Box Turtle Bulletin

NYT gets it wrong on Ender’s Game controversy

It would be difficult to be more wrong on the controversy surrounding Orson Scott Card and the upcoming movie Ender’s Game than is the New York Times. The article, by Michael Cieply, not only misses the point, it does so in a way that is condescending and, at times, astonishingly stupid.

Before you even get to the article, the headline declares: “Author’s Views on Gay Marriage Fuel Call for Boycott”. Not even close.

But often headlines are misleading. So let’s turn to the article itself. Which starts this way:

At last count, 667 people, give or take, have screen credits on “Ender’s Game.”

One of them turned into a problem this week.

Oh, was it plasterer Ken Lewis Jr.? Or maybe property and set master Twig Leveque? Or any of the other 640-something people you’ve never heard of?

No. Of course not. And Cieply’s suggestion that it was just one of the 667 people with screen credit is disingenuous.

The concern is about the author of the book, creator of the characters, and producer of the move, Orson Scott Card.

And the problems don’t stop with Cieply’s downplaying of the level of connection with the movie, he also distorts the cause of the concerns. The article describes the problem using

At issue is the author of the novel on which the film is based, Orson Scott Card; his views on homosexuality; and his public stance against same-sex marriage.
…
Some of the views to which Mr. Jarrett and others object have been posted by Glaad as part of a Web-based “accountability project.” It cites published articles in which Mr. Card argued against the acceptance of homosexuality by Mormons, for instance, and contended that gay behavior often begins with sexual abuse.

Well sure. Those are some of the “views”. But there is no one protesting because Card said that the church he attends should not be pro-gay. And if his sneers were limited to misunderstanding the etiology of sexual orientation, we wouldn’t even know or care.

And, while Cieply quotes the head of the protest as saying “It’s very, very clear what he said and what he stands for”, Cieply never, ever, uses a single example of what Card has said. Not, for example, these quotes which were included in an LA Times article on the same subject:

Card repeatedly has spoken and written about his opposition to gay rights and gay marriage. He has been active in the National Organization for Marriage, which recently wrote to supporters, “If we do not fight back against these governmental attacks on our fundamental right to act in the public square in support of the truth of marriage as God created it, then none of our cherished liberties and rights are safe.”

Writing in 1990, Card said, “Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books, not to be indiscriminately enforced against anyone who happens to be caught violating them, but to be used when necessary to send a clear message that those who flagrantly violate society’s regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society.”

In the Mormon Times in 2009, he wrote, “Married people attempting to raise children with the hope that they, in turn, will be reproductively successful, have every reason to oppose the normalization of homosexual unions.”

But while Cieply didn’t have time or space for any actual illustrations of Card’s actual language, he did find time to tell us that there are only 2,000 people boycotting, that there are a lot of obscure boycotts of movies “that somehow offend them”, that Lionsgate has also promoted movies with positive gay images, and that someone somewhere wrote something that claims that Ender’s Game isn’t homophobic. So there.

Cieply may have set out to report the story about a cultural pushback against the promotion of a movie over controversial statements made by the story’s author, but at some point he decided that his story was about how silly, pointless, and unjustified the objections were. Which is fine for a blogger or a columnist, but as a piece of journalistic reporting, this article fails miserably.

The Daily Agenda for Monday, July 15

TODAY IN HISTORY:
New York’s WBAI Radio Broadcasts Talk Show Featuring Eight Gay Men: 1962. There had long been an inherent tension among the various local chapters of the Mattachine Society between those who, because of their experience with the McCarthy-led Lavendar Scare witchhunt in the early 1950s, feared public scrutiny and exposure, and those who argued for greater visibility. The latter group sought increased public exposure for two reasons. First, to let other gay people across the country to understand that they weren’t alone. And also so that society at large could get to know gay people, which, they argued, was necessary if attitudes were every going to change. Randy Wicker, a recent Texas college student who moved to New York to become involved with that city’s Mattachine Society, was a natural at public relations, and he pushed to get the Society’s activities publicized in the local press. “Randy was very young and wild-eyed,” one Mattachine member recalled. “He was very radical and did things that the rest of us didn’t have the guts to do. Many of other people in our group were professionals, and I think they thought Randy was moving too fast. We weren’t sure things were ready for someone like him yet. But he certainly made us sit up and take notice.”

To get around some of the group’s objections, Wicker established a separate entity he called the Homosexual League of New York, an organization that consisted solely of himself. This way, if Mattachine members became too uncomfortable with his actions, he could just switch and do them under the guise of the alternative “group.” One of his first projects was to talk WBAI, a listener-supported radio station, to air a ninety-minute program with gay people as part of the panel. He proposed this after the station had already aired an hour-long special, “The Homosexual In America,” featuring a panel of psychiatrists who described gay people as being sick and in need of a cure. When WBAI agreed to air Wicker’s follow-up program, the New York Journal-American went ballistic. Jack O’Brian, the paper’s radio-TV columnist, wrote that the station should change its callsign to WSICK for agreeing to air an “arrogant card-carrying swish. …We’ve heard of silly situations in broadcasting, but FM station WBAI wins our top prize for scraping the sockly barrel-bottom.”

WBAI went ahead despite the controversy and the program, titled “Live and Let Live,” featured Wicker and seven other gay men talking for ninety minutes about what it was like to be gay. They talked about the difficulties in maintaining careers, the problems of police harassment, and the social responsibility of gays and straights alike. The following morning, The New York Times’s Jack Gould called the program “the most extensive consideration of the subject to be heard on American radio” — a statement that betrays his own unawareness of several similar programs which had already aired on radio and television in San Francisco and Los Angeles years earlier. Nevertheless, he wrote that “it succeeded, one would think in encouraging a wider understanding of the homosexual’s attitudes and problems.” Newsweek called the program “96 minutes of intriguing, if intellectually inconclusive listening.” A group of listeners lodged a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission and challenge the station’s broadcast license. When the FCC recognized the broadcast as a legitimate exercise in free speech, it signaled to other radio and television stations that homosexuality was an acceptable topic for broadcast.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
110 YEARS AGO: Samuel Reber, Jr.: 1903. He was a well-regarded American diplomat who spent twenty-seven years in the Foreign Service. During World War II, Reber scored a significant diplomatic success by getting Vichy France to agree that French colonies and possessions, ships and planes in the Caribbean would not be used by the Axis powers, an agreement which underscored Vichy’s weakness as a French power. Reber then joined the Allied Control Commission in Italy, and from there he served as the U.S. representative to the Allied French government in 1944. By 1946, he was a political adviser to the U.S. delegation at the Council of Foreign Ministers Conference in Paris, in 1947 he was director of the State Department’s Office of European Affairs, and in 1950 he joined in the Allied High Commission as an adviser for the U.S. High Commissioner for Germany.

Beginning in 1948, Reber faced his greatest diplomatic challenge working t for an Austrian peace treaty while enduring years of threats and insults from the Soviet Union. His work ultimately laid the groundwork for an independent Austria remaining outside of the Soviet block. But the treaty guaranteeing that independence wouldn’t come about until two years after Reber was forced out of the State Department in 1953. That’s when Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s Red Scare — and the accompanying Lavender Scare — was in full force in the U.S. Senate. McCarthy charged that the upper ranks of the State Department were filled with communists and homosexuals, prompting a wide-ranging witch hunt within the department. Reber was called in for a polygraph test and interviews on March 17 and 19, 1953. That investigation uncovered “a lot of admissions” about homosexuality. When McCarthy threatened to reveal allegations of Reber’s homosexuality, Reber promptly announced his retirement in May 1953, effective July 15 when he turned 50.

But because of Reber’s high profile, the reasons for his resignation quickly became well known in diplomatic and political circles. In 1954, McCarthy would use Reber’s resignation against his brother, Major General Miles Reber, who was called to testify on the first day of the Army-McCarthy hearings. According to Time magazine:

Returning to twist the dirk already thrust into the Reber brothers, McCarthy asked General Reber: “Are you aware of the fact that your brother was allowed to resign when charges that he was a bad security risk were made against him as a result of the investigation of this committee?” Jenkins roared in protest. McClellan roared in protest. McCarthy talked on, stuck to his question. General Reber sat in silence, gripping the edges of the witness table until his knuckles showed white. Finally, McCarthy, having made his point over radio and television, dismissed the entire question as unimportant, and grandly said he would withdraw it.

But West Pointer Reber would not have it so. In a voice thick with emotion, he asked to be allowed to answer the “very serious charge” made against his brother. After another long argument, Reber said simply: “. . . As I understand my brother’s case, he retired, as he is entitled to do by law, upon reaching the age of 50 … I know nothing about any security case involving him.” With a sigh of relief, Chairman Mundt dismissed Reber, thanking him for his frank manner—a remark to which McCarthy, who seemed determined to resent any civility, made a formal objection.

David Cicilline: 1961. When he was elected mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, in a landslide in 2002, David Cicilline became the first openly gay man to become mayor of a state capital. He held that position until 2011, when he went to Congress to represent Rhode Island in the U.S. House of Representatives. When he joined Congress, he became one of four openly gay representatives in the House.

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The Daily Agenda for Sunday, July 14

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations Today: Bournemouth, UK; Leipzig, Germany; Marseille, France (EuroPride 2013); Munich, Germany; San Diego, CA; San Luis Obispo, CA.

Other Events Today: Rocky Mountain Regional Rodeo, Golden, CO; Outfest Film Festival, Los Angeles, CA; QFest Film Festival, Philadelphia, PA; Bear Week, Provincetown, MA Tokyo International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, Tokyo, Japan.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Vatican Orders Priest and Nun To Halt Pro-Gay Ministry: 1999. New Ways Ministry, founded in 1977 by Sr Jeannine Gramick and Fr. Robert Nugent, was (and still is) “a gay-positive ministry of advocacy and justice for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Catholics, and reconciliation within the larger Christian and civil communities.” The ministry’s name was inspired by a 1976 pastoral letter by Bishop Francis J. Mugavero of Brooklyn which, while emphasizing “chastity is a virtue which liberates the human person,” nevertheless “pledge[d] our willingness to help you bear your burdens, to try to find new ways to communicate the truth of Christ because we believe it will make you free.”

Free from what, exactly, the letter didn’t say. (This was before the religious ex-gay movement was founded in 1976.) But Sr. Gramick and Fr. Nugent saw that the clearest path to freedom was to create wider acceptance for gay and lesbian Catholics within the Catholic Church. Sr. Gramick came by her advocacy for gay people a few years earlier while working on her Ph.D at the University of Pennsylvania, where she befriended a gay man and began ministering to those who had left the Church because of its stance toward gay people. Fr. Nugent had been involved with pastoral ministry and counseling to gay Catholics since 1971. When Fr. Nugent and Sr. Gramick co-founded New Ways Ministry at Mt. Rainier, MD., it attracted almost immediate attention from the Church’s hierarchy. In 1984, Archbishop of Washington James Cardinal Hickey’s criticisms of New Way Ministry led the Vatican to order Fr. Nugent’s and Sr. Gramick’s resignation. They complied, but continued speaking and writing about gay and lesbian issues within the church.

On July 14, 1999, the Vatican’s official newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, published a “Notification regarding Sr. Gramick and Fr. Nugent“, from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), which is charged with enforcing adherence to Catholic doctrines. The CDF, under the leadership of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (who would later become Pope Benedict XVI), “permanently prohibited” Sr. Gramick and Fr. Nugent “from any pastoral work involving homosexual persons and are ineligible, for an undetermined period, for any office in their respective religious institutes.”

Fr. Nugent responded with a lengthy statement describing his experience with Vatican officials during the previous two decades. That prompted a further order from the Vatican prohibiting him from speaking any further “about the Notification itself, about the ecclesiastical processes that led to it or about the issue of homosexuality.” Fr. Nugent then decided to return to parish-based ministry.

But Sr. Gramock refused to complying with the silencing. “I choose not to collaborate in my own oppression by restricting a basic human right [to speak]. To me this is a matter of conscience.” She then transferred from the School Sisters of Notre Dame to the Sisters of Loretto, where she has continued her work for social justice and outreach to LGBT people. In 2004, Sr. Gramick became the subject of a powerful documentary film, In Good Conscience: Sister Jeannine Gramick’s Journey of Faith, directed by Albert Maysles of Grey Gardens and Gimme Shelter fame. New Ways Ministry continues its work of independent advocacy on for LGBT Catholics.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Arthur Laurents: 1917. The three-time Tony Award winning playwright, director and screenwriter started out by writing scripts for radio shows and training films for the U.S. Army during World War II. One photograph of GIs in the South Pacific jungle inspired him to write Home of the Brave about anti-Semitism in the military. The play opened on Broadway in 1945 and ran for sixty nine performances. (When the play was adapted for the 1949 film, the topic switched from anti-Semitic to anti-black bigotry.) That first run wasn’t a long one, but its controversial subject would come back to haunt him later when he was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee and was placed on the infamous entertainment blacklist during the McCarthy red scare.

His tenure on the list was relatively brief, and by the mid-1950s, Laurents was in Broadway and Hollywood’s good graces again. Good thing, because he went on to write West Side Story and Gypsy, and the script for Alfred Hitchcock’s The Rope. He also wrote the scripts for the films The Way We Were and The Turning Point, and directed the 1983 stage production of La Cage Aux Folles. Laurents died just this past May in New York of pneumonia at the age of 93. His partner of more than fifty years, Tom Hatcher, had preceded him in 2006. In honor of Laurents’s career, the lights on Broadway were dimmed at 8:00 p.m. on May 6, 2011.

My Mom: 1940. Happy Birthday Mom!

Jane Lynch: 1960. Nobody does bitter sarcasm like Jane Lynch. Since 2009, she has played the role of Sue Sylvester on Glee, where her Emmy-, People’s Choice- and Golden Globe-winning performance is the only rational reason why anyone would want to watch Glee (in my opinion at least). She has also appeared in The 40-Year-Old Virgin and had a recurring role in The L Word. In 2010, Lynch married clinical psychologist Dr. Laura Embry in Sunderland Massachusetts. You can see their video for Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” project here. But sadly, the couple announced last month that they were divorcing.

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?

The Daily Agenda for Saturday, July 13

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Bournemouth, UK; Bristol, UK; Green Bay, WI; Leipzig, Germany; Marseille, France (EuroPride 2013); Munich, Germany; San Diego, CA; San Luis Obispo, CA; Santa Barbara, CA; Tacoma, WA.

Other Events This Weekend: Rocky Mountain Regional Rodeo, Golden, CO; Outfest Film Festival, Los Angeles, CA; QFest Film Festival, Philadelphia, PA; Bear Week, Provincetown, MA Tokyo International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, Tokyo, Japan.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Gay Pub Raided in London: 1810. From The Times of London: “The existence of a Club, or Society, for the purpose so detestable and repugnant to the common feelings of our nature, that by no word can it be described without committing an outrage upon decency, has for some time been suspected by the Magistrates of Bow-street; who cautiously concealing the odious secret, abstained from taking any steps on the information they had received, until an opportunity should offer of surprising the whole gang. About 11 o’clock last Sunday evening, three separate parties of the patrole, attended by constables, were detached from Bow-street on this service. … The enterprise was completely successful. — We regret most deeply, that the information given at the office was found to be so accurate, that the Officers felt themselves justified in seizing no fewer than 23 individuals, at a public-house, called the White Swan, in Vere-street, Clare-market.”

Two men were found guilty of sodomy and were hanged. Six more were found guilty of attempted sodomy and were made to stand at the pillory. The crowds who turned out for the pillory were particularly violent, throwing rotten fish, dead cats, “cannonballs” made of mud, and vegetables at the convicted men. The men were severely injured and barely survived their allotted time at the pillory.

“Brothers” Debuts: 1984. The first American television program featuring a gay lead character finally debuted on Showtime. The show, set in Philadelphia, centered around the three Waters brothers: Lou was a typical blue-collar construction foreman, Joe was a retired placekicker for the Philadelphia Eagles and owner of a sports bar, and Cliff, who in the first episode left his bride at the altar and came out to his family as a gay man. ABC and NBC had already turned down the series out of fear of portraying homosexuality on prime time, but when Showtime decided to begin producing original television series, they saw Brothers as the perfect fit. After a successful first season, Showtime decided to pick up the series for a second season. Showtime also offer the series for syndication to over-the-air broadcast stations, and the fledgling Fox network decided to jump on that deal. Brother would go on for a full five seasons and 115 episodes.

15YEAR AGO: Anti-Gay Groups Kick Off Nationwide Ex-Gay Advertising Campaign: 1998. The campaign attracted so much attention that the Family Research Council’s Bob Knight hailed it as “the “Normandy landing in the larger cultural wars.” Fifteen anti-gay organizations, including the Christian Coalition, Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council and Coral Ridge Ministries, launched a national million-dollar advertising campaign, with newspaper ads in the New York Times, Washington Post and USA Today featuring “ex-lesbian” Anne Paulk under the headline, “I’m living proof that the Truth can set you free.” The campaign also included a television commercial featuring ex-gay and HIV-positive Michael Johnston who, with his mother by his side, proclaimed that he was now free from the “homosexual lifestyle.”

The ads quickly generated widespread media attention. Segments on NBC’s Today, ABC’s Nightline, CBS’s 60 Minutes and Oprah were devoted to the topic, Anne and John Paulk made the cover of Newsweek under the question, “Gay for life?” The ex-gay movement finally found its moment under the sun. But more significantly, the larger anti-gay political movement had yet another weapon to use against the gay community. As the argument went, if gay people could choose to become straight, then they didn’t need protections or guarantees of equality under the law. One underlying argument went even further: that there was no such thing as homosexuals; they were just heterosexuals with homosexual problems.

Focus On the Family, in particular, was eager to exploit the growing public awareness of the ex-gay movement. That same year, Focus, in partnership with Exodus International, launched a series of one-day conferences across the country. Titled “Love Won Out,” the conferences were part road show and part infomercial for ex-gay ministries. Featuring John Paulk (who was also a Focus employee and conference coordinator), fellow Focus employees Melissa Fryrear and Mike Haley; Exodus’s Bob Davies and Joe Dallas (and later, Alan Chambers); NARTH co-founder Joseph Nicolosi; and Nancy Hesche, actress Anne Hesche’s mother, the conferences introduced thousands, mostly parents of gay children, to the movement. Many conferences attracted an attendance of more than two thousand, with a half a dozen conferences taking place every year across North America.

But all was not well behind the movement’s facade. In 2000, Wayne Besen photographed John Paulk as he was leaving a gay bar in Washington, D.C. where he had spent a couple of hours chatting up customers (see Sep 19). Paulk was called back to Focus headquarters in Colorado Springs, where he was placed on probation and removed as Board Chair at Exodus International (although he remained a member of the board on probationary status). But Paulk managed to weather the controversy, remaining in his position at Focus, and continuing in his role as the principal organizer and featured speaker at Love Won Out conferences for another three years.

Michael Johnston and his mother in a television commercial.

In 2003, it was revealed that while Michael Johnston was the public face of the ex-gay movement, he was privately engaging in anonymous sex with men without disclosing his HIV status. Johnston quickly shuttered his ministry and fled to Pure Life Ministries, an ex-gay residential program in rural Kentucky.

So, where are they today? In 2012, Alan Chambers acknowledged that “the majority of people that I have met, and I would say the majority meaning 99.9% of them, have not experienced a change in their orientation.” He then repudiated the particular type of counseling intended to change sexual orientation known as Reparative Therapy, and he has declared that Exodus will no longer take sides in the political debates surrounding gay rights. In 2013, he issued a formal apology for the harms done by Exodus International to its clients and shut down Exodus altogether.

John Paulk left Focus on the Family in 2o03, and he and his wife moved to Portland Oregon where he started a catering business. Anne continue to write books and speak on the ex-gay circuit. Earlier this year, recanted his ex-gay beliefs and issued a formal apology. Meanwhile, Anne helped to form Restored Hope Network, a more hardline break-away group of former Exodus ministries. She now serves on the board of directors of RHN. The Paulks are divorcing.

Johnston continues as director of donor and media relations at Pure Life Ministries, where his is also available as a public speaker (PDF: 93 KB/3 pages).

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
45  YEARS AGO: Robert Gant: 1968. He was Ben Bruckner in the American version of “Queer as Folk.” His HIV-positive character gave the series an opportunity to explore anti-AIDS hysteria and stigma, both outside and inside the gay community. He has had numerous television guest roles, and he acted and produced in Save Me, the film staring Chad Allen about the ex-gay movement. Gant and Allen, along with Christopher Racster, are partners in the production company Mythgarden. He is active in LGBT elder issues, supporting SAGE (Senior Advocacy for GLBT Elders) and GLEH (Gay and Lesbian Elder Housing).

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?

It’s Only McCarthyism If We Do It

That’s what Maggie Gallagher seems to believe:

Gay marriage advocates are trying to build up a boycott of Ender’s Game because of Orson Scott Card’s personal views on marriage. It seems very strange to me that so many artists and people on the left are supporting the idea that to make art in the mainstream you have to have the right political opinions. This used to be considered the heart of McCarthyism: loyalty oaths for filmmakers as the condition for working in the film industry. (These were imposed by the industry, not the government, remember, in response to public pressure).

It was just a little more than a year ago that the National Organization for Marriage, of which Gallagher is board chair, called for a boycott of Starbucks. I’ve grown to believe that organized boycotts are almost always futile in achieving their aims. That said, I do believe that we are all free to spend our money however we choose. I don’t purchase gasoline at Exxon on Mobil, and I don’t shop at Wal-Mart. And if the gross receipts for Ender’s Game opening night are going to be looked at as some kind of an economic referendum for Card, then I can safely say that I won’t be seeing the movie. It’s my money, and I just don’t feel like paying Card a dime of it, and I hope none of my friends or family members will either.

But if they do — if they want to see the movie because they loved the critically-aclaimed book, or because they’re interested in the star power of Asa Butterfield, Harrison Ford, Ben Kingsley, Aramis Knight, Hailee Steinfeld, Jimmy Pinchak, Viola Davis, and Abigail Breslin — then that’s no skin off of my nose either. Evil people are capable of producing great art, and it’s not axiomatic that their personal evil compromises that art, although I also think that it’s rare for that to occur. I’m not familiar with Ender’s Game to know whether it is tainted with Card’s vindictive viewpoints or not, although I am aware that it does infect other books that he wrote later.

But where I draw the line is here: ten years ago, Card wanted my very existence made criminal. Five years ago, if California had decided to legalize my marriage, he wasn’t just going to disagree with the outcome. He vowed “to destroy that government and bring it down.” So we’re not talking about a civil discussion over afternoon tea. Card has portrayed these issues in a stark struggle-to-the-death choice: it’s either us or him. And now he and his allies are crying foul because some of us are taking him at the very standard he established.

But in the final analysis, this isn’t a question of art or politics. It’s a question of commerce, as Gallagher helpfully clarified today:

But here’s what I believe about boycotts:

It’s fair to boycott a corporation as a corporation for something that corporation does as a corporation.

I think it’s unfair, destructive, and wicked to boycott a whole corporation because of the personal beliefs of one member of that corporation.

I think its repellent to boycott or blacklist an artist because of his personal views. It’s the heart of McCarthyism to me.

That said, people are free to buy tickets or not if they feel differently.

McCarthy, it must be remembered, was a powerful U.S. Senator who threatened to bring the power of the Federal Government down on Hollywood if it didn’t purge “communists,” however McCarthy alone chose to identify or define them,  from its midsts. That’s very different from citizens urging fellow citizens to refrain from buying something.

But setting aside Gallagher’s historically myopic view of McCarthyism, I think her attempt to draw a distinction around Card as an artist is unrealistic. I don’t see many homophobes going to a Lady Gaga concert, and I do see a lot of anti-gay activists denouncing pretty much whatever she does. When k.d. lang came out, she was met with boycotts of her records by country music stations across North America. Outside of the LGBT political arena, we can all recall the backlash against the Dixie Chicks when Natalie Maines took a distinctly anti-Bush stance at a 2003 concert in London. But despite the backlashes, art was never repressed. Card, Gaga, k.d., the Chicks were then and still are free to make their art with whatever points of view they see fit.

But when they sell it, we enter the land of commerce, and we are all free to decide whether we want to buy what they’re selling. And my money just won’t go from my pocket to Card’s. It’s as simple as that.

Colombia Judge Orders Marriage Equality

A judge in Colombia ruled that same-sex couples in that country can marry:

Caracol Radio reported that Carmen Lucía Rodríguez Díaz, a civil judge in Bogotá, the country’s capital, “defended the viability of marriage for gay couples” in a five page ruling she wrote after a couple identified as Diego and Juan petitioned her to legally recognize their relationship. The two men are expected to tie the knot in a civil marriage ceremony on July 24.

…The South American country’s Constitutional Court in 2011 ruled gays and lesbians could legally register their relationships within two years if the country’s lawmakers failed to extend to them the same benefits heterosexuals receive through marriage.

Despite the Constitutional Court’s ruling, the Colombia Senate rejected a bill legalizing same-sex marriage. The Constitutional Court’s two-year deadline passed on June 20.

The Daily Agenda for Friday, July 12

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Bournemouth, UK; Bristol, UK; Green Bay, WI; Leipzig, Germany; Marseille, France (EuroPride 2013); Munich, Germany; San Diego, CA; San Luis Obispo, CA; Santa Barbara, CA; Tacoma, WA.

Other Events This Weekend: Rocky Mountain Regional Rodeo, Golden, CO; Outfest Film Festival, Los Angeles, CA; QFest Film Festival, Philadelphia, PA; Bear Week, Provincetown, MA Tokyo International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, Tokyo, Japan.

Van Cliburn’s historic performance at the first Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow, 19589

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Van Cliburn: 1934. In 1958, the Soviet Union, flush with the technological success of Sputnik, inaugurated the first International Tchaikovsky Competition to showcase the Soviet’s cultural superiority. But twenty-four year old Van Cliburn’s astounding performance of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 resulted in a standing ovation lasting eight minutes. With an American clearly the crowd favorite to take what was supposed to have been a Soviet showcase, the judges reportedly sought Khrushchev permission. “Is he the best? Then give him the prize!” so the story goes. Cliburn returned to the U.S. to a hero’s welcome, becoming the first and only classical musician to be treated to a New York ticker-tape parade. His 1958 Grammy-winning recording of Tchaikovsky’s first Piano Concerto became the first classical album to go platinum and was the best-selling classical album for more than a decade. It would eventually go on to go triple platinum and is still available for download in the internet age.

Van Cliburn’s return to Moscow, 2011

In 1962, he became the artistic adviser for his own namesake competition, the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, held every four years in Ft. Worth, Texas. His own competition now rivals the Tchaikovsky in international stature. He continued performing and recording through the 1960s and 1970s, but after the deaths of his father and manager, he took a hiatus from public life. He came out of retirement in 1987 to perform at the White House for President Ronald Reagan and Soviet president Mikhael Gorbachev. In 2011, Van Cliburn returned to the XCI Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, where he served as an honorary juror and was treated like a rock star. He died in 2013 at his Ft. Worth home of bone cancer at the age of 78. His funeral was held at the gay-friendly Broadway Baptist Church, and his obituary listed his sole survivor as “his friend of longstanding, Thomas L. Smith.”

Cheyenne Jackson: 1975. He was named for show business, named by his father after a 1950s Western television series. He is a talented actor and singer, working on stage, film and television. His biggest film role to date was as gay 9/11 hero Mark Bingham in the 2006 Oscar nominated United 93, though he was not yet out yet. Publicly at least. He came out to his parents at the age of 19. His conservative Christian family — including his brother who pastors a large evangelical church and often appears on Pat Robertson’s CBN — encouraged him to enroll in an Exodus International program, but he quietly refused. Fortunately, his family has mostly come around since then.

Jackson came out publicly in 2008, in an interview with the New York Times. That same year, he appeared in a New York production of Damn Yankees with Jane Krakowski and Sean Hayes. In 2009, he opened on Broadway in a revival of Finian’s Rainbows. He has also had recurring roles on television with NBC’s 30 Rock and Fox’s Glee. In 2009, he released a CD with Michael Feinstein, The Power Of Two. He is an avid LGBT rights supporter and an ambassador for amfAR (The Foundation for AIDS Research), and in 2011, he appeared in the New York stage reading of Dustin Lance Black’s play, 8, based on on the Proposition 8 trial transcript. In 2011, he married his husband, physicist Monte Lapka, after New York legalized same-sex marriage. The couple have been together since 1999.

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?

A Most Perfect Description

Yesterday someone messaged me a most perfect description of our opponents.

He and I had been tangling with NOM’s Jennifer Roback Morse on an anti-gay website, pointing out the error of using a tragic case of child abuse as an argument against same-sex marriage. Morse, on her Facebook page, claimed we were defending the abusers — “a couple of pro-gay guys circling the wagons around these creeps,” is how she put it.

It’s enough to make you wonder where she learned to read. I alerted my compatriot and he wrote back this description of Morse and her allies on that site:

Mostly they just talk to each other and, essentially, engage in a conspiracy to take each other seriously.

Read that again, just for the pleasure of it:

…engage in a conspiracy to take each other seriously.

I say that’s a perfect phrase.

It’s fluid, looks good on the page, trips off the tongue, and rewards you with deeper insight the longer you contemplate it. I’m holding on to it, and whenever I encounter a cluster of people swapping statements with no apparent connection to reality, instead of feeling baffled I’ll think: Yes! — they’re engaged in a conspiracy to take each other seriously.

The Daily Agenda for Thursday, July 11

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Bournemouth, UK; Bristol, UK; Green Bay, WI; Leipzig, Germany; Marseille, France (EuroPride 2013); Munich, Germany; San Diego, CA; San Luis Obispo, CA; Santa Barbara, CA; Tacoma, WA.

Other Events This Weekend: Rocky Mountain Regional Rodeo, Golden, CO; Outfest Film Festival, Los Angeles, CA; QFest Film Festival, Philadelphia, PA; Bear Week, Provincetown, MA Tokyo International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, Tokyo, Japan.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Twenty-Six Oklahoma City Teachers Forced to Resign: 1966. Oklahoma County Attorney Curtis Harris revealed that 26 teachers and school administrators in Oklahoma City have resigned following a six month investiation into “alleged homosexual activity.” Harris said that his office was being “presssured” by prominent citizens to cut back on his investigation, but said “It won’t work. The investigation will continue.” He did say though that his investigation of late had been hampered when his assistant, investigator Albert J. Hock, suffered a heart attack over the weekend.

Alex Higdon, Executive Asstant for Oklahoma City schools had a different set of figures, saying that as far as he knew only twelve had resigned, “but of course we may not have known about it when they resigned.” HE also said that the school board condicted its own investigations rather than work in tandem with the County Attorney. “If evidence substantiates the charges, the person is asked to resign,” he said.

[Source: UPI. “26 Resign in Teacher Deviate Quiz.” The Washington Post (July 12, 1966): A3.]

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Dorothy Wilde: 1895. She was born in London three months after her uncle Oscar Wilde’s arrest for homosexuality. Known as Dolly, she inherited much from her uncle: her good looks, her cutting wit, her charms, her poise, and her artful turn of a phrase. Those talents held her in good stead in the salons of Paris between the wars. She first traveled to France in 1914 to serve as an ambulance driver during World War I, and it was then that she had an affair with another ambulance driver, Standard Oil heiress Marion “Joe” Carstairs, who after the war become a renowned speedboat racer (“the fastest woman on water”). Her longest relationship though began in 1927 and lasted until her death, with the American writer Natalie Clifford Barney. Dolly was a gifted storyteller and writer, but she never pursued a career in writing. Her drinking and addiction to heroin may have gotten in the way. In 1939, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, but refused surgery. The next year when Germany invaded France, Dolly fled to London, where she died in 1941 of “causes unascertainable,” a possible allusion to a drug overdose or to alternative treatments she sought for her cancer.

Tab Hunter: 1931. Born Arthur Gelien in New York, he was given his stage name by his first agent. His good looks quickly made him a teen idol in the 1950s as he appeared in more than forty films throughout his career. That career was threatened however when, in 1955, Confidential magazine reported Hunter’s 1950 arrest in an innuendo-laden article, but Hunter’s studio-arranged “romances” with Natalie Wood and Debbie Reynolds succeeded in rescuing his reputation. In his 2005 memoir, Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star, Hunter talks about his relationships with Anthony Perkins, Rudolph Nureyev and champion figure skater Ronnie Robertson, along with many anecdotes about the stars that he met: Roddy McDowell, Tallulah Bankhead, Robert Mitchum, Fred Astaire, Linda Darnell. But by 1959, his career was on the downhill slope towards spaghetti westerns and dinner theater. His career was revived when he co-starred with Divine in John Water’s Polyester and my favorite, Lust In the Dust, making him a new kind of icon. “Making out with Divine, that’s beyond the bravery of coming out,” he said. “But he had a sense of humor about the glamour he was caught in. He’s a great sport, and a great star.” He described his work with John Waters and Divine as “a high point in my professional life.” He now lives near Santa Barbera with his longtime partner of more than thirty years.

Yevgeny Kharitonov: 1941. Born in Novosibirsk, he embarked on a very brief career as an actor, but went from there to playwriting. Although none of his works were published in his lifetime by the Soviet press, he is now recognized as a founder of modern Russian gay literature. His sexuality, which was criminalized at the time, mirrored the Soviet experience in which the mere existence of a lot of people was grounds for state repression. . His dissident writing and his sexuality made him a double target, and he was placed under close surveillance by the KBG. When he was called to the KGB for his first “interview,” he fainted. When he died of a heart attack in 1981, many believed that his death was hastened over the pressure of official scrutiny. When he died, he was carrying a manuscript for “Under House Arrest,” which scattered and blew down the street when he collapsed. Other versions of the manuscript survived and was published several years after his death.

Kharitonov claimed his sexuality as a gift that gave him special insight into the human condition. In his brief gay manifesto, The Leaflet, Kharitonov compares the repression that gay people experienced in Russian society to the anti-Semetism experienced by Russia’s Jews. He also saw the artistry of Russia’s Jews and gays as being the product of that repression. “The best flower of our shallow people is called like no other to dance the dance of impossible love and to sing of it sweetly.”

Vito Russo: 1946. He was an LGBT activist and film historian, best known as the author of the 1981 book The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies. The book was the result of a live lecture with film clips that he had presented at colleges, universities and small art-house cinemas throughout the 1970s. His concern over how LGBT people were presented in the popular media led to his becoming a co-founder for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). He became involved as a gay rights activist immediately following the Stonewall uprising — in fact, he was among the crowd as the rebellion broke out. He went on to become a leading figure in the Gay Activists Alliance, one of the early pro-gay groups to form in New York City in Stonewall’s wake. In the 1980s, he became involved in ACT-UP as a result of increasing frustration over city, state, and federal government inaction and footdragging in the face of a mounting AIDS epidemic. He died in from AIDS in 1990 but his work continued to gain a wider audience when HBO created a documentary film version of The Celluloid Closet narrated by Lilly Tomlin. In 2011 a family-authorized biography by Michael Shiavi, Celluloid Activist: The Life and Times of Vito Russo, was published by the University of Wisconsin Press. And two weeks from now, HBO returns with another feature about Russo, this time a documentary titled simply Vito, which will premiere on July 23.

45 YEARS AGO: Esera Tuaolo: 1968. The Samoan from Hawaii was an NFL defensive lineman for nine years, beginning with the Green Bay Packers and the Minnesota Vikings. After a stint with the Jacksonville Jaguars in 1997, he went to Atlanta, where he reached the Super Bowl in 1999. He ended his career the following season with the Carolina Panthers. In 2002, he announced that he is gay on HBO’s Real Sports, making him the third NFL player to come out (after David Kopay and Roy Simmons). In 2006, he released his autobiography, Alone in the Trenches: My Life As a Gay Man in the NFL, and he has actively campaigned on ending homophobia in sports. In 2010, he was arrested on a domestic violence charge with his boyfriend, but those charges were dropped with his boyfriend saying it was all a misunderstanding.

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?

The Geeks Strike Back

Sci-fi writer, anti-gay extremist and NOM board member Orson Scott Card grumbled that people were remembering some of his anti-gay extremism — for instance, that he once called for the violent overthrow of the government if California’s Prop 8 was to fail at the box — and complained that it threatened a potentially lucrative opening for Ender’s Game, a movie based on his book for the same name. Amid growing calls for a boycott, Card decided to peg the movie’s box office success as a measure of pro-gay tolerance. Geeks OUT, a group of LGBT comic and sci-fi enthusiasts who are calling for the boycott, has responded to Card’s challenge:

The Bill of Rights protects your freedom of speech but it does not protect your right to a blockbuster opening weekend.

NOM Board Member and Ender’s Game author Orson Scott Card’s tone-deaf plea for “tolerance” from pro-gay marriage forces, first given to Entertainment Weekly, struck such a sour note with so many because it seems to miss the point entirely.

This is not and has never been about a much beloved sci-fi novel. Leaving aside the fact that Card thinks gay civil rights didn’t exist in the mid-80s, which is pretty insulting to the post-Stonewall generation frontline against a little something called AIDS—this is about us, here and now. This is about our community refusing to financially support an extreme anti-gay activist. …

…Orson Scott Card, we can tolerate your anti-gay activism, your right-wing extremism, your campaign of fear-mongering and insults, but we’re not going to pay you for it. You’ve got the right to express your opinions and beliefs any way you choose—but you don’t have a right to our money.

How many homophobic billboards and absurd “Gathering Storm” ads would a new fortune built off of Ender’s Game lunchboxes buy for NOM?

There are a couple of things I find fascinating. First, Card wrote, “With the recent Supreme Court ruling, the gay marriage issue becomes moot.” Moot? I wonder if you’ve bothered to tell NOM that? Also, I think it’s safe to say that Card’s response has done wonders in elevating Geeks OUT’s public profile. I before this all hit, I wonder how many people had ever heard of Geeks OUT before.

Geeks OUT ends their statement asking Lionsgate, the actors and production crew, “How do you cut this guy a check?”

UK Marriage Equality Bill Survives Report Stage in House of Lords

The British House of Lords concluded its examination of the  Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill at the Report Stage, and has scheduled the bill for its Third (and final) Reading on July 15. The Lords turned back several key amendments which would have either wrecked the bill altogether or delayed its implementation. 

One “wrecking” amendment which would have created a two-teir marriage law, was withdrawn earlier in the day. Another set of amendments, proposed by Lord Indarjit Singh of Wimbledon would have required that the entire bill be put to voters in England and Wales in an October referendum before it can take effect. After intense debate, during which Lord Singh cited the discredited Regnerus study, he eventually withdrew the amendment before it was called for a vote. And another set of  proposed amendments from Baroness Ruth Deech would have extend all tax and other benefits of civil partnerships to all care givers and family members who share a house. Those amendments were soundly defeated in a 267-89 vote.

Do not mess with ‘flamboyant’ Dynasty or his Mama. Just don’t.

Darnell “Dynasty” Young, a 17 year old gay kid, attended Arsenal Technical High School in Indianapolis. And last year, Dynasty got a bit tired of being bullied and harrassed at school – and of the administrators telling that if he didn’t want to be bullied he shouldn’t be so flamboyant.

So he turned to someone much more pragmatic (and kid savvy) than his school administration: his mother. And Dynasty’s mother, Chelisa Grimes, had a solution. Like many a parent, she had the philosophy that if someone is picking on you, you find a way to defend yourself.

And when complaining to the administration didn’t work, she sent Dynasty to school with a stun gun.

And, on April 16, 2012, when Dynasty was cornered by six kids threatening to beat him up, he pulled out his stun gun, pointed it at the sky, and set off a stun charge. The bullies quickly discovered that they had other compelling engagements and couldn’t hang around to beat up Dynasty this time.

The school’s response was to expel Dynasty. As it turns out, while the school does not have a zero tolerance policy for beating up gay kids, it does have a zero tolerance policy for using quasi-sorta-gun-like-items to defend yourself from physical harm.

Dyanasty’s mama wasn’t buying it. (CNN)

Grimes told CNN’s Don Lemon on Sunday that she would do it again, despite the threat of expulsion.

“I do not promote violence — not at all — but what is a parent to do when she has done everything that she felt she was supposed to do … at the school?” Grimes said. “I did feel like there was nothing else left for me to do but protect my child.”

“I brought the stun gun ’cause I wasn’t safe,” the teen said.

So Grimes and Young sued the district. The asked whether “butch up, young man” was really the appropriate response to a kid being taunted and harassed and subjected to threat. And, this week the school admitted that maybe that was a good question. In fact, it was the $65,000 question. (WISHTV)

An openly gay Indianapolis teenager who was expelled for bringing a stun gun to school to protect himself from bullies has agreed to settle his lawsuit against Indianapolis Public Schools for $65,000.

The proposed settlement filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Indianapolis also calls for the school district to remove all references of Darnell “Dynasty” Young being expelled from school from the 18-year-old’s academic record.

So to all you principals out there who look the other way when some gay girl gets beat up, or who tells some gay boy that if he wears womens boot that he deserves what he gets – and there seems to be a lot of you – listen up. I have some advice.

The next time you go to dismiss some flamboyant little queeny thing, give that a second thought. The next time you ignore a parent who is desperate to protect their child, you might want to pay attention. Because that little boy – and his mama – may be a whole hell of a lot tougher than you think they are.

Update: I also want to point out that Arsenal Tech has a higher than 50% dropout rate. But this young gay bullied black young man is so determined to have an education that he fought for that right. And he learned to value education somewhere – obviously somewhere other than his school.

Just Enjoy the Sparkly Lights

“Jennifer Thieme is the Director of Finance for the Ruth Institute, a project of the National Organization for Marriage Education Fund.”

That’s according to the Ruth Institute’s website. Jennifer is frustrated with libertarians who support same-sex marriage, and especially those who think the government should get out of marriage altogether. Her arguments are so astounding that I cannot understand them. I can only be entertained by them. For instance: Read the rest of this entry »

ENDA passes Senate committee

Today the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee took up the Employment Non Discrimination Act today. (RollCall)

Three Republicans joined all the Democrats on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee as it endorsed legislation that would ban workplace harassment and job discrimination nationwide based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The 15-7 approval vote makes clear that a majority of senators support passage, and that the roster of supporters is no more than a handful short of the 60 necessary to overcome a guaranteed filibuster from Republican cultural conservatives.

The Republicans voting yes were Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mark S. Kirk of Illinois, and Orrin Hatch of Utah. Sue Collins of Maine (not on that committee) has also signed on as a sponsor.

The “no” votes were Lamar Alexander (Tennessee), Michael Enzi (Wyoming), Richard Burr (North Carolina), Johnny Isakson (Georgia), Rand Paul (Kentucky), Pat Roberts (Kansas), and Tim Scott (South Carolina).

“What’s Morally Wrong With Homosexuality?” John Corvino’s Answer Now Available on YouTube

Back in 2007, I raved about John Corvino’s DVD, “What’s Morally Wrong with Homosexuality,” in which he methodically deconstructed our opponents arguments about the morality of our relationships.In this lecture, he covers it all: pointing out that the Bible didn’t just condone slavery but described how people should own slaves; exploring the logical fallacy that happens when people are reduced to the sum of their parts, a defense of what “morality” really means. It’s all there. Now Paradise Valley Media, which produced the 2007 DVD has finally made the full hour-long lecture available on YouTube. Now, as then, I highly recommend it.