Box Turtle Bulletin

Queen Bea steps down

The Netherlands is to have a new monarch.

CBC

Dutch Queen Beatrix announced Monday that she will abdicate on April 30 after 33 years as head of state, clearing the way for her eldest son, Crown Prince Willem-Alexander, to become the nation’s first king in more than a century.

The Queen has been immensely popular, especially during the past tumultuous decade where she served as a symbol of stability amidst cultural division.

Her son, Prince Willem-Alexander, is considered a competent replacement but does not evoke the same level of emotional connection. However his wife, Argentinian Princess Maxima, does have tremendous support of the people. And she is perhaps best known as one of Europe’s most gay-supportive royal.

Maxima is one of the few royals in the world to be open about her support for gay rights—she was one of the first to attend an LGBT rights conference in 2008 and also signed a declaration ensuring LGBT rights in the Netherlands.

NOM plans dramatic revelation of their irrelevancy

The National Organization for Marriage has a nice long history of illustrating just how few people pay attention to them. There was their multi-state tour of mostly empty city plazas, their bus trip through California for Carly Fiorini in which literally no people showed up at some stops, and their efforts at collecting signatures from people who were willing to pledge to consider buying other brands than General Mills.

But NOM is nothing if not persistent. So now they are planning the grand, dramatic, colossal, ultimate illustration of just how inept, inadequate, and irrelevant they really are. NOM is going to march on Washington.

In the grand tradition of the civil rights marches and the Million Man March and the annual March for Life, NOM is going to have a Marriage March. They even have a charming MooM logo.

Not long ago, I sent you an email hinting that NOM was getting ready to launch some major initiatives. Well, after participating in the March for Life last Friday, I am excited to announce that NOM is putting together a March for Marriage!

It will take place in Washington DC on March 26th — the day the Supreme Court will be hearing oral arguments in the Proposition 8 case. You can go to www.MarriageMarch.org and sign up for information and alerts today!

I’ll be sending you more information in the days and weeks to come… but this is a pivotal moment in the marriage movement — an opportunity to show grassroots support from throughout the nation for marriage just as Proposition 8, the potential Roe v. Wade of marriage, is being considered!

Brian Brown is fresh back from France where hundreds of thousands of Catholics (a million he claims) converged on Paris to demand that marriage be limited to maman and papa. And no doubt he is dreaming that a million American Catholics (and a few Mormons, an Orthodox Jew, and some guy who can pass as Muslim – ya know, multi-faith) will gloriously march on our capital and tell our nation’s politicians and judges that the traditional definition of marriage must be protected from the assault by activist homosexuals.

I’m predicting 100. And I’m in a generous mood.

But I pledge: even though the mainstream media, the religious media, and the random people wandering by with a smart phone will all ignore Brian’s pathetic little effort, we here at Box Turtle Bulletin will give it all the attention it deserves. And if you happen to be in DC on March 26th, please feel free to snap a pic or two and send them our way.

Congratulations, Kathleen Wynne

Buzzfeed

With 1,150 votes to Sandra Pupatello’s 866 votes on the third ballot at the Ontario Liberal leadership convention on Saturday, Kathleen Wynne was elected to lead the party and becomes Ontario’s first female premier — and Canada’s first out LGBT premier.

Wynne, 59, is married to Jane Rounthwaite, and the party’s new leader said she believed her sexual orientation would not be an issue in the race or going forward.

Sun-Times politics wonk: Republicans want marriage equality passed and over with

Recently a friend and I play a smart-phone game in which you spell words to flip letters and gain control of the board. If you play creatively and protect your letters, you can situate yourself into a non-losable position. And when I’m so lucky as to do so, Anthony will play a word that ends the game, letting me win, and move on to the next game.

And, according to Rich Miller, the political reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times, that is what Illinois Republicans want to do on the issue of marriage equality: lose the battle and move on to the next one.

Talk to just about any top Illinois Republican these days off the record and they’ll freely admit that they want the bill legalizing gay marriage to be approved as soon as possible.
…
The reason so many Republicans would like to see the bill passed is because they know that with the huge, new Democratic majorities in both legislative chambers, that it’s eventually going to pass anyway.

They want to get this issue out of the way and behind them as soon as possible. The issue is trending hard against the GOP’s historical opposition, and they want the thing off the table before it starts to hurt them.

After New Hampshire Republicans refused to reverse marriage, and after New York Republicans met in caucus and came out with enough votes to pass marriage, and after the call by Wyoming Republicans for marriage (and it’s very close vote in today’s committee hearing), and after Rhode Island’s House Minority Leader lecturing the Senate Leader about delaying votes, and after the Illinois GOP chairman’s endorsement of equality (without losing his position), this argument makes a lot of sense.

And I’m sure that BTB readers will happily agree. Let’s pass marriage equality and move on.

Family “Research” Council Blames “Bullies” For Boy Scout Policy Change

This email went out moments ago under the subject line, “Will the Boy Scouts stand up to bullies?”

For decades, the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) have heroically withstood attacks from homosexual activists. Now, officials from the organization have indicated that this may be about to change. The BSA says that it is “discussing potentially removing the national membership restriction regarding sexual orientation.”

“Be prepared.” The motto of the venerable organization that has helped develop countless boys into men, preparedness is not only an aspiration, but a descriptor. Thus far they’ve been prepared to withstand the constant bullying by those who work to bring down all that the millions of dedicated Scouts and Scout leaders stand for.

A departure from their long-held policies would be devastating to an organization that has prided itself on the development of character in boys. In fact, according to a recent Gallup survey, only 42 percent of Americans support changing the policy to allow homosexual scout leaders.

As the BSA board meets next week, it is crucial that they hear from those who stand with them and their current policy regarding homosexuality. Please call the Boy Scouts of America at 972-580-2000 and tell them that you want to see the organization stand firm in its moral values and respect the right of parents to discuss these sexual topics with their children.

Please call the Boy Scouts at 972-580-2000!

Oh yes, do please call the Boy Scouts at 972-580-2000 — that’s 972-580-2000! — and thank them for opening Scouting up to those who have been bullied the most. Operators are standing by.

Math for Wyoming House domestic partnerships

The Wyoming House of Representatives has 60 members. Of that number, nine just voted in committee, seven in favor and two opposed.

That leaves 51 members which have not voted. However, four of them (two Republicans and two Democrats) are sponsors of the bill and can be counted as yes votes. It is also probably likely that the five Democrats who did not sponsor the bill will also vote favorably.

Which means that our starting place is probably 16 yes votes. So, in order for this bill to pass the House, we need 15 Republicans to support it, out of 42 who have not yet stated their position. In other words, we need 36% of Republicans to support the bill.

We cannot extrapolate the committee vote, but we can gain hope from it. In committee, 75% of Republicans voted yes.

Wyoming committee approves domestic partnership bill

Two bills came before the Wyoming House Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee today, one to enact marriage equality and the other to allow for a domestic partnership registry that appears to be ‘all but the name’.

The marriage bill failed to pass by a 5-4 vote, but the domestic partnership bill was approved 7-2 and will move on for debate on the House floor.

Report: End of Boy Scouts Ban on Gay Scouts and Scout Leaders Imminent

This is a really, really big deal. NBC’s Pete Williams broke the story this morning that the t Boy Scouts of America is “actively considering” and end to its ban on gay scouts and scout leaders:

If adopted by the organization’s board of directors, it would represent a profound change on an issue that has been highly controversial — one that even went to the US Supreme Court. The new policy, now under discussion, would eliminate the ban from the national organization’s rules, leaving local sponsoring organizations free to decide for themselves whether to admit gay scouts.

“The chartered organizations that oversee and deliver scouting would accept membership and select leaders consistent with their organization’s mission, principles or religious beliefs,” according to Deron Smith, a spokesman for the Boy Scouts’ national organization.

Individual sponsors and parents “would be able to choose a local unit which best meets the needs of their families,” Smith said.

The discission is reportedly in its “final stages.” It’s important to note that the change in policy will allow individual boy scout troops to decide for themselves whether they will accept gay scout members or leaders. Because many LGBT-affirming churches and organizations sponsor troops, the Scouts’ ban on gay members and leaders have placed those organizations’ affirmative beliefs and policies in an untenable conflict with the BSA. Meanwhile, the Boy Scouts have been the de-facto youth group the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, where every Mormon boy is automatically enrolled and the vast majority are active members. By pushing the policy decision to a local level, the BSA appears to be aiming for a compromise which would allow all of the sponsoring organizations to remain affiliated with Scouting.

The change could be finalized next week when the board holds its annual meeting. Welcome to the twenty-first century, scouts!

It was just last July when it was announced that a double super-secret panel at BSA had recommended that the ban on gay scout members and leaders remain in place. That announcement came under outgoing BSA president, Rex Tillerson, who is also the CEO of ExxonMobil, a company with the lowest possible rating on LGBT equality from the Human Rights Campaign. The new BSA president, Wayne Perry, who retired from McCaw Cellular which became a part of AT&T — which, by the way, has a perfect score from HRC. Other BSA board members, namely James Turley, global chairman and CEO of tax firm Ernst & Young, and AT&T’s chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson, also voiced their opposition to the ban.

Update: The New York Times has more on the pending policy change:

“This would mean there would no longer be any national policy regarding sexual orientation, and the chartered organizations that oversee and deliver Scouting would accept membership and select leaders consistent with each organization’s mission, principles, or religious beliefs,” a spokesman for the Boy Scouts of America, Deron Smith, said in a statement.

Mr. Smith added: “The Boy Scouts would not, under any circumstances, dictate a position to units, members, or parents. Under this proposed policy, the BSA would not require any chartered organization to act in ways inconsistent with that organization’s mission, principles, or religious beliefs.” He said that members and parents would be able to choose a local unit that best meets the needs of their families

Rebutting the Rebutters

I’ve been quiet the last month or two, feeling burned out and needing a break. Lately, though, I’ve been looking for a good entry point to get started again, a way of warming up and stretching those unused muscles. Fortunately, NOM recently pointed its readers to an article called, Rebuttals to arguments for same-sex marriage: Examining the most common arguments for redefining marital unions …and understanding why they are flawed. 

Perfect! In this piece, author Brandon Vogt tries to disprove 10 common arguments for same-sex marriage, and in doing so manages to highlight the most common mistakes of his own camp. Rebutting him is a kind of back-to-the-basics exercise, certainly useful for me, and hopefully for some of you, too. I’ll hit each of his 10 points in a separate post, starting with this first entry in his list of “our” arguments:

1. Marriage has evolved throughout history, so it can change again.

Different cultures have treated marriage differently. Some promoted arranged marriages. Others tied marriage to dowries. Still others saw marriage as a political relationship through which they could forge family alliances. But all these variations still embraced the fundamental, unchanging essence of marriage. They still saw it, in general, as a public, lifelong partnership between one man and one woman for the sake of generating and raising children.

Hmm. “…the fundamental unchanging essence of marriage.” According to whom? Under the guise of proving that one-man-one-woman is an essential part of marriage, Vogt ends up merely assuming it to be so. In a reasoned debate, you can’ t just assume your conclusion is true as a means of proving your conclusion is true. It’s true because it’s true, and we know that it’s true because it’s true. That a nice little circular fail.

Here’s another failure: “They still saw it, in general, as a…” Emphasis added. In general is shorthand for, “People didn’t always see it this way in every instance, but I’m going to evade saying so because I don’t want to explain why my iron-clad rule isn’t actually iron-clad.”

Moving on:

This understanding predates any government or religion. It’s a pre-political, pre-religious institution evident even in cultures that had no law or faith to promote it.

This is one of our opponents’ silliest contradictions. On the one hand, they say marriage a pre-political, pre-religious institution that exists fully and completely in the absence of laws. Yet our opponents deride opposite-sex couples who don’t marry under those laws as shacking up, or living in sin. They draw a firm line between civil marriage and mere cohabitation, and they give us data showing that civil marriage is better. Obviously, then, when they speak of marriage as pre-political and pre-religious, independent of laws, they don’t really believe it. Or perhaps they’re blind to the contradiction, happily holding conflicting views without ever realizing it, changing back and forth depending on whether gays are the topic of conversation. (You know, if only we had a word for an aversion to homosexuality so powerful that it interfered with one’s ability to reason.)

The other problem is that Vogt’s camp likes to say the government cannot define marriage; it can only recognize it. In that case, though,  it makes perfect sense to say gays and lesbians started marrying long before the laws or churches permitted it, that we’ve been marrying as long as we’ve been pairing up in committed relationships. By this reasoning, we have gay marriage in every state and country right now, so our opponents should really be agitating for the government to catch up and recognize it!

Vogt finishes up with an irrelevancy.

Yet, even supposing the essence of marriage could change, would that mean it should? We know from other areas of life such as medical research and nuclear physics that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you ought. After all, such action may not be ethical or serve the common good. Even if this argument had historical basis, it would not necessarily be a good reason to change the meaning of marriage.

That’s right, actually. But then, this argument isn’t mean to explain why we should allow same-sex marriage, and if he’s pretending otherwise he’s setting up a straw man. When we talk about the evolution of marriage, we’re simply pointing out how ridiculous our opponent are when they claim marriage cannot change because it never has. Which truly is ridiculous, not just on historical grounds but on logical grounds as well.

Tomorrow: Vogt takes on “Same-sex marriage is primarily about equality.”

The Daily Agenda for Monday, January 28

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Wyoming House Committee To Consider Marriage, Domestic Partnership Bills: Cheyenne, WY. The Wyoming House Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee will meet today to discuss two important bills for the state’s same-sex couples. HB0169 would provide marriage equality for the state’s same-sex couples as a civil contract beginning on July 1, 2013, while HB0168 would instead establish a domestic partnership registry which appears to open much of Wyoming’s marriage law to same-sex couples, but without conferring the name “marriage” to the union.

Both bills will get their hearing today when the committee convenes in room B63 following the noon recess of the full House. Equality Wyoming will hold a rally for marriage equality this morning at 9:00 a.m on the front steps of the Capitol Building in Cheyenne.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Richmond Barthé: 1901. Mississippi-born Richmond Barthé spent his formative years in New Orleans, where his parish priest, Father Harry Kane, encouraged his aesthetic development as a painter. But since he couldn’t enroll in art school during his teenage years because of segregation, he remained self-taught until Kane was able to get him enrolled in the Art Institute of Chicago. During his senior year, Barthé discovered sculpting and never looked back. He moved to New York, won a Guggenheim fellowship (twice), and became a celebrated figure of the Harlem Renaissance. His work explored both race and eroticism. When crime in New York began rising after the war, Barthé moved to Jamaica. Which crime began to rise there in the 1960s, he moved to Switzerland for five years, then to Pasadena. When he moved to an apartment above a garage, the city decided to name the street after him. There, he worked on his memoirs and editioned many of his most important works, with actor James Garner being among his most important patrons. He died in 1989.

Bobbi Campbell: 1952. An early AIDS activist, Campbell was the 16th person in San Francisco to be diagnosed with Kaposi’s sarcoma, one of the more common opportunistic infections associated with AIDS. He came by activism rather simply but boldly: by simply refused to hide his face, he became known as the “KS poster boy” in 1982 when he began writing a column for the San Francisco Sentinel.  He gained nationwide attention on August 8, 1983 when he appeared with his partner on the cover of Newsweek. That same year, he co-founded the People with AIDS Self-Empowerment Movement, which established the Denver Principles which rejected the notion that people with AIDS (PWA) were “victims” and demanded the inclusion of PWAs in all aspects of organized responses to the epidemic, including the right to make informed decisions with regard to their own care.

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

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

Marriage update – Europe

It’s getting marriagey all over the place. And it’s also getting hard to keep track of what is going on where. So here is an update to help (which will almost certainly be outdated by the time I hit “publish”).

Europe:

Netherlands – marriage has been equaul since 2001. The first legally recognized same-sex marriages in the modern world took place here.

Belgium – marriage has been equal since 2003.

Spain – marriage has been equal since 2005.

Norway – marriage has been equal since 2009.

Sweden – marriage has been equal since 2009.

Portugal – marriage has been equal since 2010.

Iceland – marriage has been equal since 2010.

Denmark – marriage has been equal since 2012.

In addition, a number of nations offer various levels of couple recognition, several of which are in flux.

England and Wales – Since 2004 the United Kingdom has had “civil partnerships”. In a move that is reversed from that of many countries, while civil recognition is allowed, religious officiation has been banned. In fact, religious symbols, readings and music are prohibited and until 2010 they could not take place in a religious venue.

Before David Cameron became Prime Minister in 2010, he set about changing the Conservative Party’s position on gay issues, including promoting gay MP candidates, apologizing for anti-gay Section 28, and even promoting gay tolerance to the US’s Republican Party. Yet still it surprised many when in the fall of 2011 he announced that he strongly supports equality and the government introduced the process of bringing a marriage bill. After a lenthly review process and public input, the marriage bill has been introduced and will be brought for vote on February 5th. While the Tory party is split (and Cameron is allowing a “conscience” vote), Labour favors the bill and it should sail to law.

In an odd twist, churches may opt-in and conduct religious ceremonies – with one exception. Because the Church of England and the Church of Wales are official state churches, parliament weighs in on doctrinal and procedural change. So those churches are excluded from opting-in on marriage and Anglican ministers are forbidden to participate until parliament votes to lift the ban. Althouth the Anglican Church had whined for a year about Teh Ghey, the Archbishop of Wales was not happy by being told that they didn’t have a choice. Nevertheless, Quakers and Reformed Jews are delighted.

Scotland – in a procedure separate but mirroring that in England, Scotland’s government announced in July 2012 that it would bring a marriage bill. Plans were laid out last month, but in a departure from England and Wales, in Scotland no church will be banned from participation (the Church of Scotland, though emotionally associated, is Presbyterian and not a state church; the state has no say in its theology.) Drafting of language will last until March when a bill will be introduced.

France – since 1999, France has offered same-sex couples Pacte civil de solidarité (PACS), Europe’s weakest form of recognition. Efforts for greater recognition have been rebuffed.

However, during his campaign, Socialist candidate François Hollande promised support for marriage and, after his May 2012 election he made good on his promise. In early November, a bill was presented to allow for marriage equality and to allow same-sex couple adoption.

France, though long thought to be a rather secular nation, is nominally Catholic. But that nominalism was put to the test in the past few months as a fierce campaign by the Catholic Church has resulted in nationwide protests, including a street protest in Paris of hundreds of thousands. A somewhat smaller – but still a quarter of a million people – poured into the streets today to counter-protest in support of equality.

The legislature will vote this Tuesday on this bill.

Poland – on Friday, the legislature rejected three bills that would have given recognition to same-sex couples. The weakest of these, a bill similar to France’s PACS, failed 228 to 211. While a setback, the closeness of the vote holds hope for future efforts.

Luxembourg – the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, the tiny nation between Germany, France, and Switzerland, has long had colic unions. However, the Prime Minister has announced that marriage equality will be a priority in the next

Marriage update – South America

It’s getting marriagey all over the place. And it’s also getting hard to keep track of what is going on where. So here is an update to help (which will probably be outdated by the time I hit “publish”).

Central South America:

Argentina – marriage has been equal since 2010.

Bolivia – in 2011 a bill to grant some limited couple recognition was introduced into the Bolivian Chamber of Deputies. It was referred in April 2012 to the Human Rights Commission, where it appears to have fallen asleep.

Brazil – since May 2011, Brazil has had recognizd civil unions for same-sex couples. The states of Alegoas and Bahia allow couples to administratively convert the civil unions to marriage. Since last month, same-sex couples in Sao Paulo may marry without any converted-civil-unions process.

Chile – on March 27, 2012, Daniel Zamudio was tortured and beaten to death. Much in the same way that Matthew Sheppard’s story changed the United States, Zamudio’s has been changing Chile. A long-stalled non-discrimination bill was quickly passed and signed and the populace is now impatient with institutionalize homophobia.

In August 2011, conservative President Pinera sent a civil unions bill to congress and two months ago he reaffirmed that the end of his term, March 2014, is the deadline for its passage. In hearings on the bill in the first weeks of the year, the Catholic Bishop of San Bernardo testified that the bill “brings the destruction of human beings and, although they deny it, destruction to social and family peace among men.” However, public polling shows strong support and the President has named the bill “a top priority”.

The opposition party’s contenders for Presidential nominee debated earlier this month whether same-sex couples should have civil unions or marriage rights. It is likely that civil unions will be achieved this year and that marriage equality will then follow at some point.

Colombia – in July 2011, the Supreme Court found that same sex couples have the same contitutional rights to recognition as heterosexual couples, but they left the structure open to Congress to legislate. Since that time there have been various bills pass one house or the other, but none came to completion. Currently there is a marriage bill in the Senate which has passed the first committee hurdle. Should no bill be enacted by June 20th, same-sex couples will be able to go to judges and become recognized. As there is no alternative legal structure in place, it seems logical that the only legal alternative for judges is to declare them married. But as legislators are disinclined to turn over power to anyone, it’s even more likely that something – civil unions or marriage – will be in place by that date.

Ecuador – while marriage equality is banned by constitution, Ecuador has had civil unions since 2008.

Uruguay – civil unions have been available since 2007. Last month a marriage equality bill passed the House of Deputes with a wide margin last month and is expected to pass the Senate in April.

And while other nations in South America are strongly hostile to same-sex marriage recognition, many of them place strong importance on the rulings of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which has been increasingly supportive of gay rights. It may be that this court plays a role in shifting the continent’s laws in the near future.

The Daily Agenda for Sunday, January 27

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Events This Weekend: Creating Change Conference, Atlanta, GA; Midsumma, Melbourne, VIC; BeefDip, Puerto Vallarta, JAL; Winter Rendezvous Ski Week, Stowe, VT; Out In the Desert LGBT Film Festival, Tucson, AZ.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Rep. Dick Armey Calls Barney Frank “Barney Fag”: 1995. It’s not easy being the biggest ‘mo in the House. In an interview with a group of radio broadcasters, House majority leader Rep. Dick Armey (R-TX), he discussed the acrimonious atmosphere in the House of Representatives, which was then under the leadership of Newt Gingrich. “Newt’s a very patient fellow and able to handle a harangue going on around him better than I,” Armey said. “I like peace and quiet, and I don’t have to listen to Barney Fag — Barney Frank — haranguing in my ear because I made a few bucks off a book I worked on.”

Armey apologized to Frank when word of his remarks got out, first in person and then again on the House floor. But not without a harangue: “I take this exception especially in light of the fact that I went to the press that had the tape and explained to them in the best humor I could that I had simply mispronounced a name and did not need any psychoanalysis about my subliminal or about my Freudian predilections.” He also castigated House Democrats for focusing on what he called a “mispronunciation.” Frank wasn’t inclined to accept the apology. “I don’t think it was on the tip of his tongue, but I do believe it was in the back of his mind,” said Frank. “There are a lot of ways to mispronounce my name. That is the least common.”

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Alan Cumming: 1965. Well let’s see. He was the M.C. in the 1993 London staging of Cabaret, the evil Boris Grishenko in GoldenEye, and he had roles in Eyes Wide Shut, the Spy Kids franchise, X2, and Gray Matters, among others. He earned two Emmy nominations for his guest role as Eli Gold in The Good Wife, and he won produced the Independent Spirit Award-winning Sweet Land. Where the Scottish actor once described himself as a “frolicky pansexual sex symbol for the new millennium,” he now simply says he’s bisexual. On January 7, 2012, he married his husband Grant Shaffer in New York, on the fifth anniversary of their 2007 civil partnership in London.

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, January 26

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Events This Weekend: Creating Change Conference, Atlanta, GA; Midsumma, Melbourne, VIC; BeefDip, Puerto Vallarta, JAL; Winter Rendezvous Ski Week, Stowe, VT; Out In the Desert LGBT Film Festival, Tucson, AZ.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Government Payments to Maggie Gallagher, Other Columnists Revealed: 2005. Howard Kurtz revealed in a Washington Post story that the Bush Administration had paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to two columnists in a “pay-to-sway” scandal to promote the administration’s policies. In one case, it was revealed that the U.S. Department of Education paid columnist Armstrong Williams $241,000 to promote and talk up the No Child Left Behind Initiative and to encourage other journalists and columnists to write favorable articles on the law. It was also revealed that Maggie Gallagher had accepted $41,500 to promote the Bush Administration’s marriage initiative, which called for abstinence education and premarital counseling. Gallagher responded in a rather creative way: first by defending her role in the contract (“I’m a marriage expert. I get paid to write, edit, research and educate on marriage. If a scholar or expert gets paid to do some work for the government, should he or she disclose that if he writes a paper, essay or op-ed on the same or similar subject? If this is the ethical standard, it is an entirely new standard.”), then by acknowledging that she should have disclosed the contract when she later wrote about the Bush marriage initiative. “But the real truth is that it never occurred to me. … I would have, if I had remembered it. My apologies to my readers.” Nice work if you can get it.

Armstrong was dropped by from syndication by the Tribune Company. Gallagher continued writing for Town Hall as though nothing had happened. She went on to found the National Organization for Marriage in 2007 and remained its president until 2010. She also founded Culture War Victory Fund in 2011. Three weeks ago, she announced the retirement of her syndicated column.

David Kato Murdered: 2011. It seems like yesterday, it seems like a lifetime ago. But it was one year ago today when Ugandan LGBT advocate David Kato was brutally murdered in his home. The murder took place almost four months after his photo appeared on the front page of a local tabloid as one of Uganda’s “top homos” with the tag, “Hang Them!” And the murder took place less than a month after a Ugandan Court issued a permanent ruling baring that tabloid from outing gay people on its pages. The police, before they even had a suspect, were quick to deny that homophobia had anything to do with his murder, and they maintained that position after they settled on a suspect and obtained a “confession.” To seal the deal, the alleged murderer was quickly found guilty and sentenced — in proceedings so rushed that his own lawyer didn’t know he was appearing in court. But LGBT advocates in Uganda know the real score and aren’t buying the government line. On this anniversary, it’s important to pause and remember that there are martyrs for gay rights: Harvey Milk, David Kato, and many others, known and unknown.

In honor of Kato’s memory, the David Kato Vision and Voice Award has been established to recognize those who demonstrate “courage and outstanding leadership in advocating for the sexual rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people, particularly in environments where these individuals face continued rejection, marginalization, isolation and persecution.” It is awarded annually on December 10, Human Rights Day. The first recipient The latest honoree is Ali Erol, who founded Turkey’s first gay rights organization, Kaos GL, in 1994.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Ellen DeGeneris: 1958. She made her own bit of history in 1997 during the fourth season of her sitcom, Ellen, when she came out publicly as a lesbian on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Her character soon came out on her sitcom, and that coming out episode was one of the highest rated episodes of her series. That episode won her her first Emmy, but the show’s popularity dropped soon afterward and was cancelled. Ellen withdrew form television and returned to her roots in stand-up comedy (and taking on a voice-acting stint for the 2003 film Finding Nemo) before re-establishing herself as a popular talk show host on Emmy-winning The Ellen DeGeneris Show, where she often talks about Portia de Rossi, her wife of four years. Her show is very popular with housewives and not a few gay men, with her popularity undoubtedly helped along with segments like these:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h42VMWcaxlQ

In 2008 — at the age of fifty, Degeneres became the spokesperson for Cover Girl cosmetics. In 2012, she became the spokesperson for J.C. Penney, much to the consternation of the American Family Association, whose astroturf front organization One Million Moms is all kinds of upset because her mere presence is an affront to their manufactured moms.

In 2012, Degeneres was honored with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor by the by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

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

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

Marriage update – Central America and the Caribbean

It’s getting marriagey all over the place. And it’s also getting hard to keep track of what is going on where. So here is an update to help (which will probably be outdated by the time I hit “publish”).

Central America:

Costa Rica – Gay Rights advocates met last month with the administration to discuss a proposal to provide specific couple benefits. It may be early yet to know how far or how quickly this could go, but it was a positive step. There is a strong opposition coming from (can you imagine?) the Catholic Church.

Other than Costa Rica, the outlook on same-sex couple rights in Central American looks dim.

Caribbean Islands:

In many of the Caribbean Islands, LGBT people live in a state of oppression, often subjected to social ostracization and occasional violence. There are a few bright spots.

Since 2009, the Dutch islands of Sint Eustatius, Saba and Sint Maarten, Aruba, Curaçao and Bonaire have recognized same-sex marriages conducted in the Netherlands. But last month the tiny island of Saba finalized changes to their laws to become the first Caribbean Island to offer marriages. The other five are expected to follow.