Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyJanuary 24th, 2013
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Rhode Island House to Vote On Marriage Equality Bill: Providence, RI. In 2011, Rhode Island began offering Civil Unions, am offering that has proved exceptionally unpopular among the state’s samei-sex couples. After six months, only 46 couples bothered to register. And why should they, when five states within a 200 mile radius — including both states on Rhode Island’s border — offers full marriage equality and Rhode Island recognizes those marriages as marriages? Today, the state House of Representatives begins to remedy that deficiency when, at 4:00 p.m. EST, the a bill granting full marriage equality is scheduled to be brought to the House floor for a vote.
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:
“Gay Plague” Conservative Withdraws from Bush’s AIDS Panel: 2003. Could there possibly have been a more inappropriate pick for President George W. Bush’s AIDS advisory panel than Jerry Thacker? One might have imagined that the nominee who contracted the AIDS virus after his wife was infected by a blood transfusion might have been a good choice. But Thacker, a former Bob Jones University graduate and faculty member, had a web site where he presented his messages on AIDS prevention and caring for people with AIDS. Among his topics was a talk that he advertised, titled, “Help for Homosexuals,” in which he claimed to offer (via archive.org):
A message on the nature of homosexuality and how Christ can rescue the homosexual. Includes statistics on homosexual behavior, tips for ministry to those practicing this “deathstyle” and information on the homosexual movement and its political agenda.
Thacker also referred to AIDS as the “gay plague.” The web site was quickly scrubbed soon after the offending comments were discovered, but the damage was done. LGBT and HIV/AIDS advocates were furious. Carl Schmid, a Log Cabin Republican member and a board member for the Human Rights Campaign, had worked in Bush’s 2000 Presidential campaign. He said, “We need to have a scientific-based approach to the problems of HIV-AIDS and not this radical agenda he’s pushing.” Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-ND) also denounced the nomination: “Thacker’s characterization of AIDS as the gay plague and his offensive public statements about homosexuality indicate a disturbing bias that is completely at odds with the role the advisory commission should play.” But the panel’s co-chair, Tom Coburn (who would later become Republican Senator from Oklahoma), professed ignorance of Thacker’s opinions and claimed that Thacker’s views on homosexuality were irrelevant to the panel’s work.
A week after Thacker’s nomination, he withdrew is name from consideration. White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer moved quickly to distance the administration from the controversy: “Those words are as wrong as they are inappropriate. And they are not shared by the President. That remark is far removed from what the president believes.” Thacker blamed his nomination’s failure on “gay radicals” in an interview two weeks later: “The primary tactic used by gay radicals is intimidation. They’re going to be in your face and they’re going to be noisy.”
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?
January 23rd, 2013
Sen Steadman (left, D-Central/Southeast Denver) is again presenting his bill to his Senate peers in committee.
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This afternoon the Colorado civil unions bill is having its first committee hearing. I posted some background on Monday.
Here’s live audio from the Colorado Channel. To follow the conversation on Twitter use hashtag #COleg or feel free to comment on this post below.
Update: The hearing has concluded.
January 23rd, 2013
Rep. Brian DelGrosso, R-Loveland
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From the Colorado Springs Gazette:
In 2006, Colorado voters approved an amendment defining marriage as only between one man and one woman.
Rep. Brian DelGrosso, R-Loveland, who voted against civil union bills in committees the past two years, said he questions the constitutionality of the proposed bill.
“The voters of Colorado have clearly said this is what we expect,” DelGrosso said. “How can you prove to us that what you’re doing is constitutional? That you’re not just changing the name of something and trying to pretend that it’s something that it’s not — same-sex marriage.”
Brian DelGrosso seems to fundamentally misunderstand how Colorado’s constitution. Our neighbors in Utah, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma have all passed amendments that not only ban gay marriage but also ban civil unions. Here in Colorado our constitution says nothing of civil unions.
The authors of Colorado Amendment 43 and voters have left the door open for us to have civil unions here in Colorado.
And yes, DelGrosso represents Loveland. Oh the irony.
January 23rd, 2013
I haven’t been to a football game since college; my hometown, the nation’s second largest, doesn’t have a team. And as I find watching televised sports to be an exercise in frustration, I haven’t much cared about the NFL.
But this year I will be watching the Super Bowl, and not just for the commercials and half time show.
This year I will be cheering on a team, the one that Brendon Ayanbadejo is on. The Baltimore Ravens.
On Sunday night WeHo’s gay sports bar was packed with people wearing blue and purple jerseys. And when the night was over (long after I left) the Ravens had won a place in the SuperBowl.
And that night, a night of exhilaration for the underdog team, Ayanbadejo thought about his personal priorities and reached for his computer. (Times)
He tapped out an email to Brian Ellner, a leading marriage-equality advocate with whom he had worked before, and Michael Skolnik, the political director for Russell Simmons, a hip-hop mogul who has become involved in many issues, including same-sex marriage.
Ayanbadejo wrote: “Is there anything I can do for marriage equality or anti- bullying over the next couple of weeks to harness this Super Bowl media?” The time stamp on the email was 3:40:35 A.M.
Yep. I’m a fan.
January 23rd, 2013
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Colorado Senate Judiciary Committee To Consider Civil Unions Bill: Denver, CO. The proposed bill which would grant civil unions to Colorado’s same-sex couples will undergo its first hearing in the new legislation session. The bill is expected to experience smooth sailing through the legislature because House and Senate majorities have already signed on as the bill’s sponsors, with final passage through both houses coming perhaps as early as March. BTB’s Daniel Gonzales provided a full explanation of the bill’s history here. The Senate Judiciary Committee hearing will take place this afternoon at 1:30 p.m. in the Old Supreme Court Chambers. Committee hearings will be broadcast as audio-only on the Colorado Channel’s website.
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:
FCC Backs Stations Which Aired Programs About Homosexuality: 1964. In the summer of 1962, New York City’s Pacifica public radio station WBAI aired a highly controversial talk show about homosexuality (see Jul 15). It wasn’t so much that the subject was homosexuality — that alone was controversial but it had been done before — but that the station would agree to include gay rights activist Randophe Wicker and several other gay men on the program. Real live gay men, talking about he difficulties in maintaining careers, the problems of police harassment, and the social responsibility of gays and straights alike.
This went on for ninety minutes, and at least one group of listeners were fit to be tied over it. They launched a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission and challenge the station’s broadcast license. That complained joined others against two other Pacifica stations in Los Angeles and Berkeley for their broadcasts a two poetry readings and a recording of playwright Edward Albee’s “The Zoo Story.” But after a lengthy investigation, the FCC unanimously agreed to renew the stations’ licenses. In doing so, the FCC issued a statement which said, in part:
We recognize that as shown by the complaints here, such provocative programming may offend some listeners. But this does not mean that those offended have the right, through the Commission’s licensing power, to rule such programs off the airways. Where this the case, only the wholly inoffensive, the bland, could gain access to the radio microphone or TV camera.
Commissioner Robert E. Lee addressed the specific complaints made about the WBAI broadcast. While he felt that a panel discussion featuring physicians and sociologists might be informative, “a panel discussion of eight homosexuals discussing their experiences and past history does not approach the treatment of a delicate subject one could expect from a responsible broadcaster.” While the FCC stressed that the ruling did not mean that the commission endorsed the broadcasts, it nevertheless was regarded as a landmark decision upholding the broadcaster’s right to determine the kinds of programs that it wishes to air.
[Source: Lawrence Laurent. “Stations’ judgment backed by FCC.” Washington Post (January 23, 1964): D20.]
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Gary Burton: 1943. The Grammy-Award winning jazz vibraphonist is an innovator on several fronts. He began learning to play the marimba and vibraphone while only six years old growing up in Anderson, Indiana. His father built him a platform so that he could reach the keys. By his senior year in high school, he was playing professionally at a restaurant in Evansville. While studying at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, he also began recording with several Nashville musicians, including Hank Garland, Floyd Cramer and Chet Atkins. He later began touring with Stan Getz from 1964 to 1966 as Bossa Nova became popular. Burton’s innovation didn’t end with the mixing of musical styles. His unique four-mallet technique has become known as the “Burton grip,” which allow him to play the vibraphone in a much more pianistic style. In 1967, he formed the Gary Burton Quartet, and the group’s first album, Duster, set the stage of the jazz-fusion tend in the 1970s by combining jazz, country and rock and roll. In 1968, he became the youngest musician to win Down Beat magazine’s Jazzman of the Year award, and his 1972 album Alone at Last
Burton came out publicly in 1992 during a radio interview with NPR’s Terry Gross. ” At that time I was in my early 40s,” he wrote in an email to BTB. “Like many from my generation, I struggled for the first half of my life to understand my sexual identity, but finally accepted that I am gay and always was.” He added: “I have always hoped that my experience might serve as a source of encouragement and enlightenment for others in my profession, who are trying to reconcile a career in the public eye while being a member of the gay community. I have been fortunate to have found acceptance from both the musical community and the public during my 30 years of being out. I have no idea what might be said when I’m not around, but I have never directly experienced any discrimination because of my identity.”
By the time he came out, he was not only a successful recording artist, but he was also Dean and then Executive Vice President at Berklee College. He retired in 2003, but continues to teach some courses online. His latest album, Hot House
Here is Gary Burton and Makoto Ozone playing “Afro Blue” at Montreaux:
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?
January 22nd, 2013
From the Providence Journal
With a unanimous vote, the House Judiciary Committee did Tuesday what no previous committee had done, sending a bill to legalize same-sex marriage to the floor of the Rhode Island House of Representatives.
There were eleven “yes” votes and two abstentions. The vote was not only bipartisan, but every single Republican member of the committee voted yes. (Okay, so there’s only one Republican on that committee, Doreen Costa, but I’m sure it annoys the National Organization for Marriage to say it that way.)
The House vote is expected on Thursday.
January 22nd, 2013
Russia’s Duma is expected to consider a proposed bill which would outlaw all public demonstrations, publications, broadcasts and other activity which it terms “propaganda” for gay rights. The Associated Press has a very good write-up:
Lawmakers have accused gays of decreasing Russia’s already low birth rates and said they should be barred from government jobs, undergo forced medical treatment or be exiled. Orthodox activists criticized U.S. company PepsiCo for using a “gay” rainbow on cartons of its dairy products. An executive with a government-run television network said in a nationally televised talk show that gays should be prohibited from donating blood, sperm and organs for transplants, while after death their hearts should be burned or buried.
The anti-gay sentiment was seen Sunday in Voronezh, a city south of Moscow, where a handful of gay activists protesting against the parliament bill were attacked by a much larger group of anti-gay activists who hit them with snowballs.
The gay rights protest that won Samburov a fine took place in December. Seconds after Samburov and his boyfriend kissed, militant activists with the Orthodox Church pelted them with eggs. Police intervened, rounding up the gay activists and keeping them for 30 hours first in a frozen van and then in an unheated detention center. The Orthodox activists were also rounded up, but were released much earlier.
Similar laws have been passed in St. Petersburg and a couple of Russia’s regions. Last October, thugs attacked patrons at a gay bar in Moscow. The Associated Press has this quote from an Orthodox priest after that attack:
On the next day, an Orthodox priest said he regretted that his religious role had not allowed him to participate in the beating.
“Until this scum gets off of Russian land, I fully share the views of those who are trying to purge our motherland of it,” Rev. Sergiy Rybko was quoted as saying by the Orthodoxy and World online magazine. “We either become a tolerant Western state where everything is allowed — and lose our Christianity and moral foundations — or we will be a Christian people who live in our God-protected land in purity and godliness.”
January 22nd, 2013
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Marriage Briefs Due To U.S. Supreme Court: Washington, D.C. Since last month when we learned that the U.S. Supreme Court would take up the appeal of the Prop 8 challenge and one of the challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act, you might be forgiven if you thought we were just in some kind of a holding pattern until the court hears oral arguments in March. In fact, lawyers in both cases have been working furiously putting together their written briefs for the court.
In Hollingsworth v. Perry, the challenge to California’s Prop 8, today is the day in which the opening brief from Prop 8’s supporters, the Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly the Alliance Defense Fund), are due. Then the Americans for Equal Rights (AFER), which is challenging Prop 8, will get to file a response brief, which is due on February 21. Then ADF will get to file a reply brief on March 19. Meanwhile, amicius curiae briefs on behalf of Prop 8 supporters are due next week, and supporting briefs against Prop 8 are due on February 8. Oral arguments are scheduled for March 26.
Things are a considerable more complicated in U.S. v Windsor, which challenges the constitutionality of Section 3 of DOMA. The opening brief from the House of Representatives’ Bipartisan Legal Advisory Committee (BLAG) is due today. But because the U.S. Supreme Court is not convinced that BLAG has standing, the court has asked Law Professor Victoria C. Jackson’s to compose a brief to provide a legal basis to argue that BLAG lacks standing, and that since the Justice Department has agreed with the lower court in finding DOMA Section 3 unconstitutional, the Court lacks jurisdiction. That brief is due on Thursday. A slew of response briefs follow, both on the question of DOMA’s constitutionality and on BLAG’s standing, as well as amicus curiae briefs. Oral arguments are scheduled for March 27.
MARK YOUR CALENDARS:
International Health and Policy Consequences of Sexual Orientation Change Efforts: New York, NY. The first ever United Nations discussion on the legalities, ethics and science behind the movement promoting sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE) and its relationship to human rights is scheduled to take place on January 31. Panel experts for the discussion include: Taiko Kleppe, of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights; Dr. Jack Drescher, friend of BTB and author of the APA’s position statement on sexual conversion therapy; Sam Wolfe of the Southern Poverty Law Center; Chaim Levin, a survivor and plaintiff in a lawsuit against conversion therapy; and Andrew Marin, of the Marin Foundation in Chicago. (Update: Marin is no longer on the program.) The conference, which will take place at the UN Church Center (777 United Nations Plaza, 8th Floor), is open to the public but RSVP’s are required. Please RSVP at UNuntern@uua.org.
Apply for the Iowa Matthew Shepard Scholarship: Iowa. Applications are now available for Iowa’s 2013 Matthew Shepard Scholarship Program, which is being offered to distinguished Iowa LGBT high school seniors. Applications are available at apply.matthewshepardscholarship.com and due on March 15.
THIS MONTH IN HISTORY:
V.D. As Retribution for Illicit Intercourse: 1916. Today’s history item goes to show that the more things change, the more things stay the same. Through much of the first decades of the AIDS crisis, moralistic preachers, pundits and politicians described the fatal disease as divine punishment for what they saw as illicit behavior. In 1983, for example, New York Post Columnist Pat Buchanan wrote, “The poor homosexuals… they have declared war upon nature, and now nature is exacting an awful retribution.” (See May 24)
It’s that phrase — “awful retribution” — which is as ignorant is it is memorable, even some two three decades later. But it’s hardly original. In 1916, Dr. Winfield Scott Hall, professor of physiology at Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago, published a book, Sexual Knowledge, “for the instruction of young people, young wives and young husbands… on the best way and the best time to impart sexual knowledge to boys and girls.” The book was published under a copyright held by The International Bible House, and it proved to be as ignorant and moralizing as anything Buchanan has ever written. The concern then, of course, wasn’t AIDS, but gonorrhea and syphilis, two sexually transmitted diseases for which there were no easy cures. And so avoiding them in the first place was an important priority. Condoms were known to as an effective barrier to transmission, and there were a variety of other remedies which were marketed as prophylactics. But Hall, in Sexual Knowledge, wrote that the only true prevention was adherence to marriage vows:
Nature has devised a retribution for illicit intercourse in the form of venereal disease. If the parties observe fidelity to their marriage vows, venereal disease is experienced in wedlock only on very rare occasions, and then through some accidental infection, as from contact with some public utensil, as a public water closet, a public towel, or a drinking cup. So rare is this unfortunate accident, however, that we may say that intercourse in undefiled wedlock results normally in pleasure and gratification to both parties; while intercourse out of wedlock, or illicit intercourse, is destined, as a rule, to be visited with retribution.
Mind you, this was a professor at Northwestern University’s medical school, one of the largest and most prestigious institutions in the Midwest. Dr. William J. Robinson, who was a physician, sexologist, birth control advocate, and editor of the American Journal of Urology and Sexology, exploded with fury in the January 1916 edition of his journal. Quoting the first sentence from the passage above, Robinson raged:
I wish I possessed a pen sufficiently sharp and vitriolic and a vocabulary sufficiently rich and varied, to characterize properly this sentence, to brand it as it deserves to be branded.
…It isn’t sufficient to characterize it merely as a stupid falsehood; the injury of such statements is much greater than one would casually conceive; they have a further reaching significance in the fact that they tend to loose, illogical thinking and lead to false ideas about Nature in general. Coming from a scientist such a statement is nothing less than a crime. Just think of what the sentence means: in order to discourage men from illicit sexual relations or to punish them for having indulged in ante-matrimonial or extra-matrimonial relations, Nature has designedly, purposely, created the gonococcus and the spirocheta pallida. So thoughtful, so solicitous is Nature about Man’s morality, so deeply interested is she that men should live in strictly monogamic marriage only (which, by the way, everybody except a Professor of Physiology knows is an institution of only comparatively recent origin), that she has deliberately and purposely devised a retribution in the form of gonorrhea and syphilis for all those who dare to indulge in illicit, i. e., natural sex relations! Any union sanctioned by priest or magistrate is to be blessed, happy and free from any disease or disharmony, any union not s0 sanctioned is to be punished by venereal disease. And this is Nature’s deliberate retribution, and so says a scientist, a Professor of Physiology, who is supposed to instruct and develop the thinking powers of the young!
Venereal disease is Nature’s retribution for illicit intercourse. And what is measles, scarlet fever and diphtheria a retribution for? What is consumption, cancer, heart disease, Bright’s disease, a retribution for?
Robertson was just getting warmed up. To drive home the sheer ridiculousness of Hall’s “retribution” thesis, Robertson demanded that Hall’s statement be brought to its most logical conclusion:
I believe in logic to a finish. If it be reprehensible to teach people the use of venereal prophylactics because such knowledge circumvents Nature and destroys the deterrent effect of venereal disease, then it is also reprehensible, nay even criminal, to treat venereal disease, and every venereal specialist is a criminal, because by his skill in curing venereal disease, which is the direct result of illicit intercourse, he circumvents Nature, minimizes the stings of the punishment and thus directly encourages immorality. I am not joking. I am simply logical. And if we believe that Nature has devised venereal disease as a retribution for illicit intercourse, then it stands to reason that any attempt to cure venereal disease, to free men from Nature’s punishment, is a sin against Nature.
Here is the situation. A man knows that there is such a thing as venereal disease; still, prompted by the imperiousness of his instinct, he takes the risk with the conscious or unconscious thought that if he is unfortunate enough to contract the disease he will go to a specialist who will cure it. But suppose there were no such a thing as a venereal specialist? Suppose the treatment of venereal disease were made a criminal offence? Can’t you see that the fear of venereal disease would exert its deterrent effect in a thousand times stronger measure than it does now? If a man were sure that if he contracted gonorrhea or syphilis or chancroids, that he would have to carry the disease for the rest of his life, that not only would there be no hope of any cure, but that he would get no relief, don’t you agree with me that such a man would hesitate much more than he does now, before subjecting himself to the risk of venereal infection? Of course you do. Q. E. D.
We thus reach the logical, the unassailable conclusion that if Nature devised venereal disease as a retribution for illicit intercourse, then it is not only criminal to teach the use of venereal prophylactics, as is now done so commonly in the armies and navies of the world, including those of the United States, but it is just as criminal, in fact more so, to treat venereal disease in any form. If a man wants to be a criminal and wants to break Nature’s laws against illicit intercourse, then let him bear the full consequences, and every man who wants to save him from Nature’s punishment, or wants to cure him after he has been punished, is accessory to the crime.
How does Professor Hall and those who believe with him like this logically unassailable conclusion?
[ Winfield Scott Hall. Sexual Knowledge (Philadelphia: John C. Winston Co., 1916): 129-130. The passage can be read online via Google Books here.
William J. Robinson. “Venereal disease as a retribution for illicit intercourse.” American Journal of Urology and Sexology 12, no. 1 (January 1916): 24-29. Robinson’s article can be read online via Google Books here.]
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Elaine Noble: 1944. Before Harvey Milk won political office in San Francisco, there was Elaine Noble in Boston. She won her Massachusetts state House of Representatives seat in 1974, becoming the first non-incumbent “avowed homosexual” to be elected to public office. It was a nasty campaign from beginning to end: her windows were shot out, her car was vandalized, and windows were smashed at her campaign headquarters. As she later recalled, “I was elected in a largely Irish-Catholic town. I was elected in spite of being gay. In the height of desegregation in Boston, I was riding on the buses with children of color. The gay community was just as racist as the straight community. So I had a lot of issues around race… There was a level of animosity in all strata of society against homosexuality.”
Despite that animosity, she won 59% of the vote. She did it by focusing on the things people in her district cared about: crime, health care, housing for the district’s many elderly residents, and the neglect in city services.
But the harassment continued after she took office. “One day, I was walking to the State House and there was a guy, 85 years old, and he walked up and said, ”Rep. Noble.’ And I reached up to shake his hand and he spit on me. And then I turned around and he started doing his diatribe. I walked all the way home, showered and changed my clothes. So, even walking to work or riding my bike to work was not terribly safe.”
She not only had to deal with obscene profanities, she once found human feces left in her desk. But when she stood for re-election two years later, she won with almost 90% of the vote. In 1977, she was part of the first delegation of gay men and lesbians invited to the Jimmy Carter White House to discuss issues important to the LGBT community. Being such an important “first” took its toll on her though, and she decided against running for re-election in 1978:
My phone was ringing constantly from people all over the country who had very frightened voices. There were people all over the country calling and asking if I would come and speak. They’d say, “Well, you have a responsibility to a bigger constituency.” I was pulled in a thousand different ways. It was not going to have a happy ending and I was smart enough to know that. I thought, “Well, I’ve done my best. It’s time for me to move on to the next step in my own life. I’ve paid my dues.”
Since then, with the exception of an occasional interview, she has mostly been living a considerably quieter private life.
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?
January 21st, 2013
I was delighted to hear President Obama call for equality under the law for gay and lesbian Americans. But one part of his speech, even more than that call, struck me as a significant change in the language of our struggle.
We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.
Repeatedly our opponents, especially those who are African-American preachers, insist that our quest for equal treatment before our civil government does not fit within the rubric of “civil rights”. Tony Evans, pastor of the 9,000-member Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas spoke with NPR last May:
Evans and others say the black family is in crisis — a majority of babies, for example, are born to single mothers — and that’s why black ministers are often the most vocal opponents of same-sex marriage. Asked about the argument that this is a civil rights issue, Evans bristles.
“The issue of race is not an issue of choice. It’s an issue of birth,” he says.
Does that mean that homosexuality is a choice?
“The Bible is clear on that one, too. And that is, sexual relationships are to be between men and women within the context of marriage,” Evans says. “That’s not only related to the issue of homosexuality, but adultery, or fornication or bestiality. All of that is proscribed in the Bible.”
Though the tide has turned in the black community and though those who know the civil rights struggle for racial equality most intimately have championed our cause, there still remain those who think that gay people are stealing the rightful ownership of civil rights from those who fought for it. And even some who have come to support us still see our discrimination as secondary and less severe.
But this paragraph included in the President’s address casts the convention at Seneca Falls for women’s right, the marches from Selma to Montgomery for racial rights, and the riot at the Stonewall Inn for sexual orientation as one. And it was in the context of that quest for women’s, black, and gay equality that Obama quotes Dr. Martin Luther King. On this day set aside of honor Dr. King.
This was, for me, an unexpected statement, of which the implication is unmistakable. The quest for equality for our community is a civil rights battle. It always has been, but now the most influential and important African-American alive has spoke of it as so in one of his most important and broadly heard speeches.
The impact of that statement has the potential to be enormous in this country and beyond.
January 21st, 2013
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3ZI2GA9bhFs
The theme for President Barack Obama’s second inaugural address is the never-ending task of bringing the Declaration of Independence’s assertion of “certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” The journey to that promise, he said, is the history of our nation, and that journey is not complete:
We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.
It is now our generation’s task to carry on what those pioneers began. For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers, and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts. Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law – for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well. Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote. Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity; until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country. Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for, and cherished, and always safe from harm.
This is the first inaugural speech to include gays and lesbians as an integral part of America. And it’s more than just a name check. It’s also a recognition that our struggle is part and parcel of the greater, never-ending quest for liberty for all Americans.
January 21st, 2013
Poet Richard Blano is the first Latino and openly gay man to read a poem for the Presidential Inauguration:
January 21st, 2013
Committee hearings on the civil union bill always pack the chamber with spectators and media. This photo is from last year’s legislative session.
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Civil unions legislation has been re-introduced in Colorado and passage is near certain. Why you ask? Because the number of bill sponsors constitues a majority of both the House and Senate. That’s 20 sponsors in the Senate (out of 35 seats) and 38 sponsors in the House (out of 65 seats).
In a first for the bill Republican Rep Cheri Gerou all of a sudden grew balls this year and decided to sponsor the bill after declining to last year. Even OutFront Colorado published an article titled “How are we so sure civil unions will pass this year?“
How did we get to this point? Here’s some backstory…
In 2011 and 2012 Colorado had a divided legislature. In 2012 after the bill surprisingly managed to pass intact out of a key Republican controlled committee in a desperate last minute attempt to kill the bill House Speaker Frank McNulty (R-Highlands Ranch) killed 30+ bills on the last night of the session rather than allow the civil union bill to reach the floor.
Democrats swept the November election statewide and retook control of the House along with retaining control of the Senate and Governor’s Residence. Rep Mark Ferrandino was elected by his peers to be the first openly gay Speaker Of The House. Also during the fall recess, tragically, Dave Misner, the husband of Senator Pat Steadman, the bill’s author, died of pancreatic cancer.
But there are other different things this year too.
Previous civil unions legislation had excluded [Catholic] adoption agencies from having to treat civil-unionized couples equally. This year’s bill is stronger and no longer includes such an exclusion. Quoting the Catholic News Agency:
The 2012 Colorado Senate bill proposing to create the unions had stated that the bill “shall not be interpreted to require a child placement agency to place a child for adoption” with a couple in a civil union.
That language, however, is absent from the 2013 bill, S.B. 11.
Much as in other states Catholics are threatening to take their ball and go home.
If Colorado law forces the Colorado Springs-based agency to violate Catholic teaching, he said, “we probably would cease the operation of our adoption programs.”
“That risk is always there,” he said. “I think that we would try to explore every avenue available to us to provide this vital service to the community.”
He said a shutdown is “very well what could happen” given precedents in other states.
In previous years rhetoric opposing the bill was downright comical. In 2011 local grandmother (and Eagle Forum member) Rosina Kovar provided graphic testimony about the human anus. And in 2012 two Senators quoted the Bible in floor debate, one saying “I truly believe Jesus is a better answer than Senate Bill 2.” There has even been a cameo by Paul Cameron.
This year we have a new religious fundamentalist to watch.
It’s widely believed that Facebook post is reffering to Vicki Marble (R-Northern Colorado I-25 corridor) who proudly touts her AFA Action scorecard on her campaign website. Unfortunately Ms Marble’s only appointments are to the Education and Local Government committees so we’ll likely have to wait for the bill to reach the Senate floor for her to embarrass herself. And in other fundamentalist news Colorado Family Action is having a “Rally and Prayer for Marriage” on Friday Jan 25. Legislation dealing with marriage isn’t being considered this year, and marriage is already defined in our state constitution, Amendment 43 so I’m not sure why Colorado Family Action is wasting their time having a rally about it.
The civil union bill’s first hearing is the Senate Judiciary Committee, this Wednesday, January 23, at 1:30 p.m. in the Old Supreme Court Chambers. Committee hearings are broadcast as audio-only on the Colorado Channel’s website.
The final bill is expected to pass and be signed by mid March with the first civil union licenses issued May 1st.
January 21st, 2013
It’s a super-double bonus day today: Inauguration Day and Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. President Barack Obama took the official oath of office yesterday in keeping with the Constitution’s Twentieth Amendment. But in keeping with a tradition that was established in 1821 for James Monroe’s second inauguration, every time an inauguration is scheduled to take place on Sunday, the festivities have always been pushed back a day to Monday. Ronald Reagan also began his second term the same way, with a private oath on Sunday and a ceremonial inauguration oath on Monday. When Monroe established the tradition, it was no big deal. It was, after all, a continuation of his first term. But it was a different story in 1849 when the country was celebrating its good riddance of the unpopular James Polk. His successor, Zachary Taylor, refused to take the oath on Sunday, as did his vice-President, Millard Fillmore. This made House Speaker David Rice Atchison the acting president for the day.
But as I said, this day is also Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as well as Inauguration Day. And it’s altogether fitting and proper, to paraphrase the Great Emancipator, that we should observe these two together. When Dr. King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963, his call for an equal and just society must have sounded hopelessly idealistic. “One day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers,” he dreamed. I don’t think we’ve achieved that dream yet, but fifty years later we are living in a land where those little black boys and girls and those little white boys and girls have a President who embodies the fruits of that dream. Not only that, but we’ve had that President around long enough that his second inauguration now seems like old hat. For all but a stubborn few, it is no big thing.
And this president has extended the dream in ways in which I would have had a hard time imagining just a few short years ago. For the first time in our nation’s history, we have a president who believes that gays and lesbians should have the same right to marry as anyone else, and that belief has transformed his party. Never again will it be acceptable for a Democratic presidential candidate to hold a contrary position when it comes to our families.
And that position has not just transformed the Democratic Party, it also is bringing a recognition among many in the Republican Party that, while this may not be a settled issue, it is now one that many no longer want to go out on a limb against.
It’s much too early to know whether last year’s homophobic GOP platform will be the last of its kind. Social conservatives may be losing their grip on the country, but there’s not much evidence — yet — that their power is slipping among GOP primary voters. But what we can say is that that same-sex marriage is no longer the wedge issue it used to be. Or, perhaps more accurately, we should probably say that the wedge now points the other way, in the same direction of Dr. King’s “long arc of history”: towards justice.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
Time Magazine’s “The Homosexual In America”: 1966. Time magazine published an unsigned two-page article which, given that it was a “popular” magazine, provides a mirror of how gay people were viewed in the U.S. at that time:
It used to be “the abominable crime not to be mentioned.” Today it is not only mentioned: it is freely discussed and widely analyzed. Yet the general attitude is, if anything, more uncertain than before. Beset by inner conflicts, the homosexual is unsure of his position in society, ambivalent about his attitudes and identity — but he gains a certain amount of security through the fact that society is equally ambivalent about him.
In the second paragraph, Time provides some examples of that ambivalence that straight society had toward gay people:
The latest Rock Hudson movie explicitly jokes about it, Doubleday Book Shops run smirking ads for The Gay Cookbook, and newsstands make room for “beefcake” magazines of male nudes.
It’s hard to know whether Time indulged in some gay-baiting with Rock Hudson, but that line almost certainly raised a few eyebrows in Hollywood. The article went on:
But increasingly, deviates are out in the open, particularly in fashion and the arts. Women and homosexual men work together designing, marketing, retailing, and wrapping it all up in fashion magazines. The interior decorator and the stockbroker’s wife conspire over curtains. And the symbiosis is not limited to working hours. For many a woman with a busy or absent husband, the presentable homosexual is in demand as an escort — witty, pretty, catty, and no problem to keep at arm’s length. …
On Broadway, it would be difficult to find a production without homosexuals playing important parts, either onstage or off. And in Hollywood, says Broadway Producer David Merrick, “you have to scrape them off the ceiling.” … [I]n the theater, dance and music world, deviates are so widespread that the sometimes seem to be running a kind of closed shop.
As the article continues, the ugliness grows. Time cited a Los Angeles psychiatrist who declared homosexuals “failed artists, and their special creative gift a myth.” Time held gay people responsible for plays depicting “the degradation of women and the derision of normal sex. … They represent a kind of inverted romance, since homosexual situations as such can never be made romantic for normal audiences.” And Time projected its obsessions with sex onto gay people:
Even in ordinary conversation, most homosexuals will sooner or later attack the ‘things that normal men take seriously.’ It does not mean that homosexuals do not and cannot talk seriously; but there is often a subtle sea change in the conversation: sex (unspoken) pervades the atmosphere.
It was at this point when Time turned to the notorious psychologist of the 1950s, Edmund Bergler, who, though dead for four years, supplied the following from a book he wrote ten years earlier:
The late Dr. Edmund Bergler found certain traits present in all homosexuals, including inner depression and guilt, irrational jealousy and a megalomaniac conviction that homosexual trends are universal. Though Bergler conceded that homosexuals are not responsible for their inner conflicts, he found that the conflicts “sap so much of their inner energy that the shell is a mixture of superciliousness, face aggression and whimpering. Like all psychic masochists, they are subservient when confronted by a stronger person, merciless when in power, unscrupulous about trampling on a weaker person.”
It was all there: gay people were “not like everybody else. They were “anxiously camouflaged,” “catty,” “megalomaniacal,” “supercilious,” “conspiring,” “wimpy,” “camp,” “psychic masochists,” “irrationally jealous,” “beset by inner depression and guilt,” “pathetic,” suffering from “a disabling fear of the opposite sex,” trapped in “a case of arrested development,” “subservient around strangers,” “merciless around those weaker than them,” “antagonistic toward heterosexuals,” “mocking of heterosexuals,” “inferior to heterosexuals” and, yes, conspiring over curtains while also nursing their “constant tendency to prowl or ‘cruise’ in search of new partners” while “refus(ing) to accept the full responsibilities of life.” And Time’s concluding remarks were nearly indistinguishable from what we regularly hear today from the likes of Peter LaBarbera, Bryan Fischer, Scott Lively, or the minions at the Family “Research” Council:
Lack of procreation or of marriage vows is not the issue; even Roman Catholic authorities hold that an illicit heterosexual affair has a degree of “authentication,” while a homosexual relationship involves only “negation.” Roman Catholic thought generally agrees that homosexuality is of and in itself wrong because, as New York’s Msgr. Thomas McGovern says, it is “inordinate, having no direction toward a proper aim.” Even in purely nonreligious terms, homosexuality represents a misuse of sexual faculty and, in the worlds of one Catholic educator, of “human construction.” It is a pathetic little second-rate substitute for reality, a pitiable flight from life. As such it deserves fairness, compassion, understanding and, when possible treatment. But it deserves no encouragement, no glamorization, no rationalization, no fake status as minority martyrdom, no sophistry about simple differences in taste — and, above all, no pretense that it is anything but a pernicious sickness.
The gay community’s reaction was biting. An unsigned commentary in the Daughters of Bilitis’ The Ladder (possibly by pioneering activist Barbara Gittings (see Jul 31), who was the magazine’s editor at the time) read, in part:
In its final frenzied paragraph TIME shows its Catholic petticoats, TIME rolls religious, psychiatric, and plain bourgeois prejudice into one big mudball which it slings about, hoping to blacken homosexuality forever… TIME calls homosexuality “a pathetic little second-rate substitute for reality, 11 Ditto for TIME’s essay on the subject.
The Ladder also quoted from a New York psychologist, Fritz Fluckiger, who had spoken at a DOB meeting: “They are famous for having a large research staff — and indeed, they have found every single cliche you can think of, to put in that essay.”
The following month, Gittings’s partner, Kay Lahusen (see Jan 5), writing as Kay Tobin. quoted Dr. Isadore Ruben, publisher of Sexology magazine, who said that Time ordinarily prides itself in being up-to-date on whatever it covers. “But if this is so, then I am forced to conclude that if they are not ignorant, the editors of this essay are intellectually dishonest, motivated by prejudice, and guilty of deliberate omission and distortion.” That same issue also published three letters which had been sent to Time’s editor that the magazine declined to publish. Naturally, it was the letter from Frank Kameny (see May 21, founder of the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C) which was the most forceful:
Instead of a mature, fair, objective assessment of the issue of homosexuality, divorced from ancient prejudices, pre- (sic) and misconceptions, and intolerances, we have a venomous, petulant polemic, suitable for a second-rate conservative publication.
From its stereotyping of “the homosexual” in the same invalid fashion as that in which others type “the Negro” or “the Jew,” to its choice as a major “authority” of a man (Bergler) whose views are discredited and disavowed even by his own professional colleagues, TIME has remained in the millenia-old intellectual and emotional rut on this question.
Instead of making a skeptical examination of the claims of modern psychiatry and finding that they are based upon shabby, slipshod science, including poor sampling techniques, built-in conclusions, and armchair theorizing about the nature of homosexuality, TIME swallows these claims hook, line, and sinker.
…The concluding three sentences are an unwarrantedly vicious attack upon a sincere effort to improve the status of a maligned and persecuted group of people and to gain for them the dignity to which all human beings have the right to aspire. Those sentences are the voice of a closed mind, of a mind which clearly has pre-judged, is not open to change, and is therefore in the most fundamental sense, prejudiced.
[Sources: Unsigned. “The homosexual in America” Time (January 21, 1966): 40-41. Available online with subscription here.
Unsigned. Column: “Cross-currents.” The Ladder 10, no. 6 (March 1966): 18.
Kay Tobin. “A rebuke for TIME’s pernicious prejudice.” The Ladder 10, no. 7 (April 1966): 20-22.
Franklin E. Kameny. From “Letters TIME didn’t print.” The Ladder 10, no. 7 (April 1966): 22-23.]
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And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?
January 20th, 2013
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Events This Weekend: Aspen Gay Ski Week, Aspen, CO; Midsumma, Melbourne, VIC.
THIS MONTH IN HISTOY:
An Improved Method for Delivering Electric Shocks for Aversion Therapy: 1965. Electric shock aversion therapy was just one of many torturous methods which had been used to try to “cure” gay people throughout the twentieth century. Being that it’s use of electricity somehow managed to convey a “technological” gloss into a very crude affair — male patients were shown nude photographs and given painful jolts if the showed any kind of interest in photos of men — it might be surprising that there had, in fact, been only a few basic “improvements” since the technology was first developed in 1935 (see Mar 15 and Sep 6). Three researchers, Bernard Turshy, Peter D. Watson and D.M. O’Connell from Harvard’s Department of Psychiatry and the Massachusetts Mental Health Center, wrote in the journal Psychophysiology about that lack of progress:
Very little systematic work has been done toward designing a satisfactory electrode for the delivery of electric shock in psychological experimentation, although a wide variety of electrode types have been used. These, for example, have included: (a) plates of various metals and different sizes and shapes, either taped or strapped to the fingers, arms or legs of Ss (subjects); (b) cups filled with saline solution into which Ss’ fingers were immersed; (c) standard EEG electrodes attached to the earlobes; and (d) wires attached to the teeth by wax or cups.
Several studies have been conducted to determine the effect of varying the absolute and relative sizes of electrodes. It was found that the smaller the electrode, the less current was needed to produce a given subjective intensity, and that when there was a considerable difference in the relative sizes of the two electrodes, the sensation was felt primarily under the smaller electrode. These studies indicate that the size and the configuration of the electrodes are important variables.
Such was the nature of this kind of research that the very people who were being subjected to painful electric shocks were reduced to the smallest abbreviation possible: they were just “Ss”, and the less said of them the better. The real problem, as far as Tursky, Watson and O’Connell were concerned, was that currently existing technology really did have some problems that they felt needed addressing. Those problems were fourfold:
These are (a) precise delimitation of the area of stimulation; (b) minimal interference with the mobility of the S; (c) freedom from skin irritation and burning; and (d) reduction of muscle involvement as a secondary concomitant of shock stimulation.
The “improved” electrode (click to enlarge).
Tursky, Watson and O’Connell believed that they had an answer. Instead of separate electrodes placed throughout the body, they devised a concentric electrode configuration which “has been found to be highly satisfactory. An inner aluminum disk was surrounded by second aluminum ring, both of which were held together in a plastic case. In order to avoid skin irritation and burning, the electricity was conducted between the device through small sponge pads soaked in saline and coated with an electrode paste. This, they said, was a marked improvement over the older methods:
When an electrical stimulus is applied through a simple metal electrode in direct contact with the skin for long periods of time, small area burns may occur. This can be explained by thinking of the metal electrode as an infinite number of conductors making contact with the skin. Any one of these contacts can form a low resistance path which becomes the focal point for all current flow. The sponge and salt paste contact, used in our electrode, acts to diffuse current flow and insures equal density over the entire surface. In two year sof use with over one hundred Ss, this electrode has not caused any burns.
In other words, they created the torturer’s dream: a system of torment that leaves no mark. Well, at least none that we can see. It was also your parents’ and grandparents’ tax dollars at work. The research was supported by a grant from the U.S. Public Health Service.
[Source: Bernard Tursky, Peter D. Watson, D.N. O’Connell. “A concentric shock electrode for pain stimulation.” Psychophysiology 1, no. 3 (January 1965): 296-298.]
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And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?
January 19th, 2013
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Events This Weekend: Aspen Gay Ski Week, Aspen, CO; Midsumma, Melbourne, VIC.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
The Death of Murray Hall: 1901. The headline in the January 19, 1901, New York Times undoubtedly shocked a lot of people who thought they knew a gregarious Tammany Hall politician pretty well:
Murray H. Hall, the woman who masqueraded as a man for more than a quarter of a century, and the secret of whose sex came out only after her death last Wednesday night at 145 Sixth Avenue [renumbered in the 1920s to 453 6th Ave, between 11th and 12th streets — ed], was known to hundreds of people in the Thirteenth Senatorial District, where she figured quite prominently as a politician. In a limited circle she even had a reputation as a “man about town,” a bon vivant, and all-around “good fellow.” She was a member of the General Committee of Tammany Hall, a member of the Iroquois Club, a personal friend of State Senator “Barney” Martin and other officials, and one of the most active Tammany workers in the district.
She registered and voted at primaries and general elections for many years, and exercised considerable political influence with Tammany Hall, often securing appointments for friends who have proved their fealty to the organization never exciting the remotest suspicion as to her real sex.
She played poker at the clubs with city and State officials and politicians who flatter themselves on their cleverness and perspicacity, drank whisky and wine and smoked the regulation “big black cigar” with the apparent relish and gusto of the real man-about-town. Furthermore, Murray Hall is known to have been married twice, but the woman to whom she stood before the world in the attitude of a husband kept her secret as guardedly as she did.
Hall’s secret was found out when his doctor was called to treat him for an illness he had been suffering for many years. That illness, it turned out, was breast cancer. By the time the doctor made the diagnosis, the cancer had spread to the heart. He died two days later. The Times reported that Hall was a book lover, preferring scientific and medical books, which led to speculation that Hall was trying to treat himself for cancer before finally succumbing. C.S. Pratt, the bookseller who Hall dealt with (and who to whom Hall sold his library three months before his death), had no clue that Hall was anything other than a man.
“He seemed to me to be a modest little man, but occasionally he showed an irascible temper. He would never talk about himself and shunned garrulous and inquisitive companions. In fact, when I met him on the street he was either accompanied by his black and tan dog or some woman or women, strangers to me, who I supposed were clients.”
“During the seven years I knew him I never once suspected that he was anything else than what he appeared to be. While he was somewhat effeminate in appearance and talked in a falsetto voice, still his conduct and actions were distinctively masculine. This revelation is a stunner to me and, I guess, to everybody else who knew him.”
Hall had been quite successful in the rough-and-tumble political world of Tammany Hall:
Why,” continued the Senator, “when the County Democracy was in the heyday of its glory, Murray Hall was one of the bright stars in that constellation. He was the Captain of his election district when he lived and kept an intelligence office between Seventeenth and Eighteenth Street, on Sixth Avenue. That was some years ago, when the district was cut down, making Fourteenth Street the northern boundary. Hall moved so as to be in with his political pals. He used to hobnob with the big guns of the County Democracy, and I knew he cut quite some figure as a politician.
He also cut quite a figure as a ladies man. Married twice, both wives complained that he was “too attentive to other women.” His adopted daughter, Imelda Hall, had no idea about her father’s background. When she testified at a Coroner’s inquest two weeks later, she referred to her father as “he.” The Coroner interrupted to ask, “Wouldn’t you better say ‘she’?” She replied, “No, I will never say ‘she’.”
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?
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