Box Turtle Bulletin

Finally it’s ironic, don’t you think

Finally, someone has fixed Alanis Morissette’s song, Isn’t it Ironic, in which she goes on and on listing things that, while unfortunate, are not at all ironic.

Yes, I know this has nothing to do with the usual theme of this site, but I know many of you who love language will appreciate this.

Though, to Alanis’ defense, I did once hear Alanis play at a gay event where she changed one lyric on her own and make it a smidge closer to irony: “It’s meeting the man of my dreams, and then meeting his beautiful husband”.

NOM’s Thomas Peters Critically Injured (Updated)

Catholic Vote has confirmed the numerous tweets saying that National Organization for Marriage’s Thomas Peters was seriously injured in a car accident. According to Catholic Vote, Peters “sustained major injuries. He is awake, responsive, and in stable but critical condition.” Elizabeth Scalia, who writes for several conservative Catholic publications (and who is not related to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia), tweeted that Peters neck was broken. There’s been no word from NOM yet.

Peters is NOM’s Director of Communications and resident young-guy-who-opposes-marriage-equality, vociferously. His father, Edward Peters, is a well-known Catholic canon lawyer and professor at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit.

I’ll echo what Rob Tisinai said. Culture wars are brutal things, but matters of life and death occupy a much higher plane of human concern. We all hope and pray for Peters’s epiphany on the central questions surrounding our families. More so, we hope and pray for his speedy recovery so that epiphany can occur. But in any case, whether that epiphany will ever occur or not,  we hope and pray for his speedy recovery.

Update: Peters’s father, Edward Peters, has posted the following information on Facebook:

Okay, I am sorry, but here’s some news.

Thomas Peters was seriously hurt in a swimming accident Tuesday evening. He fractured his 5th cervical vert. and is at Univ. Maryland Medical Center (Baltimore). Natalie Zmuda Peters is there, and the moms Angela & Becky Z flew out a couple hours ago. He moved an arm on command and is undergoing more tests. He has responded pretty well to the immediate steps taken for him so far. I will stay in touch here. Your prayers and well wishes are deeply appreciated.

Ed

Natalie Zmuda Peters is Thomas’s wife. A further update:

Thom can move his arms, docs are discussing the best treatment for his neck injury. Immediate concern is for the considerable water in his lungs. We are astounded at the expressions of prayers and support. Thom & Nat know about it. Please keep them up. Love from us all, EdP.

Best Wishes and Hopes for Thomas Peters

NOM’s communications director Thomas Peters has been in a serious accident:

Thomas was involved in an accident yesterday evening and has sustained major injuries. He is awake, responsive, and in stable but critical condition. Family and friends are with him.

I’ve tangled with him before and have been sharply critical of him, but today I wish him my best and send him all my hopes for a full and speedy recovery.

Glorious victory in NOMian reality

Brian Brown with the National Organization for Marriage (theirs, not yours) is celebrating today. (NOMblog)

Our opponents and those in the biased media say, “It’s inevitable. You can’t win. Give up…”

I couldn’t disagree more!

In 2008, I heard the same things when we worked on Prop 8 in California…and we WON!

In 2009, I heard the same things when we worked on Question 1 in Maine…and we WON!

In 2010, I heard the same things when we worked in Iowa to oust state Supreme Court justices…and we WON!

In 2011, I heard the same things when we worked in New York to oust legislators who flipped on marriage and betrayed their constituents…and we WON!

And last year, I heard the same things when we worked in North Carolina to pass an amendment to the state constitution protecting marriage…and we WON!

Ah yes, it’s a great day in NOMville. Just look at their glorious victories in California, Maine, Iowa, and New York where the anti-equality group WON!

But over here in the real reality, marriage equality is celebrated in all four of those states. Which, I suppose, bodes well for the future of North Carolina.

This whole declaration of glorious victory is part of Brown’s latest pitch for funds. Which suggest to me that either he has no real need for individual support or he thinks his donors are delusional.

Queen Gives Royal Assent to Marriage Equality Bill

Photo via George Takei

Lawmakers cheered as House of Commons Speaker John Bercow said royal assent had been given — one day after the bill to legalize same-sex marriage in England and Wales cleared Parliament. The queen’s approval was a formality and is the last step necessary for a bill to become law.

Marriages are expected to begin sometime in the summer of 2014.

The Daily Agenda for Wednesday, July 17

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Charlotte, NC (Black Pride); Colorado Springs, CO; Frankfurt, Germany; Hull, UK; Kitsap, WA; Leipzig, Germany; Marseille, France (EuroPride 2013); Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK; Peel, ON; Plymouth, UK; Portland, OR (Latino Pride); Reading, PA; Rochester, MN; Rochester, NY.

AIDS Walk This Weekend: San Francisco, CA.

Other Events This Weekend: Sand Blast Weekend, Asbury Park, NJ; Outfest Film Festival, Los Angeles, CA; Miami Beach Bruthaz, Miami Beach, FL; QFest Film Festival, Philadelphia, PA; Bear Week, Provincetown, MA.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
50 YEARS AGO: APA Refuses To Meet With Gay Rights Groups: 1963. One of the top goals of the early gay rights movement was to get the mental health professions to remove homosexuality from their list of mental disorders. As long as homosexuality remained listed, governmental agencies and private companies had all the excuse they needed to discriminate against gays and lesbians. In 1957, Psychologist Evelyn Hooker began publishing the results of a series of tests which demonstrated that gays and lesbians who weren’t patients of mental health professionals were indistinguishable from heterosexuals (see Aug 30). Before then, the mental health community thought that gays were mentally deficient because all of the prior research had only studied people who were confined to mental hospitals or were seen in clinical settings.

Despite the strength of this new evidence, it would still take many years for it to sink in. In 1963, the American Psychological Association was preparing to meet in Philadelphia for their annual convention. Leading gay activists, under the banner of the newly-formed East Coast Homophile Organizations (ECHO) also planned to meet in Philadelphia at the same time, and they proposed a meeting with members of the APA. But the APA convention’s organizing committee declined the invitation. In a very brief letter to leading gay rights activist Frank Kameny and the Washington, D.C., Mattachine Society, the APA simply said, “This problem” — yes, the APA saw the meeting as a problem — “has already been considered by the Convention Committee and it was decided that it was not in the best interests of the APA to meet with you, nor to publicize your meetings.”

Another nine years would pass before Kameny and Daughters of Bilitis New York activist Barbara Gittings would appear with Dr. John E. Fryer (as “Dr. H. Anonymous.”) on a panel discussion on homosexuality with the American Psychiatric Association (the other APA, which is the keeper of the list of mental disorders known as the DSM) (see May 2). That appearance nearly a decade later would wind up being a key moment leading to the elimination of homosexuality as a mental illness (see Dec 15).

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?

Marriage goes to the Queen

Jim already put up the story, but I love the fireworks pictures.

Then They Came for My Boutonniere

The staunchly anti-gay, ironically-named website Anglican Mainstream has reacted to today’s approval of Britain’s marriage equality bill:

To Think About: SSM, July 2013
July 15th, 2013 Posted in News | Comments Off

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me–and there was no one left to speak for me.

 

Martin Niemoller

Because marriage equality is JUST LIKE THE HOLOCAUST, PEOPLE!

UK Marriage Equality Bill Clears Final Hurdle

It’s a done deal. The House of Commons gave its final approval to the bill after minor changes were made by the House of Lords, which approved the bill on Monday. But not before marriage equality opponents tried a last ditch effort to ditch the bill:

Conservative MP David Burrowes had tabled an amendment and was today once again accused of trying to delay implementation of the bill. Pro-equal marriage MPs padded out their speeches so that Mr Burrowes could not propose his amendment.

The amendment he tabled sought to force the government to hold individual public consultations for changes to secondary legislation.

The bill now goes to the Queen for Royal Assent. No monarch has withheld Royal Assent since 1708.

Same-sex marriages are expected to begin in the spring or summer in 2014 in England and Wales only. Legislation to allow marriage equality in Scotland is in its initial stages. There are currently no efforts underway as yet to institute marriage equality in Northern Ireland.

(By the way, when I went to Google Images looking for an appropriate image for this post, I typed “Big Ben Gay” into the search box. This image popped up, accompanied by hundreds of results for Ben Cohen. Which is appropriate when you think about it, since today’s news clears just one more obstacle to our obvious destiny of wedded bliss together.)

No, Rush, “rapist” doesn’t equal “gay”

There are few things that Rush Limbaugh enjoys more than pushing the buttons of “liberals” by turning language back on them. It matters little to him whether his jibes are based in reality, simply whether they can annoy and whether he can pretend to find them plausible.

But his latest is absurd, even for Rush. And worse, it plays on the most obscene and vile of anti-gay stereotypes.

On July 15, CNN’s Piers Morgan interviewed Rachel Jeantel, a friend of Trayvon Martin and a witness in the case. Here is a portion of the interview:

MORGAN: But you — but you felt that there was no doubt in your mind from what Trayvon was telling you on the phone about the creepy ass cracka and so on, that he absolutely believed that George Zimmerman, this man, you didn’t know who he was at the time, but this man, was pursuing him?

JEANTEL: Yes.

MORGAN: And he was freaked out by it?

JEANTEL: Yes. Definitely after I say may be a rapist, for every boy, for every man, every — who’s not that kind of way, seeing a grown man following them, would they be creep out? So you have to take it — as a parent, when you tell your child, when you see a grown person following you, run away, and all that.

Would you go stand there? You going to tell your child stand there? If you tell your child stand there, we’re going to see your child on the news for missing person.

Rush Limbaugh took that and turned it into something else entirely (the entire segment is quite long, but I can’t cut it without skewing it):

Read the rest of this entry »

Cameroon Gay Rights Activist Found Tortured, Murdered

Human Rights Watch reports that Cameroon journalist, activist, and executive director of the Cameroonian Foundation for AIDS (CAMFAIDS) Eric Ohena Lembembe was found dead Monday night in his home in Yaoundé, Cameron:

Lembembe’s friends discovered his body on Monday evening after being unable to reach him by telephone for two days, and went to his home. They found his front door padlocked on the outside, but could see Lembembe’s body lying on his bed through the window. Lembembe’s friends alerted the police, who broke down the door. According to one friend, Lembembe’s neck and feet appeared to have been broken, and his face, hands, and feet had been burned with an iron.

…Lembembe’s killing follows several attacks on the offices of human rights defenders, including those working for equal rights for LGBTI people. On June 26, 2013, unidentified assailants burned down the Douala headquarters of Alternatives-Cameroun, which provides HIV services to LGBTI people. A few days earlier on June 16, the Yaoundé office of human rights lawyer Michel Togué, who represents clients charged with same-sex conduct, was burgled, and his legal files and laptop stolen. Both Togué and Alice Nkom, another lawyer who represents LGBTI clients, have received repeated death threats by email and SMS, including threats to kill their children. Although activists have reported all of these incidents, the Cameroonian authorities have not apprehended a single suspect.

Lembembe contributed to the blog Erasing 76 Crimes, where he posted one of one of the blog’s most popular articles,“What traditional African homosexuality learned from the West.” According to that blog’s notice of Lembeme’s murder:

 That article is included in the book From Wrongs to Gay Rights, along with his articles about Roger Mbede, who was imprisoned because of an amorous text message to a man; Franky Djome and Jonas Kumie, who were imprisoned because they are a transgender couple; anti-gay blackmailer/extortioner Albert Edward Ekobo Samba; and the homophobic attack on last year’s IDAHO celebration in Yaoundé.

Cameroon criminalizes same-sex relationships with penalties of up to five years in prison and fines of 20,000 to 200,000 Central Africa Francs (up to US$400) where the average per-capita income is around US$1,200 per year. The U.S. State Department’s 2012 Human Rights Report for Cameroon (PDF: 207 KB/40 pages) describes a country with an exeptionally poor human rights record and where:

Police were ineffective, poorly trained, and corrupt (see section 4). Impunity was a problem. Citizens often resorted to vigilante violence rather than calling police (see section 6).

Also:

During the year at least five persons were arrested for suspected homosexual activity, although none were engaged in homosexual acts at the time of arrest.

Gay men and lesbians generally kept a low profile because of pervasive societal stigma, discrimination, and harassment as well as the possibility of imprisonment. Gay men and lesbians suffered from harassment and extortion by law enforcement officials. According to one human rights NGO, government officials and private citizens sometimes conspired to make false allegations of homosexuality to harass enemies or extort money.

In February police arrested three women in Ambam, South Region, on suspicions of engaging in same-sex conduct. Police charged two of the women with practicing homosexuality and with defaming a third woman, whose husband reported their relations to the authorities. Defense lawyers requested that the judge dismiss the case and submit a judgment of “No Case to Answer,” based on a number of violations of basic human rights and international agreements affecting the procedure. On March 29, the Ambam lower court rejected the defense’s arguments and ruled that it would hear the case. Defense lawyers appealed the ruling, and at year’s end the case was pending in the South Court of Appeal.

On July 16, the Yaounde First Instance Court released Jean-Claude Roger Mbede on bail. In March 2011 the Yaounde lower court had sentenced him to three years in jail for sending a sexually explicit text message to another man. On December 17, the Center Court of Appeal confirmed the initial verdict and sentenced Mbede to three years’ imprisonment. Mbede’s lawyers decided to appeal to the Supreme Court.

In July 2011 police detained three men returning from a bar in Yaounde because two of the men appeared effeminate, according to the Association for the Defense of Homosexuality and Human Rights Watch. The three were jailed for one week before being charged, and the two who allegedly appeared effeminate (Jonas Kumie and Frankie Djome) were beaten on the soles of their feet until they confessed to being gay, according to a civil society group working on their behalf; the third man was released. After repeated postponements, a trial was held in September 2011 at which the two men who confessed to being gay were sentenced to five years in prison and fined 200,000 CFA francs ($400). An arrest warrant was issued for the third man, who was convicted and sentenced in absentia to the same punishment. A final ruling was expected in October but was rescheduled for January 2013.

Several lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender organizations operated in the country. These organizations claimed there was a pattern of discrimination against members of such groups, although no official cases were available for citation.

The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, July 16

THIS MONTH IN HISTORY:
55 YEARS AGO: “My Daughter Is a Lesbian: 1958. Stonewall was still eleven years away. The first Christopher Street Liberation Day march occurred a year after that. And it was two years after that when Jeanne Manford marched with her son during that year’s CSLD parade with a sign reading “Parents of Gays Unite in Support for Our Children.” In 1958, visibility remained perhaps the single greatest hurdle for gay people. due to the dangers of being out — police raids (see Aug 14), arrest (see Jun 23), loss of job (see Mar 22, Dec 20), commitment to a psychiatric hospital (see Apr 14, Jul 26), murder (see Aug 3) — being visible was simply not an option for most people. There were few visible examples of gay people, and almost no visible examples of family members who accepted and supported their gay relatives. The three major early homophile publications — ONE, The Mattachine Review, and The Ladder — sought to change that in various ways.

Fifty-five years ago this month, The Ladder, the Daughters of Bilitis’ official newsletter, published this commentary from one mother of a lesbian daughter. What makes this short essay interesting is the many unspoken stereotypes that the author had to contend with. Countering the assumption that gay people were sick sociopaths, she described her daughter having “no frustrations or problems.” Countering the prediction that her daughter would live a life of spinsterhood, she described her daugheter’s “congenial, intelligent, loving and kind ‘mate’.” Against the prevailing view that mothers were responsible for their child’s sexuality, she defended her daughter’s morality (“she could not be cheap and promiscuous”) and her good citizenship. And to counter society’s assumptions that a faithful heterosexual marriage was every woman’s birthright, she offered the example of her own sad marriage. In all, this isn’t so much a portrait of a mother and her lesbian daughter, but a counter-narrative to the prevailing opinions of gay people at that time. The essay’s defensiveness isn’t what we would recognize as a proclamation of pride, but when you consider how oppresive the dominant assumptions were at that time, Mrs. Doris Lyles had to start somewhere.

My daughter is a Lesbian. By all measures of accepted society, that is a pretty blunt statement. If I were an average mother, I wouldn’t even bring this assertion out and
view it furtively, even when alone. Nevertheless, I do not think I would come under what one would call average, and I say this in a far from self-satisfied manner. However, I do not believe in hiding truth under our stilted, self-imposed laws of society. Many people today are frustrated and under mental treatment because of these frustrations, simply because they refuse to face the truth and prefer to delude themselves in so many ways.

My daughter from small girlhood seemed to be a little different from the average child. For one thing, she was above average mentally and had very strong will power and determination that even in childhood seemed to brook no interference. Frankly, I believe that if I had been a dictatorial, demanding mother whose child had to bend to her ego and demands, I might have had a pretty serious case of delinquency to contend with today, instead of an intelligent, serious-minded daughter who holds a fine position in a respected professional field, lives what is for her a full, rounded-out life of contentment and security, with no frustrations or problems, at least none that amount to much.

I will be very frank in saying that I am lucky in that she found a congenial, intelligent, loving and kind “mate” in this association of which I am aware but do not understand completely as a normal mother and wife. I do not like that word “normal” applied here, for there are nO two more normal persons alive than my daughter and her charming associate.

In finding out about my daughter’s preferences, I had one very firm belief. I knew she would find someone of kindred tastes and lead a very circumspect life no matter what path she chose, for I knew my child and understood she could not be cheap and promiscuous, whether Lesbian or heterosexual. This thought was a great comfort and from the beginning I knew she would need love, appreciation and understanding from me; not censure, shame or withdrawal. One thing I have done to an extent most people would feel was too much to the extreme: I have left her to her own devices and now, in her middle twenties, she leads her own life completely and when she wishes to come to me, for whatever period of time she chooses, she knows she is welcome and won’t be importuned to “come oftener” and “stay longer”. As a child, I led a sheltered life in which my mother dominated all my moves and actions. When she passed away, I was at completely loose ends and made a very foolish marriage which would not have happened had I been free to follow my ovm course in life. This had made me wary of being possessive and trying to shape and run the lives of others. As a consequence, I think I have my daughter’s love and loyalty — even to a greater degree than most mothers who make demands and expect them to be carried out.

With the background of theatrical people during my childhood, I learned rather early that all of us, men or women, did not come within the realm of “norms.” Maybe this is why my daughter’s fate didn’t seem so terrible to me. I could think of a great many worse things, such as the unhappy twenty years of marriage I had shed at the time I learned of my daughter’s “difference”. I spent those years with a man who was a congenital liar, who preferred a lie when the truth would have served him better, and who couldn’t leave town for a week’s trip as a Salesman who travelled without having his quota of affairs with anyone — waitresses, nurses, — he seemed to prefer uniforms. It was a question of keeping my marriage together by not digging too deeply in the barrel, and keeping my temper, but definitely losing my self-respect. This I believe is a fate far worse for a girl. Maybe I’m wrong and maybe I should use every means within my power to help my daughter in her situation, but frankly I do not believe she needs help from me or anyone else. If ever the time should come when she feels the need for advice or counsel, I only hope I will be able to advise her wisely, but certainly not against what she believes with all her being to be her path in life.

We preach freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and even though reams and reams have been written on the subject, there are very few who will admit belief in freedom of love.

[Source: Mrs. Doris Lyles. “My Daughter Is a Lesbian.” The Ladder 2, no. 10 (July 1958):4-5.]

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Tony Kushner: 1956. He is most acclaimed for his Pulitzer prize-winning play, Angels In America, the seven-hour epic about the AIDS crises in the Ed Koch-era of New York. Kushner wrote the play for eight actors, but stipulated that each of the actors was to play multiple roles (including multiple genders) throughout the production. When he adapted the play for an HBO miniseries starring Meryl Streep and Al Pacino, the same construct was applied. In addition to the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Kushner won the Tony Awards for Best Play in 1993 and 1994 (Angels In America is actually in two parts, Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, each having its own separate Broadway debut.)

After the turn of the new millennium, Kushner began writing for film, co-writing the screenplay for Steven Spielberg’s Munich. Most recently, he was the screenwriter for Spielberg’s Lincoln, starring Daniel Day-Lewis and based on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, for which Kushner won an Academy Award, Golden Globe, BAFTA, and a Writers Guild award for best adapted screenplay. In 2013, Kushner was one of twenty-four recipients for the National Medal of Arts and Humanities from President Barack Obama.

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?

No stay on marriage equality in California

The latest emergency injunction requested by the defendants of Proposition 8 has been rejected. However, the California Supreme Court (a better bunch than I) have decided to at least pretend to give due consideration to the latest line of wackadoodle delusion (that the Governor lacks the authority to refuse to enforce the unconstitutional amendment – or some such drivel). AP

The California Supreme Court refused Monday to order the state to immediately stop issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

However, the court still plans to consider whether the governor and attorney general correctly instructed county clerks that a voter-approved ban on gay marriages had become legally invalid statewide.

Without comment, the court denied a request made Friday by backers of the ban for an emergency order that would have required the state to keep enforcing Proposition 8 while they pursue a last-ditch legal effort to preserve it.

And, as per usual, the loons see victory in their defeat. They are joyously looking forward to arguing their case. They would also see it a grand victory if, while being booted down the stairs, no one threw tomatoes.

A rational call for tolerance

We have won the war over equality (though the battle rages on) and we must now begin to think of what kind of victors we shall be. Will we demand the spoils of war, or will we help rebuild and respect local and individual cultural mores. Will we be tolerant with those who have disagreed or who continue to disagree?

Orson Scott Card has recently illustrated the most absurd end of the spectrum of responses. His call for “tolerance” is nothing more than a demand that those who won the war now enrich those they defeated.

But there may be other who do deserve tolerance, or at least autonomy. Bart Hinkle, in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, makes a case for such.

It was a great day when the Supreme Court struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act and threw out a California case that could have undermined gay marriage in the Golden State. On that day, gay and lesbian citizens won something profoundly important: acknowledgment of the right to live as they choose, without interference from others who think they know better.

Now the question is: Will gay and lesbian citizens acknowledge that everybody else has the same right? Some certainly will. But others are challenging the notion – and thereby undermining the case for their own hard-won victory.

It’s a thoughtful piece and worth consideration.

UK Lords pass marriage equality

Bloomberg

The upper, unelected chamber approved the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill without a vote in London today. Some members of the house wore pink carnations to mark the occasion.

The legislation has already been passed by the Commons amid opposition from more than 100 lawmakers from Cameron’s Conservative Party. The bill will now return to the Commons, where amendments introduced by the Lords will be considered. If they’re accepted, the bill will be sent to Queen Elizabeth II for her signature before becoming law.