Box Turtle Bulletin

Welcome out, Clive Davis

Unless your taste is limited to polka, your music has been impacted by Clive Davis. Responsible for finding or cultivating the careers of artists as diverse as Janis Joplin, Miles Davis, Annie Lennox, and Whitney Houston, he has helped shape the sound of half a century.

And, as he reveals in a new biography, he’s bisexual (USAToday)

“After my second marriage failed, I met a man who was also grounded in music. Having only had loving relationships and sexual intimacy with women, I opened myself up to the possibility that I could have that with a male, and found that I could.”

Davis is currently involved with another man (who isn’t in show business), “but I never stopped being attracted to women. Bisexuality is misunderstood; the adage is that you’re either straight or gay or lying, but that’s not my experience. To call me anything other than bisexual would be inaccurate.”

Welcome out, Clive.

Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill Rises To Top of Parliament’s “Business to Follow”

The Anti-Homosexuality Bill, the draconian legislation that would seek to wipe LGBT people out of existence, has risen to the top of the Uganda Parliament’s “Business to Follow” list on today’s Order Paper (Word: 43KB/2 pages). The bill’s rising profile occurs as Parliament is set to consider two other contentious bills: a second Petroleum Bill to regulate gas processing and conversion, transportation, and storage; and a Public Order and Management Bill, which comes in the wake of widespread protests by opposition leaders and ongoing police crackdowns on freedom of assembly on behalf of the government. It also follows a highly controversial Marriage and Divorce Bill, which, like the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, has been in the works since 2009. In fact, it was a walkout over the Marriage and Divorce Bill which denied the previous Parliament its working quorum and led to that Parliament’s expiration before it was able to vote on the Anti-Homosexuality Bill.

All three bills ahead of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill are allocated sixty minutes on the agenda, but it may, in fact, take weeks for Parliament to make their way through these bills. The Petroleum Bill first appeared on Parliament’s Order Paper last Wednesday (Word: 36/2 pages) with its allocated sixty minutes of fame. Nearly a week later, and it’s still there awaiting action. That same day, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill was at number four under “Business to Follow”, and the Marriage and Divorce Bill was placed at number five. The next day (Word: 41KB/2 pages), the Anti-Homosexuality Bill rose to the number  three spot under “Business to Follow,” but the Marriage and Divorce Bill leapfrogged to number two, just behind the Public Order and Management Bill.

The last time the Anti-Homosexuality Bill made it to the top of Parliament’s “Business to Follow,” the house was wrangling over a highly controversial Petroleum Bill which would grant vast powers to the Energy Minister, a presidential appointee, giving the minister sole discretion in negotiating, signing and revoking lucrative oil exploration and drilling contracts. Uganda is already rated as one of the more corrupt nations of East Africa, and critics charged that the first Petroleum Bill would amount to legalizing the theft of the country’s newly-discovered oil wealth. That bill was finally passed in a deft, last-minute move when there just happened to be the precise number of people on hand in Parliament to form a bare quorum. Soon after, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill quickly fell to number seven in Parliament’s “Business to Follow.” The bill’s recent rise on the on-deck list follows a familiar pattern of being retained close at hand in case it is needed as either a carrot, a unifying reward or a distraction if one of the other more contentious bills results in turmoil in the House.

The Anti-Homosexuality Bill would, in its current form, bring the death penalty or life imprisonment for gay people, and would endanger everyone else with lengthy prison terms for either knowing, providing services, or defending them. A complete clause-by-clause examination f of the bill’s nineteen clauses begins here, and our examination of the numerous false reports that the death penalty has been removed is here. A description of the Parliamentary process is here; with the Anti-Homosexuality Bill now at step “C.” If the bill is passed by Parliament, the Uganda Constitution spells out these options before the bill becomes law.

The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, February 19

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Florida Senate Committee To Hear Bill On Domestic Partner Protection: Tallahassee, FL. I’ll bet you didn’t know that nearly half of all Floridians live in communities with local Domestic Partnership registries, including Miami-Dade, Orange County (Orlando), Broward County (Ft. Lauderdale), Tampa, Gainesville, Clearwater, Key West, and others.  SB 196, the “Families First” bill, is now before  the state Senate, and would establish a domestic partnership statewide and provide limited but important legal protectionsfor registered same-sex partners. Senate Committee on Children, Families and Elder Affairs will meet this afternoon to consider the bill, beginning at 1:00 p.m. in the Mallory Horne Committee Room, 37 of the Senate Office Building.

Equality Florida notes that this hearing will occur exactly six years to the day that Janice Langbehn’s life partner of 18 years, Lisa Pond, died at Miami’s Jackson Memorial Hospital after Langbehn was denied access to visit Lisa. That case drew national attention, leading President Barack Obama to issue an Executive Memo requiring all hospitals which receive Medicaid funding to treat domestic partners as family. Last year, Langbehn was honored by President Barack Obama with the 2011 Presidential Citizens Medal, the nation’s second-highest civilian honor, for her efforts.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Raid on Hazel’s Inn: 1956. San Mateo County Sheriff Earl Whitmore, accompanied by deputies, Army military police, state Alcoholic Beverage Control agents and members of the California Highway Patrol, began the raid by striding into Hazel’s Inn, a gay bar in Sharp Park, south of San Fricisco, and announced simply, “This is a raid!” Patrons were orderd to line up in single fule and pass before a group of officers at the rear of the door. Those who were recognized by undercover agents as being gay were ordered to step to one side and loaded into a waiting van outside. About 88 of the 200 or more patrons were singled out and taken away to be fingerprinted, their mug shots taken, and charged with vagrancy for being a “lewd and dissolute person” and for committing “acts outraging public decency” — common misdemeanor charges used against those deemed to be engaging in “immoral” acts, which in this case was, basically, being caught in a gay bar. The bars owners were also charged with operating a dance establishment without a license (some patrons were seen dancing to a jukebox).

Sheriff Whitmore told the press, “The purpose of th raid is to make it very clear to these people that we won’t put up iwth this sort of thing.” The American Civil Liberties Union of San Francisco’s Executive Secretary Ernest Besig took exception to that reasonging. “As far as can be ascertained, none of the patrons of the tavern were misbehaving or breaking any laws when the arrests occurred,” he wrote in the chapter’s newsletter. “The complaint seems to be that these men were making the tavern a ‘hang-out.’ Of course, there is no law against that, so long as their activity was lawful. …The ACLU is investigating the matter and the local staff counsel will appear on behalf of some of the alleged homosexuals at the court hearing.”

Those who were arrested were told by law enforcement officers and their bail bondsmen that if they forfeited bail, all further proceedings would be dropped. Thirty took them up on the officer, and on March 1, the remaining 57 were arraigned. About 30 entered not guilty pleas and requrested jury trials, which were set for March 26 and 27. The judge offered to reduce the charge to disorderly conduct in exchange for guilty pleas, and all but three took him up on that offer.

[Sources: Unsigned. “Civil Liberties Union looks into mass arrests.” Mattachine Review 2, 2nd special issue (March 1956): 4-5.

Unsigned. “American Civil Liberties Union acts to appeal California’s lewd vagrancy laws after convictions resulting from mass raids and arrests.” Mattachine Review 2, no. 3 (June 1956): 3-4, 36.]

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?

SCOTUS ‘rules’ marriage legal in Mexico

Mexico’s legal system is complicated, especially when it comes to matters of civil rights. Earlier this month, we reported that the Supreme Court of Mexico had declared that same-sex couples are entitled to the same rights to marriage as heterosexual couples. Today they clarified the basis of their thinking.

Oddly enough, it was the US Supreme Court: (Buzzfeed)

The historical disadvantages that homosexuals have suffered have been well recognized and documented: public harassment, verbal abuse, discrimination in their employment and in access to certain services, in addition to their exclusion to some aspects of public life. In this sense … when they are denied access to marriage it creates an analogy with the discrimination that interracial couples suffered in another era. In the celebrated case Loving v. Virginia, the United States Supreme Court argued that “restricting marriage rights as belonging to one race or another is incompatible with the equal protection clause” under the US constitution. In connection with this analogy, it can be said that the normative power of marriage is worth little if it does grant the possibility to marry the person one chooses.

As they address the Windsor and Perry cases this spring, let’s hope that the Supreme Court rules as wisely in the US as the Mexico Court has found its rulings to be in Mexico.

Gallup asks how many gays

The Gallup Poll people have conducted a rather massive survey – 206,186 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia – asking one simple question:

Do you, personally, identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender?

Gallup then ranked the states by most to least, and news and bloggers were quick to find that ranking interesting. Which was, in itself, interesting in that it illustrated that most folks don’t understand polls and that Gallup is more than happy to play into their ignorance.

Margins of error for individual states are no greater than ±6 percentage points, and are ±3 percentage points in most states. The margin of error for the District of Columbia is ±6 percentage points.

In other words, the ranking is all in the margin of error.

But the national margin of error is much smaller, +/- 1% (95% confidence). And the overall finding is pretty close to what we’ve long calculated here at BTB: 3.5%.

And it’s not exactly news either. Gallup told us back in October that the percentage was 3.4%, along with a lot of other inside-the-margin-of-error details. And this poll appears to be an extension of the last.

But, in any case, we are finally getting a number into general circulation that is probably more accurate than the old Kinsey 10%. (Though I’m sure we would all find it interesting what was in the heads of the three to four percent which refused to answer either yes or no.)

Cardinal Mahony Wants You To Know He Forgives You

In January, Roger Cardinal Mahony, the retired Archbishop of Los Angeles, was relieved of all of his public and episcopal duties by his successor, Archbishop José Gomez, after posting tens of thousands of pages of previously secret personnel records of 122 priests who were accused of sexually abusing children. The records reveal that the claims of abuse went directly from the local parish level straight up to the top of the archdiocese, with Mahony being made personally aware of the abuse claims and working directly, with the full knowledge that the priests were subject to criminal investigation and prosecution, to shield the priests from the consequences of their criminal deeds by sending them out of state to New Mexico for therapy and keeping them out of state, for other dioceses to deal with, after their therapy had ended (unsuccessfully). The records also showed that another reason these priests were sent out of state is because Mahony was aware that California therapists have a legal duty of reporting child sexual abuses to local authorities.

In other words, Mahony oversaw a vast criminal racket to shield predatory men from having to face the legal consequences of sexually abusing underage boys. For decades, the families of these boys have been denied seeing these monsters held accountable for their crimes, with Mahony himself deeply embedding himself in numerous acts to obstruct justice. By the time Mahony reached the mandatory retirement age of 75 and handed the archdiocese over to his successor, changes had been made to how the archdiocese handles complaints going forward, but the families have yet to see their day in court. But when Gomez relieved Mahony of his remaining duties, Mahony recounted his self-serving version of the long disgusting history and protested, “I handed over to you an Archdiocese that was second to none in protecting children and youth.” Sadly, given what he was comparing his archdiocese with — Boston, New York, Dallas, San Diego, Denver, Louisville, Tucson, Davenport, Covington (KY), Charleston (SC), and in each of the rest of the 195 dioceses in the U.S.  — those words were undoubtedly, sadly, true.

But now, before he leaves to go to Rome to help elect the next Pope, he wants you to know that all is forgiven:

Given all of the storms that have surrounded me and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles recently, God’s grace finally helped me to understand:  I am not being called to serve Jesus in humility.  Rather, I am being called to something deeper–to be humiliated, disgraced, and rebuffed by many.

I was not ready for this challenge.  Ash Wednesday changed all of that, and I see Lent 2013 as a special time to reflect deeply upon this special call by Jesus.

To be honest with you, I have not reached the point where I can actually pray for more humiliation.  I’m only at the stage of asking for the grace to endure the level of humiliation at the moment.

In the past several days, I have experienced many examples of being humiliated.  In recent days, I have been confronted in various places by very unhappy people.  I could understand the depth of their anger and outrage–at me, at the Church, at about injustices that swirl around us.

Thanks to God’s special grace, I simply stood there, asking God to bless and forgive them.

So if you’re worried about how all of the righteous anger being directed at Mahony over his criminal misdeeds has been affecting him, you can now sleep better at night. He forgives you.

Narcissism, thy name is Mahony.

The Daily Agenda for Monday, February 18

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Fundraising Campaign for Jamaica Anti-Gay Violence Documentary: Kickstarter. Two weeks ago, I told you about Micah Fink’s documentary, An Abominable Crime: Anti-Gay Violence in Jamaica, which is currently in production and the subject of a Kickstarter campaign running through March 2. With eleven days left, they are now more than half way to the goal of raising $35,000, which will allow them to complete post-production work: editing, a musical score, sound mixing, graphics and title sequences, and promotion. Kickstarter is an all-or-nothing model. Either they raise pledges for a full $35,000 campaign or they get nothing. But now, The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, which as been providing part of the funding for the project, has decided as of last week to match, dollar for dollar, up for $15,000 on Kickstarter contributions going forward, which means that your pledge will go twice as far.

Micah Fink is a documentary filmmaker whose credits include PBS, National Geographic, CNN, and HBO, among others. Since filming started on An Abominable Crime in 2009, five of the film’s subjects have fled Jamaica after dealing with gunfire, mob violence, and death threats. The film centers on two gay Jamaicans who were forced by homophobic violence to flee their homeland:

• Simone Edwards is a brave lesbian mother, who barely survives a murderous attack — and then is forced to choose between a life in hiding in Jamaica with her young daughter — or a life alone as an asylum seeker abroad.
• Maurice Tomlinson, Jamaica’s leading human rights activist and an active member of the MCC Church, is also forced to flee his homeland when he is publicly outed by a Jamaican newspaper — shortly after filing a legal challenge to Jamaica’s destructive anti-gay laws. The filmmakers follow him as he decides to risk his life by returning home to continue his work.

For more information and to contribute, please click here.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Marquess of Queensbury Accuses Oscar Wilde of Being a Sodomite: 1895. British playwright Oscar Wilde was dining at the Albermarle Club when the Marquess of Queensbury left a calling card with the porter. It read, “To Oscar Wilde posing as a somdomite.” The misspelling may have been the product of Queensbury’s rage over the relationship between Wilde and his son, Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas. Queensbury had ferocious arguments with his son, trying to get him to stop seeing Wilde, but Bosie refused. Queensbury even threatened to go public with what he knew, but Bosie refused to back down. So on February 18, 1895, Queensbury followed through on his threat.

This action led to a long string of events which eventually led to Wilde’s disgrace, imprisonment, exile in France, and early death. Perhaps all that could have been avoided if Wilde had decided not to sue Queensbury for libel. His friends advised him against it, but he may have felt he had little choice. Having been called out publicly like that, declining to sue might be taken as an admission of guilt. Unfortunately, Wilde’s libel case collapsed when Queensbury’s lawyer asked whether he had ever kissed Walter Grainger in greeting. “Oh, dear no,” Wilde replied, “He was a peculiarly plain boy. He was unfortunately extremely ugly. I pitied him for it.”

Queensbury’s lawyer pounced on Wilde’s admission that attraction was the reason he didn’t kiss him.  In short order, Wilde lost the case, and was charged with gross indecency. Wilde’s first criminal trial ended in a hung jury but the second one resulted in Wilde’s conviction and sentence to two years at hard labor.

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 lesson in wedding photography

Sometimes discrimination doesn’t come from a place of hate. Sometimes it just comes from a place of fear or confusion, an automatic reaction based on the established prejudice of the dominant culture. This weekend, we had an illustration of just such an event.

Photographer Anne Almasy decided it was time to take out her first advertisement, and she chose Weddings Unveiled as the magazine she felt best suited to reach potential clients. And although Anne has take pictures from many different weddings, big and small, she decided to stand out and be unique. She chose a picture from a same-sex wedding in which the brides were in a warehouse sitting on bags of coffee beans. She says it represents love, home, and joy, but I think it also is creative, interesting, and outside the box.

The response was not positive. The editor called her and said,

Is there possibly another photograph you’d like to use in your ad? We just don’t feel comfortable publishing an ad featuring a same-sex couple. These aren’t our personal beliefs, of course, but, you know…

Over the weekend, the magazine heard from a few folks who were not particularly pleased by that decision. And today they have a new perspective.

Honestly, we knew that everyone would not share our belief that all people have the right to marry. The issue is very sensitive and it is also very divided. We knew that it was possible that people would be offended if we published the ad and we knew that it was possible that people would be offended if we did not. We are so sorry that we acted out of fear and uncertainty. We had never been faced with such a decision and we should have acted with our hearts.

Yes, they should have. They made a hasty, fearful, and stupid decision. And now they are apologizing in a way that appears to me to be sincere.

I hope we are all able to see this as a learning situation, a reminder to our friends that friendship requires more than just “supporting” our community in theory or words, and a reminder to our community that sometimes people make mistakes but can grow if we let them.

The Daily Agenda for Sunday, February 17

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Events this weekend: Arizona Gay Rodeo, Laveen, AZ; Sydney Mardis Gras, Sydney, NSW.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Laredo D.A. Defends City’s Reputation: 1953. The District Attorney for Laredo, Texas, defended his fair city’s reputation against allegations made by a Mexican newspaper in Nuevo Laredo, just a cross the border, that there were homosexual activities taking place on the American side of the line. D.A. James Kazen was responding to a series of articles by El Manaña, a morning daily with wide circulation in both communities, which claimed that many prominent citizens of Laredo were involved in homosexual activities, and promised to run a list of names in a future article. Kazen denounced the stories as “wholly untrue,” and successfully appealed to Judge R.D. Wright to reconvene a grand jury to investigate the reports. Kazen did acknowledge that there were homosexuals on the streets of Laredo — but only four, and two of them were outsiders who had only recently moved to town.

“Chicken And Bulls” Blackmail Ring Busted: 1966. A massive, multi-state blackmail ring stretching from Chicago to New York To North Carolina was broken with the arrest of nine extortionists, with eight more being sought. As The New York Times reported, the gang employed “chickens” (including college students and at least one bodybuilder) who posed as young gay men who would allow themselves to be picked up by other gay men, usually travelling businessmen, to go back to the hotel. Once there, the “chicken” would beat and rob their victims and leave. A few hours later, other men — the “bulls” — posing as policemen would arrive at the hotel for another shakedown. Saying that they had arrested a homosexual prostitute with the victim’s wallet in his possession, the “police” needed to victim to go to the station to make a statement. Fearing exposure, the victim would often offer a bribe to the “police” to make the whole problem go away. In another version of the shakedown, “police” would burst into the hotel room just when the men were in a compromising state of undress, and the shakedown would begin with the threat of arrest.

The gang’s success hinged on several factors: homosexuality was illegal everywhere except Illinois, and even there the mere threat of being publicly exposed was enough to induce the victim to do just about anything to avoid having his reputation, career and family life ruined. The ring’s longevity — it would later be revealed that it had been in operation for about a decade — was further aided by the fact that none of the victims went to the police. And why would they? They already thought they were dealing with the police. Actual police corruption was so rampant, with many of them operating their own blackmail schemes using many of the same tactics, victims had no way to tell the fake cops from the real.

To further add to the confusion, some members of the gang actually had police connections, allowing the gang to imitate police officers with a great deal of precision. John J. Pyne, the ringleader of the gang, was a retired Chicago policeman. In his home, the FBI found police badges and identification papers for almost every state, along with a variety of blank arrest warrants, charge sheets and extradition forms from several jurisdictions. As the investigation and trials unfolded over the next two years, investigators would learn that millions of dollars were extorted from over a thousand victims. The victims themselves were no lo-lifes. They included university deans, professors, military officers (including a navy admiral and two generals), several well-known actors, TV personalities (including, it’s been said, Liberace, who refused to testify before a grand jury for fear of ruining his career), and at least one U.S. Congressman. Their boldness knew no limits. Twice, they confronted Rep. Peter Frelinghuysen (R-NJ) in his Capitol Hill office, took him to a private plane to fly to New Jersey, and brought him directly to a bank where he paid a total of $50,000. They pulled a prominent surgeon out of an operating room, forcing his colleague to finish the surgery. They even went into the Pentagon and escorted Admiral William Church out of the building and to a bank where he handed over $5,000. Church later committed suicide to avoid testifying before a grand jury against his blackmailers.

Church’s suicide (and Liberace’s reticence) was indicative of the greatest problem that the FBI and New York Police Department faced in trying to break the case: almost none of the victims were willing to talk to police, let alone testify. If there is a silver lining in the whole affair, is is probably the fact that investigators had to figure out how to set aside their own prejudices, and through persistence and discretion, build a foundation of trust between themselves and the victims. The Mattachine Society was enlisted as a go-between so that victims might feel less exposed. Some judges, where they could, allowed victims to testify anonymously, or allowed victims to testify about the blackmail without going into any sexual details. These accommodations were a complete turnaround from the way law enforcement and the courts had dealt with gay people during the Lavender Scare of the 1950s. Press coverage was also markedly different. With the roster of victims including the cream of society, it was much easier to portray them with considerable sympathy. As one law enforcement official told The Times, “Extortion of money from well known persons who are homosexual or bisexual is a persistent problem. We want to alert these people who come from all walks of life that such extortion schemes exist and we want to impress upon them also that New York City detectives are no part of this disgusting racket.”

Over the next two years, various members of the ring were tried, with most found guilty and sent to prison. Pyne was sentenced to two consecutive 20-year federal prison terms. Weightlifter John Fellabaum, a ringleader who posed as a musclebound “chicken,” angered the judge when he forced a witness, an antiques dealer from Maine, to take the stand and publicly out himself, after which Fellabaum immediately changed his plea to guilty. The judge was outraged. “I have been sentencing people for twenty-seven years and it has been a a long time since I have come upon a case that was so revolting as your case. I think you are so steeped in filth that as I read the report I cringed, and my flesh crept as I read the depth of inequity to which you allowed yourself to sink.”

[Sources: William McGowan. “The Chicken and the Bulls” Slate (July 11, 2012). Available online here.

Angus McLaren. Sexual Blackmail: A Modern History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002): 239-242.]

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?

Are You a Pro-Gay Bigot?

I’m still working on the follow-up post on bigotry that I promised the other day as part of my response to Vogt. In the meantime, I figured I’d share something I wrote a few years ago before joining Box Turtle Bulletin. I came across this list of twenty questions on a conservative web site under the title, “Are You a Pro-Gay Bigot?” The questions reveal quite a lot about about the author’s mentality. Here are the questions, with my own answers to each.

1. Do you believe in free speech about homosexuality for everyone except conservatives or Christians?

No, I believe in free speech for everyone.

2. Do you participate in name-calling of those who object to homosexuality — names like bigot, hate-monger, etc.?

No.  It takes more than an objection to homosexuality.  Here are the people I call bigots:

• People who bully, assault, and kill gays because of their sexual orientation.
• People who think gays should be imprisoned or put to death.
• People who devote their professional lives to stripping gays of their rights.
• People who make sweeping generalizations about the character of gay people.
• People who automatically believe any anti-gay statement they read, while shutting their eyes to contradictory facts and evidence.

3. Do you believe ‘gays’ have been deprived of the right to marry? Doesn’t pretty much everyone have the right to marry now — to a person of the opposite sex?

a.  Yes I do.

b.  No they don’t.  Here are three responses:

• Do you really think we’ve achieved equality and freedom just because I have the right to do what YOU want me to do?  That’s not equality or freedom — that’s putting you in charge of me.

• Your question is based on the principle that if everyone has the same rights, then everything must be okay.  But does this principle hold true?  Apply it to religion:  Suppose we passed a Constitutional amendment shutting down all non-Christian places of worship.  Your principle would suggest that no one has been deprived of their rights because everyone has the same right to enter a Christian Church — and if everyone has the same rights, then we’re fine.   That would be ludicrous, so your principle is flawed.

• If only same-sex marriages were allowed, and all opposite-sex marriages were invalidated, would straights think they’ve been deprived of their right to marry?  I’d like to see someone do on a poll on that question.

4. Do you believe those who object to homosexuality are motivated by fear or ignorance? Do you believe they could never be motivated by compassion for the people involved, and if they say so, they must be lying?

a.  For the most part, yes.  I was raised to be afraid of gays and was kept ignorant of the facts by my parents (who were trying to “protect” me and had themselves been taught untruths), by my church, by my public school teachers, and by the media.  I think this is true of most people, not just me.

b.  I do believe some anti-gays are motivated by compassion — a compassion based on ignorance and fear.  They’re trying to “rescue” me from something they fear, they know nothing of, and they’ve been lied to about by people they trust.

5. Do you believe some people will just inevitably be homosexual, and that there’s a set percentage of the population that will always be ‘gay’, and that this won’t increase, even if a culture embraces ‘gay’ sex? Do you think homosexual experimentation could never become ‘chic’ and popular? Is there no risk for the people involved or our culture if this happens?

a.  Of course.  There’s me, so that’s at least one.  And while it’s possible that more people will engage in gay sex if the culture embraces it, we won’t see an increase the number of people who are actually gay.

b.  Anything could become “chic and popular.”  Especially if it has the lure of the “forbidden” around it.

c.  All sex carries a measure of emotional and physical risk.  That’s why we need realistic and genuinely useful sex education, not “abstinence” programs that lead kids into risky behavior (like unprotected anal sex) because that way they can still think of themselves as virgins.

6. Do you automatically dismiss any conservative comments about homosexuality without listening? Do you believe you are well-informed, while refusing to learn about what homosexuals actually do and the risks involved?

a.  No.  I dismiss lots of conservative comments because I do listen.  And then I write a blog post detailing the factual and logical errors.

b.  I do believe I am well-informed, despite the best efforts of conservatives to deceive the public about what homosexuals actually do.

7. Do you believe that the tragedy of any suicide by someone involved in homosexuality is the fault of conservatives? Is the best solution to these tragedies to demand that everyone in America accept homosexuality?

a.  No.  People — straight and gay — commit suicide for many reasons.  I do believe, however, that quite a few suicides (especially teen suicides) are the fault of those people — liberal or conservative — who perpetuate lies about homosexuality.

b.  I believe many teens now dead would still be alive if their parents (and our culture) were more accepting of homosexuality, rather than telling kids that all gays are despicable, selfish people who prey on children and can never know love.

8. Do you automatically dismiss the idea that anyone could be a former homosexual, despite the hundreds of groups started by ex-‘gays’ and the thousands who live in America?

Please define “former homosexual.”  Many ex-gay groups say they cannot take away your homosexual urges but can help you stop acting on them.  That’s an odd definition of “former homosexual.”  Sounds like a celibate gay to me, and yes, I do believe some gays are celibate.

9. Do you believe that homosexuals are born that way? Do you refuse to consider the evidence against this claim? Have you ever looked at the connection between child sexual abuse and later homosexual attraction?

a.  I don’t know.

b.  The “evidence against this claim” tends to be weak.  People point to a lack of definitive evidence in favor of the claim, and erroneously call that evidence against it.  They also say things like, “We’ve mapped the human genome without finding a gay gene, so it doesn’t exist,” which does nothing but illustrate their ignorance of what genome-mapping means.  Or they assume “born that way” means “100% genetic” and ignore research on things like pre-natal hormones.

c.  Have you ever looked at the connection between child sexual abuse and later heterosexual attraction?

10. Do you believe that only churches that accept homosexuality have interpreted the Bible in the ‘correct’ way? Do you feel it isn’t necessary to read the relevant Bible passages yourself, all of which are straightforward in condemning homosexual acts? Do you believe it’s impossible to be “kind” and oppose homosexuality?

a.  I only have access to a translation of a copy of a copy of the Bible, so I can’t speak on the correct interpretation of the Bible.

b.  Again, I can’t read ancient languages, and even if I could, no one has access to the original documents, so no one can really read the relevant passages themselves, much less claim they are “straightforward.”

c.  No, I think it’s possible.  There’s so much deception from the anti-gay leadership, it twists the kind impulses of some people into tragically ugly statements and actions

11. Are you quick to say “Judge not, lest you be judged” ( Matthew 7:1) and similar passages, without understanding the Christian theology behind it, and all the while being very judgmental yourself?

No.

12. Do you sincerely believe Jesus would have accepted homosexual sex acts? Do you believe Jesus is cool with whatever anyone wants to do? Do you believe there’s such a thing as ‘sin’ and if so, how is it defined? Are you the one who defines sin for yourself? Do you have no need of a savior and if not, wasn’t Christ’s death and resurrection pretty pointless? Despite all these contradictory and self-constructed beliefs, do you consider yourself a “Christian”?

a.  I don’t know and neither do you.

b.  No.

c.  I think of sin as a religious concept that differs from religion to religion.  I do believe in right and wrong, and I think “wrong” is defined by treating others as objects and things for your disposal rather than as human beings who deserve the same kindness, generosity, and respect  you would want for yourself.

d.  Life is hard and we all long for a savior sometimes.  Christ’s death wasn’t pointless because it gave rise to a religion that has, in various times and various places, inspired humanity to greatness and led it to horrific acts of evil.  I don’t have evidence that the resurrection happened.

e.  I do not consider myself a Christian.  But what contradictory beliefs are you talking about?  You didn’t even know the answers to my questions when you wrote that.  Is this a thought-provoking questionnaire or merely yet another listing of stereotype and prejudice?

13. Do you believe sweeping stereotypes, like that all ‘gay’ people are innocent victims or that all conservatives must be mean and stupid?

No.  Do you believe the many negative sweeping stereotypes about gays?

14. Do you close your ears and figure it’s a conservative plot if you hear that at least 2/3 of all the HIV transmission in the United States still involves males having anal sex with each other?

No.  But if conservatives believe this then I have to wonder why so many of them oppose realistic sex education.

15. Do you believe anyone who objects to homosexuality is automatically “hateful,” while you seethe with hate yourself?

No.  And I’ve written at length to that effect.

16. Do you believe it’s okay for thirteen- year- olds to learn at school that they have the right to have homosexual sex with each other? Do you close your ears when concerned parents are outraged? Would you call such parents “ignorant” and accuse them of “censorship”?

a.  I don’t know what you mean by “they have the right.”  I do believe that thirteen year-olds should be taught the information they need to protect themselves from doing permanent harm to themselves, and I’m amazed anyone could advocate otherwise.

b.  No.

c.  I would call the parents ignorant if they were ignorant, but not if they weren’t.  I don’t throw around the term “censorship” lightly.

17. Do you believe that, after several thousand years where most cultures have prohibited homosexuality, only now the ‘real’ truth is emerging? Do you believe this is not an arrogant, narrow or immature position?

a.  Have most cultures prohibited homosexuality?   Certainly ancient Greece and Rome, from which our own culture derived, did not have blanket prohibitions on homosexuality.  And what do you mean by “prohibit”?

b.  No, for two reasons.

• I do not think it’s arrogant, narrow, or immature to think for yourself.  I find your question appalling, frankly.

• I also find it a bit frightening that you think it’s arrogant, narrow, and immature to move beyond the moral code of our ancient ancestors, who once believed it was fine to rape women as long as they belonged to a different tribe.  Do you think we were arrogant, narrow, and immature to outlaw rape?

18. Do you believe that ‘gays’ are the target of widespread violence that goes unpunished in the United States? Do you understand that hate crimes stats don’t support this claim and that laws already exist to punish all crimes, no matter why they are committed? Would you be unconcerned about overall civil liberties if trumped -up charges of so-called “hate speech” were used to silence people?

a.  Yes.

b.  No, I do not understand that hate crimes stats “don’t support” this claim.  Yes, I do understand that laws already exist to punish all crimes — do you realize that this statement is an empty tautology?

c.  I am in fact concerned about countries in Europe outlawing hate speech against gays, Christians, and so on, and I’ve written to that effect.  Fortunately, in the US, there is no such thing as a legal charge of “hate speech,” and the First Amendment prevents such a thing from happening here.  I wish conservatives understood that, too.

19. Do you believe that conservatives are making a big deal out of a behavior that has no harmful effects on individuals, families, communities, or societies? Do you scoff at any claims that serious public health issues are involved, like sexually transmitted diseases or risks to children?

a.  I believe that many conservatives are making a dishonest deal out of something — not a behavior, but an intrinsic human trait — that can be a source of joy and of harm (just like heterosexuality).

b.  I do not scoff at serious public health claims.  I believe we need realistic sex education about sexually transmitted diseases and risks to children associated with sexuality in general (not just hetero or homo).

20. And–very big question: Is your need for other people’s approval greater than your appreciation of truth? Do you refuse to consider an unpopular viewpoint because it might make you appear unenlightened to some people? If your mind and heart changed about this issue, would you have the courage to be a rebel for a worthy cause, to speak up and inform family, friends–and fellow humans who are involved in homosexuality?

a.  We all struggle with this issue throughout our lives.  You can be sure an openly gay person has struggled successfully at least once, by coming out of the closet and living in truth rather than hiding for fear of losing the approval of the people around them.

b.  No.

c.  Yes.  And in fact I get enormous satisfaction from being a small rebel in a great and worthy cause — the crusade for truth, dignity, and equality.  Wait — are you people claiming to see yourselves as rebels?

The Daily Agenda for Saturday, February 16

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Events this weekend: Arizona Gay Rodeo, Laveen, AZ; Sydney Mardis Gras, Sydney, NSW.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Katharine Cornell: 1893. She shared the title of “The First Lady of the Theatre” with Helen Hayes; as good friends and colleagues, they each deferred the title to each other. While Hayes is probably more well known today, Cornell’s own acting and contributions to the theater are legendary. Part of her success can be attributed to her collaboration with her husband, Guthrie McClintic, a successful director and producer. Their marriage was both professional and one of convenience: Cornell was lesbian and McClintic was gay. She was a member of New York’s “sewing circles, with relationships with Tallulah Bankhead and Mercedes de Acosta, among others. Meanwhile, McClinctic directed Cornell in every play since their marriage.

Cornell’s acclaimed Broadway roles include the title character of George Bernard Shaw’s Candide, Countess Ellen Olenska in The Age of Innocence, the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning in The Barretts of Wimpole Street — and that’s just before the Great Depression. Her career continued unabated through the 1950s. Her appearance in the title role of 1936’s St. Joan won her a bevy of honorary degrees from several colleges and universities, and she won a Tony Award for Best Actress for  Antony and Cleopatra in 1947. After McClintic died in 1961, Cornell decided to retire rather than work with another director. She restored the 300-year-old Association Hall on Martha’s Vineyard, which was later rename the Katharine Cornell Theater. She died of pneumonia in 1974, and was buried next to the theater named in her honor.

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Another Researcher Denounces Nicolosi’s Misuse of Research

BTB reader Jack Flanagan is freelance writer living in London, who writes about LGBT issues from a psychological and clinical perspective, and also on classical music and the London scene. He is voluntary press officer for the UK Gender and Sexual Diversity organisation Pink Therapy. A few weeks ago, he contacted me  with the news that another researcher had learned that NARTH founder Joseph Nicolosi was misusing his research in a recent book. In this guest post, Flanagan describes what he learned since then.

Reparative therapy advocate and founder of NARTH (National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality), Joseph Nicolosi, has made false claims that well-respected scientists are on his side, supporting the idea that homosexuality is a disorder.

The mistake was discovered in late 2012 by therapist, Dominic Davies, of the UK sexual and gender diversity organization Pink Therapy. He was alarmed to find Allan Schore’s named referenced in Nicolosi’s book, Shame and Attachment Loss: The Practical Work of Reparative Therapy. Within the book, Nicolosi states “I would also like to express my deep gratitude for the assistance of Alan Schore, Ph.D.”, and references Schore throughout the book.

In response to an email, Schore replied that he was “disturbed” by Nicolosi’s incorrect interpretation of the research, and there is “no neuropsychological research” that justifies the book, or what Nicolosi is doing.

Dr. Allan Schore

“All kinds of people are using my work for various reasons, including bolstering their own theories, and there is nothing I can do about that. In the pages you sent Nicolosi is grafting my shame and attachment models on to gender identity disorders, something I have never even written about.”

In a press release (PDF: 117KB/2 pages) from Pink Therapy, Dominic Davies said “This is a most odious cosying up by Nicolosi, who has sunk to new depths in distorting the work of one of the world’s most respected neuropsychologists in furthering NARTH’s agenda to pathologise gay people and it’s attempt to cure them. It is important to Pink Therapy to clear the name of Dr Schore, whose work may have been contaminated by this erroneous assertion.”

This is the latest in a series of attempts Nicolosi and his associates have made to justify Reparative therapy, or in the insistence that homosexuality is a disease. Lisa Diamond, who appeared on the Respect my Research website, also saw her research in sexual fluidity entirely corrupted in order to insist that homosexuality was in some way pathological (despite her best attempts to prevent it).

Schore also responded that he didn’t consider the book an issue, given that it was unlikely to sell. However, the danger of research like this is that it may convince people who are not scientifically literate that there is research that suggest being gay is ‘wrong’. In fact, informal reviews of the book (for example, on Amazon) are in many places written by earnest teenagers desperate to change their sexuality. Books like these, and the work of Nicolosi, convince them that that is, not only a option, but is recommended.

There is no major psychological institution in the world that considers homosexuality to be a disorder: the APA and the main British psychological institutions openly oppose reparative therapy (although this has been a development as recent as January, for the British Psychological Society). Despite this strong insistence that homosexuality is not a disorder, however, many clinicians will offer to treat or refer patients who want to change their sexuality.

So while it’s true that, mostly, Nicolosi’s new book and tainted research will fly under the radar, it shouldn’t be allowed to do so unmolested. What should be made clear to clinicians, parents and children, is what the science says: there is nothing wrong with homosexuals.

Update by Jim B.: Dr. Allan Schore is on the clinical faculty of the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, and at the UCLA Center for Culture, Brain, and Development. He is the author of Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self, which was first published in 1994 and is now in its eleventh printing. He also wrote Affect Dysregulation and Disorders of the Self and Affect Regulation and the Repair of the Self, a two-volume set published in 2003. He is also either a reviewer or on the editorial staff of twenty-seven journals.

The Daily Agenda for Friday, February 15

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Events this weekend: Arizona Gay Rodeo, Laveen, AZ; Sydney Mardis Gras, Sydney, NSW.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Michael Swift’s “The Gay Revolutionary”: 1987. Think back to what the beginning of 1987 was like. AIDS was ravaging the gay community, with nearly 25,000 dead and AZT, the first U.S. government-approved treatment for HIV therapy, wouldn’t become FDA approved for another month. The year would be the year of the cri de coeur, with ACT-Up’s formation that year being the most visible manifestation of the growing anger over the apparent indifference on the part of public officials in New York City and Washington, D.C., as well as the overt hostility that the epidemic engendered in much of conservative Christianity.

Another cry rang out from Boston, although it was little noticed at the time. Just another crazy essay from the often-provocative Gay Community News. This one, written under the byline of Michael Swift was printed and then soon forgotten, until two years later when Rep. William Dannemeyer (R-CA) read it into the Congressional Record:

We shall sodomize your sons, emblems of your feeble masculinity, of your shallow dreams and vulgar lies. We shall seduce them in your schools, in your dormitories, in your gymnasiums, in your locker rooms, in your sports arenas, in your seminaries, in your youth groups, in your movie theater bathrooms, in your army bunkhouses, in your truck stops, in your all male clubs, in your houses of Congress, wherever men are with men together. Your sons shall become our minions and do our bidding. They will be recast in our image. They will come to crave and adore us.

…All laws banning homosexual activity will be revoked. Instead, legislation shall be passed which engenders love between men.

All homosexuals must stand together as brothers; we must be united artistically, philosophically, socially, politically and financially. We will triumph only when we present a common face to the vicious heterosexual enemy.

If you dare to cry faggot, fairy, queer, at us, we will stab you in your cowardly hearts and defile your dead, puny bodies.

…We shall be victorious because we are fueled with the ferocious bitterness of the oppressed who have been forced to play seemingly bit parts in your dumb, heterosexual shows throughout the ages. We too are capable of firing guns and manning the barricades of the ultimate revolution.

Tremble, hetero swine, when we appear before you without our masks.

From there, the essay became the anti-gay establishment’s favorite example of the so-called “homosexual agenda.” Lou Sheldon’s Traditional Values Coalition put out a notorious video, “Gay Rights, Special Rights,” which repeated passages from the so-called manifesto and paired it with ominous music and pictures of children. In the 2001 book, Bringing Up Boys, Focus on the Family’s James Dobson cited Swift’s essay (retitling it “Goals of the Homosexual Movement”) as evidence that parents must protect their children from homosexuals. “Guard them night and day when they are young,” he wrote. “Don’t send them into a public bathroom alone.” In more recent years, the so-called manifesto has gone international — from Latvia and Russia, to Uganda and Jamaica — and it still re-emerges from time to time here at home.

But every time the essay is repeated by anti-gay extremists, they always carefully omit a vitally important component of the piece, just as that component was skipped when Dannemeyer read it into the Congressional Record. And for the essay to serve their purpose, it’s critical this crucial piece be left out, because it’s impossible to understand the true nature of the essay without it. That piece that they always leave out is this, the prologue:

This essay is an outré, madness, a tragic, cruel fantasy, an eruption of inner rage, on how the oppressed desperately dream of being the oppressor.

The name of the essay’s author, Michael Swift, should also be a clue. Nobody knows who the real author is, but the essayist clearly took his cue from the famous satirist Jonathan Swift, whose 1729 essay A Modest Proposal — in which the other Swift suggested that the easiest way to ease the crushing poverty in Ireland was for the Irish to sell their plentiful babies as a food delicacy for the rich — created a wave of outrage in England for the way that he savaged the condescending attitudes of those behind many of the illogical solutions that had been proposed at that time.

The 20th-century Swift’s essay, similarly, satirized the attitudes behind some of the worst homophobic expressions that were then being unleashed in 1987, by perfectly mimicking how those homophobes imagined the worst of the “militant homosexuals.” He mimicked their prejudices so well that they took it as a genuine manifesto, and it’s that accomplishment which makes it, I think, a perfect satire. But it’s also ironic that whose whose attitudes Michael Swift satirized so well found such a nearly perfect weapon in that very same essay. Michael Bronski, who had been a features writer for Gay Community News when the first essay ran, later developed second thoughts about it. In 2003, Bronski said, “We printed it thinking that it was sort of funny. It’s been picked up by all these lunatic right-wing fringe people. In retrospect, it’s caused so much… it keeps getting quoted as being serious by people on the right and it simply was making a political point, using humor. I personally would, knowing how much it’s been misrepresented, I would think twice about printing it then.”

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Edwin Cameron: 1953. As far as closets go, the outspoken Justice on South Africa’s Constitutional Court has obliterated the biggest ones: he’s gay and he’s HIV-positive. Justice Cameron was a human rights lawyer during Africa’s Apartheid years in the 1980s, where he co-drafted the Charter of Rights on AIDS and HIV, co-founded the AIDS Consortium, and was the first director of the LAIDS Law Project. As Apartheid crumbled, he worked to safeguard human rights, including the rights of LGBT people, in the new Constitution of South Africa.

In 1994, President Nelson Mandela appointed him an Acting Judge of the High Court, an appointment that became permanent in 1995. By then, he had long been out of the gay closet, but in in 1998, after a poor black woman living in a township in Durban went on the radio to talk about having AIDS and was killed three weeks later, he decided it was time to come out of the HIV closet. “I thought if [this woman], without any protection, living in a township, not behind a palisade like I do in my middle-class suburb in Johannesburg, not with the income of a judge, not with the constitutional protection… I thought that I should speak out…”

In 1999, he became an Active Justice on the Constitutional Court before being appointed to the Supreme Court of Appeal in 2000. In 2009, he was made a permanent Justice of the Constitutional Court by President Kgalema Motlanthe.

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

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Oregon kicks off marriage initiative process with high profile names

Today supporters of equality in Oregon will begin gathering signatures to put an initiative on the ballot to reverse from their State Constitution the 2004 anti-gay marriage amendment. (Oregonian)

Gov. John Kitzhaber, former Gov. Barbara Roberts, Portland Mayor Charlie Hales, State Treasurer Ted Wheeler, Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian and Multnomah County Chairman Jeff Cogen are scheduled to attend a 3 p.m. event at Hotel Monaco in downtown Portland.

In Salem, House Speaker Tina Kotek — the first openly lesbian House speaker in the country — and Senate Majority Leader Diane Rosenbaum are scheduled to attend a 4 p.m. event at Willamette University. Both are Portland Democrats.

The mayors of Eugene and Bend are also scheduled to attend events in their respective communities this afternoon. Faith leaders are set to host a breakfast in Beaverton.

Happy Valentine’s Day from the Illinois Senate

Today the State Senate in Illinois voted on the marriage equality bill. The bipartisan vote result: 34 for; 21 against; 2 abstentions

DEMOCRATS

Voting yes:

Bertino-Tarrant
Biss
Bush
Collins
Cullerton, J
Cullerton, T
Cunningham
Delgado
Frerichs
Harmon
Hastings
Holmes
Hunter
Hutchinson
Jacobs
Jones
Koehler
Kotowski
Landek
Lightford
Link
Manar
Martinez
McGuire
Morrison
Mulroe
Muñoz
Noland
Raoul
Sandoval
Stadelman
Steans
Trotter

Voting no:

Forby
Haine
Sullivan

Voting “present” (abstaining)

Harris
Van Pelt

Absent:

Clayborne
Silverstein

REPUBLICANS

Voting yes:

Barickman

Voting no:

Althoff
Bivins
Brady
Connelly
Dillard
Duffy
LaHood
Luechtefeld
McCann
McCarter
McConnaughay
Murphy
Oberweis
Radogno
Rezin
Righter
Rose
Syverson