Box Turtle Bulletin

NOM Co-Founder to Head Commission on Religious Freedom

Robert George has been selected to head the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. According to a press release issued Tuesday:

Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University and a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School, was elected today as Chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).  Professor George was appointed to the Commission in 2012 by Speaker of the House John Boehner and is serving his first term as a Commissioner.

Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett, USCIRF’s outgoing Chair and an appointee of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, announced Professor George’s selection. “I have been honored to work alongside Professor George this past year in the struggle to guarantee religious freedom abroad for people of every faith and shade of belief.  He is a true human rights champion whose compassion for victims of oppression and wisdom about international religious freedom shine through all we have accomplished this past year. Our bipartisan Commission is united in its admiration for Professor George’s skills as an advocate and leader of the international religious freedom movement. The Commission is eager to continue its work under his able leadership.”

George, who co-founded the National Organization for Marriage and is one of the key authors of the Federal Marriage Amendment and the Manhattan Declaration, was first appointed by House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) to the commission last year. In 2009, George signed a letter which mildly criticized Uganda’s proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill (a.k.a. the “Kill the Gays” Bill) but tacitly approved jail terms for LGBT people. He has recently said that he would vow to defy any “man-made laws” which conflicts with his view of what he thinks God wants. AFter the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, George called on the American people to “rise up” in a “national rebellion.” George has been a part of a growing number of voices among anti-gay extremists who claim that any advance in human rights for LGBT people represents an infringement on religious freedom. He now has a powerful platform to take that message abroad.

In 2010 George published the article “What Is Marriage?” in The Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, which BTB’s Rob Tisinai critiqued at length in a series of posts. You can access those critiques here.

The Daily Agenda for Thursday, July 25

TODAY’S AGENDA:
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:
Dr. Barry’s Death Reveals a Lifelong Secret: 1865. Before Britain’s Inspector General of Military Hospitals, Dr. James Barry, died, he left strict instructions that no one was to change him out of the clothes in which he died. But the charwoman sent to prepare his corpse had no room for such nonsense. And so when she pulled his nightshirt up to wash his boody, she screamed: “The devil! It’s a woman!”

Dr Barry, while alive, was known as a fierce and demanding doctor, and in the process became one of the most highly respected and feared surgeons in Victorian England, feared for his combative temper and fierce determination. He famously got in a bitter argument with Florence Nightingale, who called him a “brute” and “the most hardened creature I ever met throughout the Army.” As Inspector General, he fought for better food, hygiene, sanitation and proper medical care for soldiers and for prisoners. His reforms undoubtedly saved thousands of lives. He became the top-ranking doctor in the British Army, where despite his argumentative personality, he was also reputed to have an very good bedside manner. Many who knew him also remarked on his high, soft voice and his diminutive stature — he stood barely five feet tall on special stacked-soled shoes. His black manservant, who joined Barry’s employment in South Africa and would remain with him for the next fifty years, was entrusted with the task of laying out six small towels every morning that Barry used to conceal his curves and broaden his shoulders.

Despite the charwoman’s discovery upon his death, his secret remained tightly held and he was buried under the only name he had gone by since his early twenties. It wouldn’t be until the 1950s when his British Army records were unsealed that it was revealed that Barry had been born in Ireland as Margaret Buckley to a forward thinking family who were staunch supporters of women’s rights. But whatever ideals the family may have had about what women were capable of achieving, society’s limitations said otherwise and women were barred from studying medicine. So Margaret became James Barry shortly after she, then he, beginning training to become a doctor. And in every respect, he remained a man in what was very much a man’s world until the day he died.

Barry’s life and career is the subject of Rachel Holmes’s 2007 book, The Secret Life of Dr James Barry: Victorian England’s Most Eminent Surgeon.

Rock Hudson’s AIDS Diagnosis Confirmed: 1985. The rumors had been swirling for some time, coming to a head when Rock Hudson was admitted into Paris’s Pasteur Institute for what was clearly a very serious illness. He had appeared a few days earlier on Doris Day’s television talk show appearing gaunt, and his speech was nearly incoherent. His admission to Pasteur only increased speculation that Hudson was suffering from AIDS, since the world-famous Institute was a leading research and treatment center for the disease. But the official line remained that Hudson was battling liver cancer until this date in 1985, when his publicist revealed that Hudson had been diagnosed with AIDS the year before. Of Hudson’s stay at the Paris hospital, the spokesperson said, “He’s lucid. He’s talking, He’s joking… He’s feeling much better and in quite good spirits.” But his publicist remained circumspect about Hudson’s sexuality, saying only, “He doesn’t have any idea now how he contracted AIDS. … Nobody around him has AIDS.”

That would change a few weeks later when, apparently with Hudson’s blessing, close friends Angie Dickinson, Robert Stack and Mamie Van Doren acknowledged Hudson’s sexuality in a supportive article in People magazine. Messages of support flowed in from Morgan Fairchild, Joan Rivers, and, of course Elizabeth Taylor. Hudson’s death less than three months later provoked another wave of sympathy and galvanized much of Hollywood, with Elizabeth Taylor’s prodding, to undertake the task of reducing the stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Thomas Eakins: 1844. Born and raised in Philadelphia, he studied drawing and anatomy at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and anatomy and dissection at Jefferson Medical College. His interest in the human body led him to briefly consider becoming a surgeon, but after studying art in Paris, he took his interest in the human anatomy in a very different direction, becoming one of the finest painters of the human form. While he painted hundreds of portraits throughout his lifetime, he made his particular interests clear while still a student in Paris. He wrote home:

“I can conceive of few circumstances wherein I would have to paint a woman naked, but if I did I would not mutilate her for double the money. She is the most beautiful thing there is — except a naked man, but I never yet saw a study of one exhibited… It would be a godsend to see a fine man model painted in the studio with the bare walls, alongside of the smiling smirking goddesses of waxy complexion amidst the delicious arsenic green trees and gentle wax flowers & purling streams running melodious up & down the hills especially up. I hate affectation.”

Salutat, 1898.

For Eakins, nudity was the essence of truthfulness, which in turn was the underpinning of the realist style in which he worked. And it was that insistence on truthfulness that got him in trouble. In 1886, he was forced to resign from the faculty of the Pennsylvania Academy after he removed the loincloth of a male model in a class which included female students. Despite the public outcry, several students left the Academy in protest over Eakins’s departure. They formed the Art Students’ League of Philadelphia, and enlisted Eakins as their instructor. He also taught at several other institutions, but his teaching career ended came to a close by 1898, just three years after being dismissed from the Drexel Institute for, again, using a fully nude male model.

Eakins married Susan Hannah MacDowell, one of his students, in 1884. Their marriage was childless, but they both shared a love of painting (Susan was a skilled artist in her own right) and photography, which Eakins had taken up in the 1880s. Amid further controversy, his photography often involved nude subjects (including a full-frontal nude photo of his friend and fellow Philadelphia, Walt Whitman), as works of art themselves, or as studies for his paintings. His entire body of work can be seen as a yearning for freedom — from what or for what, we can only guess. But looking at the obvious homoeroticism of his art, that guess is not a difficult one to make.

J. Warren Kerrigan: 1879. While little-known today, Kerrigan had been a very popular silent film star, appearing in films for Essanay, Biograph, and later Universal. He typically played a leading role, as a modern, well-dressed man-about town. He nearly killed his career over a glib remark about his refusal to enlist in World War I. He managed to salvage his reputation in 1923 with the lead role in The Covered Wagon. That success opened the doors to five more hit films in the next year, and with that his financial security was assured. He retired from filmmaking and lived with his devoted partner of forty years until Kerrigan died in 1947 at the age of 67.

Gareth Thomas: 1974. Nicknamed “Alfie,” the Welsh rugby player was the first professional rugby union player to announce publicly that he was gay. He told The Daily Mail, “I don’t want to be known as a gay rugby player. I am a rugby player, first and foremost I am a man.” I think he succeeded. Since I don’t know squat about rugby I’ll just quote from Wikipedia, which says:

He is currently ranked 12th among international try scorers and is the second highest Wales try scorer behind Shane Williams. He also won 4 rugby league caps for Wales, scoring 3 tries. He played rugby union for Bridgend, Cardiff, the Celtic Warriors, Toulouse, Cardiff Blues and Wales as a fullback, wing or centre. In 2010 he moved to rugby league, playing for the Crusaders RL in the Super League, and for Wales. He retired from rugby in October 2011.

He retired after breaking his arm during a match in July 2011. After failing to recover in tome for the 2011 Rugby League Four Nations Tournament in October, he announced his retirement.

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Same-sex marriage takes place in Pennsylvania

Basing his opinion on the language in the recent Supreme Court ruling on DOMA3, County Register of Wills D. Bruce Hanes determined that Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, had no reason not to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. (WaPo)

At least five same-sex couples obtained marriage licenses Wednesday in a suburban Philadelphia county that is defying a state ban on such unions.

Alicia Terrizzi and Loreen Bloodgood, of Pottstown, were the only couple to marry right away, exchanging vows in a park before a minister and their two young sons.

It is not immediately determinable whether these marriages will be reversed in court – or even if they will be challenged.

The ACLU has sued the state for marriage equality, and State Attorney General Kathleen Kane, a Democrat, has said that she believes the law to be unconstitutional and will not defend it in court. Governor Tom Corbett, a Republican, has as yet not stated his intent with either the ACLU lawsuit nor the Montgomery County marriages. Also silent is Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Ferman, a Republican.

Rest in peace, Emile Griffith

Former world champion boxer Emile Griffith died today, aged 75. Griffith was a powerhouse in the ring from 1961 until his retirement in 1977, with more championship bouts than anyone else in boxing history and his record standing at 85-24-2 with 23 knockouts.

But he is probably best known for a fight on March 24, 1962 against Benny “The Kid” Paret. Paret had taunted him in the locker-room with a homophobic slur; Griffith went into the ring at Madison Square Garden before a live television audience and fought mercilessly. Peret was knocked out, went into a coma, and died 10 days later.

Griffith was hated both by the public and tortured by himself after that event. He always insisted that he never intended to kill Peret, but he also acknowledged that he was angry and the fight was personal. His boxing style changed after that bout and he fought more for points and technical wins rather than knockouts. He never quite got over the fight, and the boxing world didn’t either.

Lesser known was Griffith’s struggle coming to terms with his sexuality. While he never admitted to being bisexual or gay during his career – who would in 1962? – he did live in such a way that left few doubts. (ESPN)

“He was a tremendous boxer and person,” Ross said. “It is almost a blessing that he passed away because he has been in a vegetative state the last couple years. To know him was a privilege. He transcended being a boxer, or being gay or straight. He lived life with the fullest joy. He passed that on to everyone he knew, and not many have that as a legacy.

“Emile never felt like he was different; he lived his life openly. He’d go to a gay bar and he wouldn’t go into a side entrance; he’d go in the front door. He never flaunted it, but it was natural to him to lead his life the way he wanted to.”

And in 1992 this came to tragedy. The real story is lost to Griffith’s increasing pugilistic dementia, but any version is horrific (Sports Illustrated):

It’s a summer evening. Emile gets off an airplane at JFK. He should be exhausted. He should go straight to his mother’s house in Queens Village, where he’s moved back into the finished basement along with Luis. He has just flown back from Australia, where the boxer he trains, junior welterweight Juan LaPorte, has lost to Kostya Tszyu. Emile takes a cab to Manhattan.

He ends up in Hombre, a gay bar on West 41st Street hard by the Port Authority. He can relax more in gay bars than in straight ones, he tells people, because the people there are far less likely to challenge him to a fight. But suddenly he feels so woozy that he wonders if someone put something in his drink. He steps outside. Here comes the smoke.

A gang of men jumps him, beats him with pipes, robs him and leaves him for dead on the street. Later he staggers onto the wrong train, but finally, after hours have passed, he stumbles home. That’s what Emile tells LaPorte, who comes to the Griffith home at the request of Emile’s frightened mother and takes him to the hospital.

The men catch him stepping into a cab, slam the door on his body over and over again until he drops. That’s what Keith Stechman, a friend, says Emile told him.

Two guys start a fight in the bar. He follows them outside to break it up and two more join them, all turning on him, trying to take his money and beating him with baseball bats. That’s what Butch Miller, Jack Miller’s son, says Emile told the Miller family.

They kick him with heavy boots, kick every part of his body as if he were a dog. That’s what Luis Rodrigo, the first to find him when he staggers home, says Emile told him.

He nearly dies in the hospital. His battered kidneys fail, he goes on dialysis, then his spine gets infected. The severity and site of the beating suggests a gay bashing, a hate crime, but no one will ever know. By the time Emile comes home, two months later, he remembers almost nothing of it. It vanishes in smoke.

In 2005, Ring of Fire: the Emile Griffith Story explored his sexuality and his sport and how the two had melded to impact his life. Even in that year he couldn’t self identify as gay, though he viewed himself as having a place in our community (NYTimes)

I asked Mr. Griffith if he was gay, and he told me no. But he looked as if he wanted to say more. He told me he had struggled his entire life with his sexuality, and agonized over what he could say about it. He said he knew it was impossible in the early 1960’s for an athlete in an ultramacho sport like boxing to say, “Oh, yeah, I’m gay.”

But after all these years, he wanted to tell the truth. He’d had relations, he said, with men and women. He no longer wanted to hide. He hoped to ride this year in New York’s Gay Pride Parade.

He did ride in 2007.

By all accounts, Griffith was a kind and generous man in a difficult world and time. May his rest be peaceful.

The Daily Agenda for Wednesday, July 24

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Braunschweig, Germany; Budva, Montenegro (Today only); 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.

Kitty Lambert and Cheryle Rudd were married at midnight at Niagara Falls.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
New Yorkers Get Married: 2011. Shortly after the stroke of midnight, Niagara Falls mayor Paul Dyster pronounced Kitty Lambert and Cheryle Rudd spouses for life as the world-famous falls in the background were lit in rainbow hues.

At about the same time, Albany Mayor Jerry Jennings presided over the wedding of Dale Getto and Barb Lavin in the Common Council’s chambers. And with that, New Yorkers began to celebrate the arrival of marriage equality in the Empire State. On this date, New York became the most populous state in the union providing marriage equality for all of its citizens.

Dale Getto and Barb Laven married in Albany shortly after midnight.

When New York City officials announced that they would open their doors on Sunday for the first day of marriage equality, they worried that high demand would overload city clerk’s offices throughout the city. To manage the demand, they had established a lottery for 764 slots. But on Thursday before the big day, officials announced that they would be able to issue licenses for all 823 couples who applied for the slots. New York law provides for a 24-hour waiting period after obtaining a license before they can marry, but judges from around the state volunteered to be available at registrars offices to offer that exemption.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Gus Van Sant: 1952. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Van Sant’s traveling salesman father moved the family around through much of his childhood. One thing remained constant though, and it was the young Van Sant’s interest in painting and Super-8 filmmaking. He enrolled at the Rhode Island School of Design to study painting, but he switched to cinema after being introduced to avant-garde films. Since avant-garde films were never much of a money-maker, Van Sant became familiar with some of the more derelict areas along Hollywood Boulevard, and 1985’s Mala Noche, the story of a doomed love affair between a gay store clerk and a Mexican immigrant, was the first of many films touching on the fringes of society. 1989’s Drugstore Cowboy and 1991’s My Own Private Idaho became signature films which established Van Sant as a director to be taken seriously.

His 1993 flop, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, very nearly unraveled his career, but 1995’s To Die For (starring Nicole Kidman, Matt Dillon and Joaquin Phoenix), his first major studio production for Columbia, set the stage for his move into the mainstream. Good Will Hunting, starring and written by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, earned Van Sant a Best Director Oscar nomination. His remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho was considerably less successful. His decision to re-create Hitchcock’s film shot-for-shot in color instead of black and white left everyone scratching their heads. Since then, he has returned to art-house films, including Elephant (a fictional film inspired by the 1999 Columbine shooting) earned the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2003. He returned to the mainstream again in 2008 with his biopic Milk about the late San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk. Again, Van Sant was nominated for an Oscar for Best Director. (He lost to Danny Boyle for Slumdog Millionaire.

Kirk, at the age of 4 years and 6 months, just a few months before entering treatment at UCLA’s Feminine Boy Project (Photo courtesy of the family)

Kirk Andrew Murphy: 1965. For nearly four decades, Kirk was known only as “Kraig,” but under that pseudonym he was well known among behavioral therapists who were trying to prevent homosexuality and transgender identities in very young children. The seeds for “Kraig’s” fame were planted in the summer of 1970, when Kirk’s mother saw a television program featuring famed sexologist Dr. Richard Green describing a new federally-funded treatment program at UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute. She listened to his spiel about the dangers of effeminate boys growing up to become homosexual, and she worried that her own young son was headed for trouble. So a month before his fifth birthday, she him to UCLA where Kirk came under the care of a young grad student by the name of George Rekers. Ten months later, five-year-old Kirk was declared to be rid of his “severe gender identity disturbance,” and Kirk’s case would help Rekers earn his Ph.D. in 1972.

Two years later, Rekers published his case report of “Kyle” in the Journal of Applied Behavioral Analysis, where he described “Kyle’s” treatment and the astounding “success.” This was the first time anyone had reported curing a young child’s budding homosexuality or transgenderism — no one was ever quite sure what it was they though they saw in Kirk — and that paper became one of the more widely-cited papers in the late 1970s. Kirk’s case launched Rekers’s career, first as an acclaimed or controversial young psychologist (depending on one’s point of view at the time), and later as a significant anti-gay activist when he co-founded the Family Research Council in 1983. Throughout Rekers’s career he would write at least twenty papers describing Kirk’s case as an example of the power of his treatment program to prevent homosexuality and transgender identity in very young children. The most recent publication touting “Kraig’s” supposedly successful cure appeared in a 2009 book promoted by the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), where Rekers served on its Scientific Advisory Committee. Of course, all of that was before Rekers was discovered returning from a European vacation in the company of a male escort in 2010.

But it wouldn’t be until 2011 when the truth about “Kraig” would finally emerge. Our award winning original BTB investigation revealed that Kirk’s therapy was highly abusive; that contrary to Rekers’s persistent reports, Kirk was not straight; that Kirk struggled all his life with the shame that his treatment at UCLA had been instilled in him; and that his struggle finally ended with his suicide in December of 2003. If Kirk were alive today, he would be 48 years old. His is still deeply missed by his mother, brother, sister and friends.

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Former Exodus Vice President Issues Open Apology to LGBT Community

Randy Thomas, Exodus International’s former vice president, has posted an apology to the gay community on his personal blog, covering three specific areas in which he has been active during his two decades as part of Exodus and its member ministries. I only want to post a few excerpts here, but would encourage you to read the whole thing. The first part covers his work in public policy:

I participated in the hurtful echo chamber of condemnation. I gave lip service to the gay community, but really did not exemplify compassion for them. I placed the battle over policy above my concern for real people. I sometimes valued the shoulder pats I was given by religious leaders more than Jesus’ commandment to love and serve. That was wrong and I’m disappointed in myself. Please forgive me.

I directly empowered people to co-opt my testimony and use it against the gay community. There were a few times I almost worked up the nerve to confront them, only to hear them invoke my name at an opportune moment. “Of course I love gay people,” they would say. “Just look at my good friend Randy…” It was very selfish of me to back down in these situations. I apologize.

The second part deals with how he dealth with some of the problems he observed at Exodus:

In 1992, I was part of an Exodus affiliated ministry in Texas that believed being in relationship with Jesus alone was our goal. I never felt pressured to change my same sex orientation. I saw my life greatly improved by having the freedom to question my sexuality and identity. I assumed this was what happened at every Exodus group, and I ended up idealizing the entire ministry based on my singular experiences in Texas. However, after joining the Exodus staff, I was confronted with the reality that some methods used by some of our local ministries ended up bringing hurt and pain to the very people they were trying to comfort.

There are many good people in the broader Exodus movement that I didn’t want to hurt by sharing the bad we’d uncovered. Other staff members and I dealt with some of these ills privately. But by keeping quiet, and not even letting our own leaders know the depths of what concerned us, I contributed to the negative response surrounding Alan’s recent apology. To protect some leaders, which wasn’t totally inappropriate, others didn’t know how bad some things had gotten. Therefore, some have been shocked that Alan apologized and that I, among others, were supportive. In order to protect the reputation of some, I chose silence. I apologize for remaining silent and passive. Looking back on my time with Exodus, it seems I was always waiting for a convenient time to discuss some of my concerns publicly. But as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “There is never a wrong time to do the right thing.”

The third part relates to some of the teachings he helped to promote at Andrew Comiskey’s Living Waters program. It’s worth remembering that Comiskey was one of the first Exodus ministry leaders to publicly criticize Exodus president Alan Chambers after Chambers acknowledged that “99.9%” of ex-gay ministry members “have not experienced a change in their orientation,” disavowed the particular form of sexual orientation change therapy known as Reparative Therapy, and acknowledged that gay Christians can enter heaven. Comiskey is now board chairman for Restored Hope Network, comprised of a hard core breakway group of former Exodus ministries. Comisky has denounced Chambers’s apology to the gay community, which Chambers delivered immediately before shutting down Exodus International altogether. Of Thomas’s work with Comiskey’s Living Waters, he writes:

When I look back at some of my old interviews, group meetings, and keynotes over the past twenty years, I realize there are many things I would communicate differently today. In the past I taught quite a mixture of performance-based accomplishment along with God’s grace. I taught that God is always present, but if we don’t manage our sin properly, it could negatively impact our relationship with Him.

That’s not grace. It doesn’t take seriously the finished work of the Cross.

I look back on my time as a Living Waters coordinator (eleven years ago) with the most remorse. Even though there is some good in this program, it often ripped open old wounds in the name of healing by attempting to manufacture an environment for the Lord to work in. I have to apologize for the times some people may have felt manipulated to bare their souls to a group full of strangers. I apologize for any pressure we, on the Living Waters team I led, might have placed on group participants as we tried to help them cultivate “authentic experiences.”

As a trained Living Waters coordinator, I used to hang on to every word Andrew Comiskey said. I even did some online consulting work for him. But today, over a year after leaving his employ as a consultant, I look back and recognize there were signs that something was wrong. In retrospect, I realize I helped build Andrew Comiskey’s online platforms – platforms which have increasingly gotten more vitriolic and stigmatizing toward the LGBT community. I regret that and I’m sorry.

As I said, his entire apology is worth reading. No single apology or statement can ever cover two decades of work. When someone sets about writing such an apology, the first difficulty they will encounter is the near-impossibility of  addressing those things which perhaps they don’t remember, which didn’t leave much of an impression on them, or can’t bring themselves emotionally to address, but were nevertheless harmful to others. When there is so much to address, where do you begin? All you can do is to begin where you know to begin. That’s why turning over a new leaf is such a lengthy process, of ongoing and continual discovery and, perhaps, repeated or new apologies. It would take an entire memoir’s worth of apologies to cover it all.

So there will always be things that people can point to and say he left this out or he glossed over that. And many will inevitably be right. This apology — or any apology — won’t be the thing that sets things right. But it can be the thing that allows the work of setting things right to begin.

The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, July 23

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Charlotte Saunders Cushman: 1816. The American stage actress began her career as an opera singer at the age of thirteen, following the death of her father. She had learned to sing from a friend of her father, who was also a foreman at a Boston piano factory, and she is said to have possessed a remarkable contralto range. But when her singing voice suddenly failed due to strain, she switched gears and became a noted drama actress, with a particular flair for Shakespeare. She and her sister, Susan Webb Cushman, became famous for playing Romeo and Juliet together, with Charlotte playing the role of Romeo to Susan’s Juliet.

In 1848 while in Europe, Charlotte met journalist and sometime actress Matilda Hays, and they began a ten year affair during which they became known for dressing alike. Charlotte retired from the stage in 1852 and the couple moved to Rome, where they immersed themselves in an expatriate community consisting mainly of lesbian artists. Hays and Cushman split in 1857, and Cushman became involved with the sculptor Emma Stebens. She returned to the U.S. for a tour, and before returning to Italy in 1861 she was offered a farewell performance of the title role of Hamlet in Washington, D.C., the first of at least seven different so-called farewell performances over the next seven years. Her final final performance on the stage wouldn’t be until May of 1875 at Boston’s Globe Theater, nine months before she died at the age of 59 of pneumonia.

155 YEARS AGO: Edward Prime-Stevenson (a.k.a. “Xavier Mayne”): 1858. Trained as a lawyer though he never practiced, Edward Irenaeus Prime-Stevenson was known as a very cosmopolitan man of letters, befitting one who was born into a wealthy and cultured family. A master of nine languages, he wrote poetry, short fiction, magazine serials and travel essays for Harpers and The New York Independent before settling on music criticism. Early in his career, he wrote two books for boys: White Cockades: An Incident of the “Forty-Five” (1887), a historical fiction about a young Prince Pretender, and Left to Themselves: Being the Ordeal of Philip and Gerald (1891).

It was at about that time that he began dividing his time between the U.S. and Europe, and by the time the century turned, he was spending most of his time, never quite settled, in a regular circuit that consisted of stays in London, Paris, Budapest, Florence, and Rome. His beloved mother had died and left him an independently wealthy man, and his great love, Henry Harkness Flager, the son of a railroad magnate, had dumped him to marry a woman. As Stevenson let it be known in a few of his letters, he found America too oppressive for one such as he.

While in Naples in 1906, he published his “little psychological romance,” Imre: A Memorandum, under the pen name of Xavier Mayne. Imre, about a young Hungarian military officer’s relationship with another man, and was notable for two reasons. Not only was it the first American novel to deal openly and sympathetically with homosexuality, but it did so with a story line with a happily-ever-after ending.

Stevenson, again as Xavier Mayne, followed that with another book, The Intersexes: A History of Similisexualism as a Problem in Social Life, which he published privately in Rome in 1908. (“Intersex” was often used to refer to gay men or women under the idea that they were members of the “intermediate sex”. “Simisexual” was an all-Latin form of the word “homosexual,” which scandalized some scholars for its hybridization, some said “bastardiazation,” of Greek and Latin roots.) This 646-page opus, dedicated to the memory of the German writer Richard von Krafft-Ebing, covered an incredible array of topics: homosexuality in the ancient world and among primitive peoples, animal studies, gay geniuses, literature, ancient and modern legal codes, male prostitution, blackmail, violence, and contemporary anecdotes, gossip and scandals. It is considered the first great defense of homosexuality in the English language, as in this passage (where he uses Krafft-Ebing’s “Uranian” to refer to gay men):

Happiest of all, surely, are those Uranians, ever numerous who have no wish nor need to fly society — or themselves. Knowing what they are, understanding the natural, the moral strength of their position as homosexuals; sure of right on their side, even if it be never accorded to them in the lands where they must live; fortunate in either due self-control or private freedom — day by day, they go on through their lives, self-respecting and respected, in relative peace

From 1913, Stevenson published Her Enemy, some Friends — and Other Personages, a collection of short stories, many of them with overtly gay themes. This time, he published it under his own name. He stayed busy through the 1920s and 1930s, but by then he was writing mostly about music. When World War II broke out, he retreated to Lausanne, Switzerland, where he died in 1942.

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And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?

Judge grants injunctive relief to Ohio married couple

John Arthur and Jim Obergefell married last week in Maryland. It is a marriage that is doomed to be short, as Arthur has ALS and is not expected to live much longer.

Upon returning, they sued in Federal Court to have Ohio, their home state, recognize their marriage. In 2004, voters amended the Ohio Constitution to limit recognition of marriage to opposite-sex couples.

Today Federal Judge Timothy S. Black ordered that the State of Ohio recognize the marriage and list the couple as married on Arthur’s death certificate.

This Court finds that Plaintiffs have established by clear and convincing evidence their entitlement to injunctive relief. Accordingly, Plaintiffs’ motion for a temporary restraining order (Doc. 3) is GRANTED, and a temporary restraining order shall issue by separate order, directing, inter alia, that the local Ohio Registrar of death certificates is hereby ORDERED not to accept for recording a death certificate for John Arthur whichdoes not record his status as “married” and/or does not record James Obergefell as Mr.Arthur’s “surviving spouse” at the time of Mr. Obergefell’s death, which is imminent.

Ohio recognizes heterosexual marriages in other states that it would not allow to be conducted within its borders (first cousins, for example) provided that the marriage was legal where conducted. While this order is not a ruling on the merits of the case, it seems a foregone conclusion that Judge Black will find for Arthur and Obergefell when this case is determined.

Federal Judge Orders Ohio Officials To Recognize Gay Couple’s Marriage

In as stunningly swift development, a Federal Judge has issued a temporary restraining order requiring Ohio state officials to recongize the marriage of John Arthur and Jim Obergefell, who were married two weeks ago in Maryland. Federal District Judge Timothy Black ordered Ohio officials to recognize the Cincinnati couple’s out-of-state marriage just as they recognizing marriges performed in other states even when those marriages cannot be performed in Ohio:

Throughout Ohio’s history, Ohio law has been clear: a marriage solemnized outside of Ohio is valid in Ohio if it is valid where solemnized. Thus, for example,under Ohio law, out-of-state marriages between first cousins are recognized by Ohio,even though Ohio law does not authorize marriages between first cousins. Likewise,under Ohio law, out of state marriages of minors are recognized by Ohio, even thoughOhio law does not authorize marriages of minors.

How then can Ohio, especially given the historical status of Ohio law, single outsame sex marriages as ones it will not recognize? The short answer is that Ohio cannot … at least not under the circumstances here.

By treating lawful same sex marriages differently than it treats lawful opposite sexmarriages (e.g., marriages of first cousins and marriages of minors), Ohio law, as applied to these Plaintiffs, likely violates the United States Constitution which guarantees that”No State shall make or enforce any law which shall … deny to any person within its jurisdiction equal protection of the laws.

The end result here and now is that the local Ohio Registrar of death certificates is hereby ORDERED not to accept for recording a death certificate for John Arthur that does not record Mr. Arthur’s status at death as ‘married’ and James Obergefell as his ‘surviving spouse,'”

Judge Black noted that when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, it left in place Section 2, which allows states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states, but:

…the issue whether States canrefuse to recognize out-of-state same sex marriages is now surely headed to the fore.Indeed, just as Justice Scalia predicted in his animated dissent, by virtue of the presentlawsuit, “the state-law shoe” has now dropped in Ohio.

John Arthur is bedridden with ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease, a progressive neurological disease which robs patients with the ability to walk, move, and eventually breath. When the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, Arthur and Obergefell, partners of 20 years, used donations from friends and relatives to charter a special medical transport plane and fly to Maryland two weeks ago, accompanied by a nurse, two pilots trained in emergency medicine, and Arthur’s aunt, who had been ordained specifically to perform the wedding. They married on the tarmac at an airport in Baltimore and immediately returned to their home in Cincinnati. Last Friday, the couple filed a lawsuit in Cincinnati Federal District Court demanding that the State of Ohio recognize their marriage.

Judge Black limited the order to Arthur and Obergefell only, citing the plaintiff’s “strong likelihood of success on the merits” and Arthur’s declining health for the urgency of his order:

…In addition to the alleged denial of Plaintiffs’ constitutional rights, the Court must also consider the fact that Mr. Arthur is in hospice care and death is imminent. Without a temporary restraining order, the official record of Mr. Arthur’s death, and the last official document recording his existence on earth, will incorrectly classify him as unmarried, despite his legal marriage to Mr. Obergefell. The death certificate will also incorrectly fail to record Mr. Obergefell as the “surviving spouse,” which status he lawfully enjoys. Furthermore, Mr. Arthur wants to be buried in his family plot at Spring Grove Cemetery. He also wants Mr. Obergefell to be buried next to him someday. The family plot directive limits those who may be interred in the plot to descendants and married spouses. Thus, without a temporary restraining order, Mr. Arthur’s burial may be delayed or his remains may have to be exhumed when this case is finally decided.

…Moreover, there is absolutely no evidence that the State of Ohio or its citizens will be harmed by the issuance of an order temporarily restraining the enforcement of these provisions against the Plaintiffs in this case. No one beyond Plaintiffs themselves will beaffected by such a limited order at all. Without an injunction, however, the harm toPlaintiffs is severe.

[via BuzzFeed]

Montenegro to have a Pride Parade

Montenegro is a small Eastern European nation on the Adriatic Sea about the size of Connecticut (with about one sixth of that state’s population). It’s a bit of an anomaly, in that the laws and official positions of the nation are not hostile (homosexuality was decriminalized in 1977 and Montenegro is a signatory on the UN Resolution supporting same) while the culture in this Orthodox country is socially conservative and partiarchal. Most gay people keep a very low profile.

So it is quite a notable event that a Pride Parade has been planned (AFP)

Traditionally conservative Montenegro is to hold its first ever gay pride parade later this week in the coastal town of Budva, organisers said Monday.

“The first Montenegrin gay parade will be held on Wednesday, July 24, in front of the walls of Budva’s old town,” a centuries-old tourist resort on the Adriatic Coast, said Aleksandar Zekovic of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) forum Progress.

Welcome Baby Cambridge

CNN

It’s a boy! Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, and husband Prince William on Monday welcomed their first child.
The baby boy was born at 4:24 p.m., weighing 8 pounds, 6 ounces. A name has not yet been announced for the child, who is now third in line to the throne.

“Her Royal Highness and her child are both doing well,” read an official announcement that was placed outside Buckingham Palace.

Welcome, Baby Cambridge. It’s quite a different world than the one your great-grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, entered. And when you gain your throne, should the monarchy continue ’til then, we cannot begin to guess what challenges or triumphs will face you and this world you have just met.

BSB: In a World Like This

The new Backstreet Boys video In a World Like This

A rapturous day in NOMville

It’s Working!

So declares the National Organization for Marriage (theirs, not yours) on their NOMblog site. Due to NOM, and their vast army of members (several dozen, at least), the House of Representatives is quickly surging forward to support the anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment introduced by Rep. Tim Huelskamp.

A few weeks ago when I wrote to you urging you to contact your federal legislators urging them to support the Marriage Protection Amendment introduced by Rep. Tim Huelskamp, you were quick to respond. Well, now I can write to you to tell you that when you spoke up, your elected leaders listened!

The proposed amendment now has over 40 cosponsors signed on! [emphasis in the original]

Oh rapturous day!! Forty cosponsors!! And in just three weeks!!!

Now only 250 more Representatives to go to get the needed vote. And then on to the Senate where there are neither sponsors nor supporters. But surely once NOM’s mighty army marches forth they’ll fall into place.

It’s Working!

Churches in Minnesota get ready for same-sex marriages

The concept of conducting a same-sex marriage may not seem to be tough; you just do what you would do with an opposite-sex couple. But in practice, there are some differences that require pastors to adjust.

From the Austin (Minnesota) Daily Herald:

At Edina Morningside Community Church, a United Church of Christ congregation, Pastor Rosemary Rocha will be performing her first same-sex marriage at the church next month. When talking to the two men who want to be married by her, Rocha says she asked them, “Do I pronounce you husband and husband? … I think we’re looking at I’m to pronounce them ‘married.’?”

“I’ve been learning along the way,” Rocha added. “Because we don’t have a big population of LGBT people in our church, it’s important for me to educate and familiarize myself with some of the issues. You can’t just go assuming … there are some things that might be the same for same-gender and male-female weddings. But what does it mean for a gay couple … who have been in love, cared about people, and been denied this? “

Ohio Couple Challenges State’s Marriage Equality Ban in Federal Court

Last week, John Arthur and Jim Obergefell, partners of 20 years, flew from Cincinnati to Maryland to get married. A trip like that to get married is already complicated enough, but Arthur is in a hospice, suffering from ALS, or Lou Gejrig’s, a neurological disease which, over time, robs patients of their ability to walk, move, talk, and eventually breathe. Aurthur needs around-the-clock care, and a commercial flight was out of the question. After the call went out, friends, family, and total strangers donated aver $12,000 to charter a private plane. They flew to Baltimore, the pilots parked off the runway, and the couple was married on the tarmac. A few minutes later, the couple celebrated with champagne, the pilots climbed back in the cockpit, and the wedding party was back in the sky on the return trip to Ohio.

The Cincinnati Enquirer published a well researched, in-depth story on the couple shortly after they married, illustrating the problems they face in a state which relegates them to legal strangers to each other. Last Friday, Arthur and Obergefell filed suit in Federal Court seeking Ohio’s recognition of their legal marriage. Their attorney, civil rights lawyer Alphonse Gerhardstein, noted some of the absurdities of Ohio’s marriage law:

“(T)he marriages of opposite-sex couples that are legal in other states but would not be allowed in Ohio – e.g., marriages of first cousins or a young partner – are routinely accepted in Ohio if those marriages are legal in the state where they are celebrated,” the suit notes.

The suit seeks a temporary restraining order and injunction, hoping to allow Arthur’s death certificate to reflect that his status at death was “married.” That is more important now, the suit notes, because Arthur is gravely ill.

“It is the final record of a citizen’s life. It must be accurate,” Obergefell said of the death certificate.