Savage finally decided that enough was enough. Six months from now, Russia will be hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics on Sochi, with many calling for a boycott. Dan Savage reviewed the pros and cons of boycotting the Olympics and proposed an alternative:

If there isn’t a boycott—if gay and pro-gay athletes compete at the Olympics in Sochi this winter—there must be a protest during the Sochi Olympics that is as powerful and indelible as Tommie Smith and John Carlos’s protest during the Mexico City Olympics. It should happen on the medal stand while the world watches.

But boycott or no boycott there is something we can do right here, right now, in Seattle and other US cities to show our solidarity with Russian queers and their allies and to help to draw international attention to the persecution of gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, trans people, and straight allies in Putin’s increasingly fascistic Russia: DUMP RUSSIAN VODKA.

Here is a list of Russian vodkas currently available in the US: Dovgan, Gold Symphony, Standart, Hrenovuha, Kauffman, Kubanskaya, Moskovskaya, Narodnaya, Pyatizvyozdnaya, Putinka, Rodnik, Ruskova, Russian Standard, Shustov, Starka, Stolnaya, Youri Dolgoruki. The two best known Russian vodkas? Russian Standard and Stolichnaya.

That was Wednesday. It only took Stolichnaya’s CEO, Val Mendeleev, a day to respond with “an open letter to the LGBT community”:

Letter from Stoli. Click to enlarge.

The recent dreadful actions taken by the Russian Government limiting the rights of the LGBT community and the passionate reaction of the community have prompted me to write this letter to you.

I want to stress that Stoli formly opposes such attitude and actions. Indeed, as a company that encourages transparent and fairness, we are upset and angry. Stolichnaya Vodka has always been, and continues to be a fervent supporter and friend to the LGBT community. We also thank the community for having adopted Stoli as their vodka of preference.

In the US, the brand’s commitment to the LGBT community has been ongoing for years. Among the best examples, I can cite the series produced by Stoli in 2006 called “Be Real: Stories from Queer America” which featured short documentaries on real life stories depicting the challenges and accomplishments of the LGBT community in the United States.

Stoli is very proud of the current exclusive national partnership with Gaycities.comand Queerty.com in search of the Most Original Stoli Guy. .. Previous national initiatives included serving as the official vodka of the Miami Gay Pride Week as well as ongoing events with focus on Pride month.

…This letter also gives me the opportunity to clear some of the confusion surrounding the Stolichnaya brand, based on facts found online that often inaccurately link our company to the Russian Government. The Russian government has no ownership interest over the Stoli brand that is privately owned by SPI Group, headquartered in Luxembourg in the heart of Western Europe…

(Update: Queerty, perhaps because of their entangling alliance with Stoli, has been practicing radio silence where the boycott is concerned, except to post Stoli’s open letter.)

Savage countered:

For the record: Regardless of where SPI Group’s corporate offices are located, the company is owned by Yuri Scheffler, one of the 100 richest men in Russia. SPI is a Russian corporation, Stoli is a Russian vodka. And while it’s nice that SPI is willing to market to homos who are lucky enough to live in Austria, the US, and South Africa, what has SPI done in Russia? The group has sponsored gay pride events in Vienna and Miami. That’s nice. But have they sponsored gay pride events in Moscow or St. Petersburg? Val says that Stoli is upset and angry. That’s nice. So has Stoli said anything to the Russian authorities? Has Yuri Scheffler expressed his anger in an open letter to Vladimir Putin? Did the SPI Group speak the fuck up before the Russian government passed a law that made it a crime to be openly gay and a crime to publicly support someone who is openly gay? Frankly I’m not interested in Stoli’s marketing efforts in the West. I’m interested in what this Russian-owned company is doing in Russia. And from this letter it’s clear they’ve done and they only plan on doing squat.

But Scott Shackford at Reason posted a counter argument. He noted that there is a battle going on between Scheffler and Russia, which is trying to nationalize the company, which seized the internal brands and nationalized them in 2001.

There is a big, nasty battle between Russia and the private Stolichnaya company and its owner, Yuri Scheffler…. t doesn’t take that much research to see how difficult a position Scheffler is in. Russia wants his company. This story from The Guardian from 2002 makes it very clear that Scheffler is no friend of Putin’s … Scheffler himself is wanted for “questioning” for allegedly threatening the director of the parts of the Russian company that were renationalized.

What’s sad about this effort is that if Russia succeeds in getting its hands back on Stoli, then a boycott actually makes sense. But the consequence will be that a powerful businessman who does support the gay community will lose his company. Boycotting Stoli now is a very bad idea. Scheffler is an ally who the gay and lesbian community needs to work with, not alienate. From a Western perspective it may be hard to realize that an incredibly rich person like Scheffler has the potential to be a victim of Russia’s authoritarian regime like its gay citizens or members of Pussy Riot, but it’s extremely important not to look at the nature of power and influence there the way we do here.

Nevertheless, the Russian vodka boycott — which goes beyond Stolichnaya, although Stoli is the biggest, most well-known brand — is spreading like wildfire. At least two bars in the Castro have pulled Russian vodka from their shelves. Seven Halsted-area bars in Chicago have stopped selling Russian booze, as have bars in West Hollywood, Vancouver, Toronto, London, and San Diego. Dallas-area bars are still considering whether to join, but The Dallas Voice reports that, contrary to Stoli’s letter Thursday, the company had already decided to “pull out of the gay market“:

(Bar owner Howard) Okon said Razzle Dazzle Dallas, the city’s June LGBT Pride Month celebration, was hit hard earlier this year when Stoli representatives said they wouldn’t sponsor the event, after they’ve been the major liquor sponsor the past two years. Okon, who was in charge of sponsorships for Razzle Dazzle, said the company told him they were realigning their outreach and pulling out of the gay market.

Civil Disobedience vs. Lawlessness

In Pennsylvania, as you may know, County Clerk Bruce Hanes has issued marriage licenses to same-sex couples, despite the state’s ban on same-sex marriage. Here’s the reaction from NOM, called The Lawlessness of Gay Marriage Activists is on Full Display:

In Pennsylvania, Montgomery County’s Register of Wills (the person who issues marriage licenses) suddenly decided he can ignore Pennsylvania law and give marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The guy claims he did it only after reading Justice Kennedy’s opinion in the Windsor case striking down part of the federal DOMA law, and concluded that gay couples should have the right to marry even though Pennsylvania law defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Kudos to the Office of General Counsel for the Governor for insisting “Individual elected officials cannot pick and choose which laws to enforce,” as their press secretary Nils Hagen-Frederiksen wrote in a released statement. “All officials are constitutionally required to administer and enforce the laws that are enacted by the Legislature.”

The irony is so bright it burns my eyes. NOM has built fundraising efforts on the notion that Town Clerks in New York have the right to “pick and choose which laws to enforce” and to refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, as an exercise of their religious freedom.

NOM’s hypocrisy will surprise only those who haven’t been paying attention. But what about our own hypocrisy when we denounce the New York Town Clerks while praising Montgomery County’s Bruce Hanes? Is there a difference?

I think there is.

Civil disobedience has a long and proud history in the US. In its best form, though, it’s not a mere refusal to obey a law. It involves a person publicly breaking an unjust law and accepting the consequences precisely in order to force an examination of that law in the public eye, and if necessary, in court. This is not “lawlessness.” It’s a deliberate attempt to invoke our legal system.

That’s happening right now in Montgomery County.  It’s not quite what happened in New York with those Town Clerks. They didn’t do anything to force a re-examination of marriage equality. In fact, they were willing to direct same-sex applicants other Clerks. Unlike Bruce Hanes, they did not say the marriage equality law was invalid; they merely claimed that they personally did not have to obey it.

Now, that’s lawlessness.

Perhaps this isn’t entirely fair. Those Clerks might say they weren’t protesting marriage equality per se, but the laws that force them to sign documents for marriages they personally deem invalid. It’s hard to believe their sincerity, though. They’d have to argue that religious freedom means that government officials can demand you pass their personal religious test before they’ll help you, and that, of course, is the opposite of religious freedom.

I see another difference between New York and Montgomery County, though: Civil disobedience doesn’t usually involve someone using their power to victimize citizens. Civil disobedience doesn’t much involve victims at all — the lack of victims is a sign that the law being disobeyed is unjust! It’s easy to identify by name the victims of the New York Town Clerks. The victims in Montgomery County, not so much.

Before I close, I want to point out something NOM founder Robert George published two days ago on the question of religious freedom:

Fifty years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr., responded in his Letter from Birmingham Jail to those who criticized his program of civil disobedience as mere willful law-breaking:

I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

King turned not inward to his own feelings of being aggrieved by the law, not to the intuitions of his autonomous self, and not even to a claim of his own rights. Instead he turned to “moral responsibility”—to obligation, to duty. He, like Newman, understood this as a duty to principles of justice we did not create, but to which we must respond. As the Declaration of Independence teaches us, prior to any laws made by men are the immutable standards of justice—standards by which we judge whether the laws are just and can rightfully command our obedience.

Robert George, fierce opponent of marriage equality, goes on to identify those standards:

These standards, of the equal dignity of all human persons, of their equal freedom, and of the accountability of government to the people…

As I said above: The irony is so bright it burns.

The Daily Agenda for Friday, July 26

TODAY’S AGENDA (Ours):
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Braunschweig, Germany; Ft. Wayne, IN; Halifax, NS; Hamburg, Germany; Harrisburg, PA; Latvia, Lithuania (Baltic Pride); London, ON; Norwich, UK; Nottingham, UK; Peel, ON; Pittsburgh, PA (Black Pride); Raleigh-Durham, NC (Black Pride); Stuttgart, Germany; Tórshavn, Faroe Islands.

Other Events This Weekend: Great Lakes Regional Rodeo, Belleville, MI; Bereans for Fairness Picnic; Berea, KY; Gay Day at ValleyFair and Soak City, Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN; Up Your Alley, San Francisco, CA.

TODAY’S AGENDA (Theirs):
Courage/EnCourage Conference 2013: Mundelein, IL. Just because Exodus International is closing up shop doesn’t mean that the ex-gay movement has gone away. In the Evangelical world, the Restored Hope Network has arisen as a more hard core successor to Exodus, while JONAH continues to offer its wares for Jews, Evergreen International for Mormons, and Courage for Roman Catholics. (NARTH, also, is still around, claiming to be the secular, professional arm of the movement.) This weekend, Courage and EnCourage (an auxiliary group “dedicated to the spiritual needs of parents, siblings, children, and other relatives and friends of persons who have same-sex attractions”) is holding its annual conference on the campus of University of Saint Mary of the Lake in Mundelein, Illinois, just north of Chicago. The conference kicked off last night with a talk by Dr. J. Budziszewski, a professor from the University of Texas, who asked “Why is there sex?” Another featured speaker this weekend is Fr. Paul Scalia, Chairman of Courage’s Board of Directors and the son of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Scalia argues that homosexuality is not a sexual orientation but a changeable “tendency.” Another speaker is Andrew Comiskey, the chairman and co-founder of Restored Hope Network. NARTH will be represented by Drs. Timothy Lock and William Consiglio. Frances Cardinal George will be the celebrant for today’s Mass, and Bishop John LeVoir of New Ulm, Minnesota will celebrate Mass tomorrow. The conference continues through Sunday.

THIS MONTH IN HISTORY:
Homosexuality and Lesbianism Treated with Metrazol: 1940. The professional literature before 1980 festers with countless torturous descriptions of psychiatry’s barbarous attempts at “curing” homosexuality. Many accounts deal with the application of painful electric shock delivered via electrodes attached to sensitive regions of the body (See, for example, Jan 18, Mar 11, Jun 3). But the imagination for new methods of torture didn’t end there. Dr. Newdigate M. Owensby, who practiced at Atlanta’s famed Medical Arts Building, published a brief paper in the July 1940 edition of the prestigious Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease describing his own unique experiments to cure homosexuality. He worked on “the assumption that homosexuality and lesbianism are symptoms of an under developed schizophrenia,” and this led him to try something new: injecting subjects with Metrazol, to produce an epileptic-type grand mal seizure. Other psychiatrists had been experimenting with Metrazol-induced seizures for schizophrenia since 1934, and their logic went like this: since epilepsy (which was considered a mental illness) and schizophrenia very rarely existed in the same individual, maybe inducing an artificial seizure might rid one of schizophrenia. Owensby extended his theory further, on the theory that Metrazol seizures might “liberate this previous fixation of the libido and the psychosexual energy becomes free once more to flow through regular physiological channels.” Who knows where he got that idea. But to give you an idea of what this seizure was like, here is a brief film clip (unrelated to Owensby’s report) of an unidentified patient experiencing a Metrazol-induced seizure:

Ownesby provided six case studies of his experiments:

Case I.-A white male of 19 years had been arrested and sentenced to prison because of moral turpitude (homosexuality). He was paroled for treatment and promised a pardon if his perversion was corrected. The family history was not enlightening. Homosexual experiences began during his fourteenth year and continued thereafter. Feminine mannerisms were evident. Metrazol was administered until fifteen shocks were produced. All homosexual desires had disappeared after the ninth shock, but treatment was continued until all feminine mannerisms had been removed. Normal sex relations were established and eighteen months later there had been no return of homosexual tendencies. He was granted a pardon.

Case 2.-A white male aged thirty-four years. Had been a homosexual since his fifteenth year. He was frank enough to admit that the only reason for seeking treatment was fear of exposure and subsequent disgrace. All homosexual desires disappeared after seven grand mal attacks were induced by metrazol. He was married four months later. At the expiration of ten months he stated there had been no recurrence of homosexual desires or practices.

Case 3.-A white male aged forty-four years. Had been a homosexual since early youth. Most of his past life had been spent in penal institutions because of the opportunities to indulge his perversion. He seemed proud of the fact that he was a “man-woman”. Was constantly inebriated when out of prison. Metrazol was administered until ten grand mal attacks had occurred. He appeared to be regenerated after the ninth seizure. His common law wife states that, with the exception of an occasional overindulgence in alcohol, he has been a normal, hard working man for the past six months.

Case 4–A white male aged twenty-five years. Has been a homosexual since his fifteenth year. His mother was a neurotic. A sister had a manic depressive attack. A brother was an alcoholic. The patient was seclusive and spent most of his free time in his room. Would take an occasional trip to another city in order to satiate his homosexual desires. Was reluctant to discuss his perversion. Six grand mal attacks were induced by metrazol. Normal sex relations became established shortly thereafter and at the expiration of three months the patient claimed to be sexually healthy.

Case 5.-A white male aged twenty-six years. Married. Had indulged in active homosexuality since his seventeenth year. Appeared to be an ambulatory schizophrenic. His marriage had been arranged by a doting mother. Had never been self supporting. An obvious personality change followed the sixth induced grand mal attack. Whereas he had formerly been indifferent to his family and friends, he began to show interest and affection for them. He secured a position after returning home and became self supporting. Six months after receiving the metrazol treatment, he reported that he had continued to be free from all homosexual desires.

Case 6.-A white female aged twenty-four years. Name and address given were admittedly fictitious. Said to have been a lesbian since puberty. Promiscuous. Preferred the active role. Inclined to boast of her conquests. Inebriate for past four years. Ten grand mal seizures were induced by metrazol. Became infatuated with an intern after the treatment had been discontinued and frequently complained of nocturnal emissions. Remained institutionalized for six weeks after the last treatment and appeared to be healthy in every way. No subsequent reports.

The report’s weak findings are obvious: no measures of sexual orientation before or after, no long-term follow-up, widespread evidence of involuntary or coerced participation — not to mention a deeply flawed belief in the nature of homosexuality itself. What’s more, it’s easy to imagine that anyone being subjected to this kind of torture would say or do anything to make it stop. In fact, the use of Metrazol-induced seizures was finally halted when it was found to be both ineffective and terrifying to patients. The seizures could be so severe that some patients actually experienced spinal fractures. It was later discovered that repeated treatments could, in some cases, lead to lasting brain damage. Needless to say, there is no evidence whatsoever that this treatment had any kind of effect in changing anyone’s sexual orientation. Indeed, in June 1949, Dr. George N. Thompson, writing for the same journal, would conclude that Metrazol shock therapy was ineffective in “curing” homosexuality.

But the National Association for the Research and Treatment of Homosexuality (NARTH) didn’t bother to read that memo. When they issued their so-called “Journal” in 2009 with a report which supposedly documents successful efforts to change sexual orientation, they included Owensby’s 1940 paper as a success story. Under the heading of “pharmacological interventions,” they write simply, “Owensby (1940) reported that six patients ceased all homosexual behavior after taking the drug Metrazol (pentetrazol).” They not only neglected to mention what Metrazol was all about — it wasn’t just some pill prescribed to patients — they also forgot to point out that the FDA revoked its approval of the drug in 1982.

[Sources: Newdigate M. Owensby. “Homosexuality and lesbianism treated with Metrazol.” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 92, no. 1 (July 1940): 65-66.

George N. Thompson. “Electroshock and other therapeutic considerations in sexual psychopathy.” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 109, no. 6 (June 1949): 531-539.

James E. Phelan, Neil Whitehead, Philip M. Sutton. “What the research shows: NARTH’s response to the APA claims on homosexuality.” Journal of Human Sexuality 1 (2009). ]

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Mel White: 1940. He had been an important behind-the-scenes figure in the Evangelical movement from the 1960s through the 1980s, working as a ghostwriter for Billy Graham (Approaching Hoofbeats: The Four Horsemen of the Apocolypse, 1983), Pat Robertson (America’s Dates With Destiny, 1986), and Jerry Falwel (If I Should Die Before I Wake, 1986, and his autobiography, Strength for the Journey, 1987). After he married in 1962, he revealed to his wife that he had always been attracted to other men. As White wrote in his own autobiography, Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay and Christian in America, he embarked on a more than two-decade long struggle to rid himself of the gay, including conventional psychotherapy, electric shock aversion therapy, and exorcism. None of it worked, and after he tried to kill himself, he and his wife agreed to amicable divorce. She later wrote the foreword for Stranger at the Gate, the 1994 autobiography in which White came out publicly as gay. In 1998, he founded Soulforce, an organization which advocates for LGBT people through dialogue and other forms of nonviolent direct action in the mode of Mahatman Ghandi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In 2008, White and his partner, Gary Nixon, were the first same-sex couple to be legally married at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena.

White has long been involved in other secular areas as well. Since 1965, he has produced 53 film and television documentaries and written sixteen books, including nine best-sellers. In 2009, White appeared in the fourteenth season of The Amazing Race with his son, screenwriter/director/actor Mike White. His latest book, Holy Terror: Lies the Christian Right Tells Us to Deny Gay Equality, was published last year by Magnus Books.

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?

First recognized same-sex union in Colombia

El Tiempo (Google Translate)

On Wednesday, for the first time in Colombia, a judge declared civilly married to a same-sex couple.

Carlos Hernando Giraldo Rivera and Gonzalo Ruiz signed an unnamed civil contract in court Bogotá municipal civil 67 consisting of a voluntary agreement to form a family.

Carlos, 57, and Gonzalo, 44, acquired the same rights as civil law provides for heterosexual couples in the marriage contract.

Both are committed to comply with all obligations under that provision for couples, to join through marriage.

[Este miércoles, por primera vez en Colombia, una jueza declaró civilmente casados a una pareja del mismo sexo.

Carlos Hernando Rivera y Gonzalo Ruiz Giraldo firmaron un contrato civil innominado ante el juzgado 67 civil municipal de Bogotá consistente en un acuerdo de voluntades para formar una familia.

Carlos, de 57 años y Gonzalo, de 44, adquirieron los mismos derechos que contempla la ley civil para las parejas heterosexuales en el contrato del matrimonio.

Ambos se comprometieron a cumplir todas las obligaciones previstas en dicha norma para las parejas, que se unan a través del casamiento.]

There is disagreement over what the legal procedure is to be called. The trial judge insisted to them that it could never be called a marriage and a former Constitutional Court President has argued the same to the press. However, activists and the couple are using the term.

The legal rights of marriage became available to same-sex couples through the failure of the legislature to act. In July 2011 the Constitutional Court found it unconstitutional to deny marriage rights to same-sex couples and gave the legislature a deadline of June 20th of this year. That date passed without the legislature agreeing upon a structure by which to achieve rights, and so earlier this month a judge in Bogota ruled that same-sex couples could avail themselves of the rights and obligations of marriage.

What this contract is to be called may be determined by the Constitutional Court, but as the legislature has not created a civil union or other comparable structure, it may be judicially deemed to be the only legal structure that exists, a civil marriage.