Box Turtle Bulletin

Federal Judge Expresses Doubt About Lawsuit Against Scott Lively

A hearing was held today at a Federal Court in Springfield, Massachusetts on a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed against American anti-gay extremist Scott Lively. The Center for Constitutional Rights is suing Lively on behalf of Sexual Minorities Uganda, alleging that Lively engaged in a conspiracy to deny the LGBT community of their rights under International Law and which resulted in harm to the LGBT community. Lively is being sued under the Alien Tort Statute, which provides federal jurisdiction for “any civil action by an alien, for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.” In today’s hearing, U.S. District Court Judge Michael A. Ponsor expressed doubts about the case:

During a 90-minute hearing in U.S. District Court, Ponsor said the lawsuit filed by Sexual Minorities Uganda against the Springfield minister poses a test of Lively’s free-speech protection and the rights of sexual minorities to equal protection under the law.

But the judge said the plaintiffs needed to show a connection between Lively’s anti-gay advocacy in Uganda and illegal acts committed against gays in the country.

“I’m frankly struggling to see what behavior beyond expressive behavior” of Lively violated federal law, the judge said during the hearing attended by about 150 people, including a prominent Ugandan activist.

The plaintiffs, the judge added, “needed to show a more concrete example of misbehavior to justify continuation of the lawsuit.”

As I wrote last March soon after the case was filed, this is the very challenge CCR faces in this case. CCR’s case cannot simply be a recitation of what Lively said. If it is, then the case becomes solely about Lively’s speech and beliefs which, as odious as they are, are nevertheless protected under the First Amendment. What CCR would need to do is provide proof that Lively actually engaged in actions which constitute a plan or conspiracy with the desired outcome being the infringement of the rights of LGBT people under International Law, and that LGBT people in Uganda, as a result of that conspiracy or action, suffered as a result. Hence the judge’s emphasis on “misbehavior.”

While Judge Ponsor expressed his skepticism about the case, he also cast doubt on Lively’s motion to dismiss. According to the Springfield Republican, the judge didn’t indicate when he would rule on the motion to dismiss.

Lively is being defended in the lawsuit by Liberty Counsel.

Log Cabin’s new director

As of January 2, Log Cabin Republicans has had a new (interim) Executive Director, Gregory Angelo. He served as head of the New York State chapter of Log Cabin during the fight for marriage in that state.

Mr. Angelo is the current Chairman of Log Cabin Republicans of New York State, a position he has held since 2009. As New York State Chairman, Mr. Angelo led Log Cabin Republicans as part of New Yorkers United for Marriage, a coalition that collaborated to make marriage equality legal through legislative vote for the first time in a Republican-controlled legislature. He is also the Executive Director of the Liberty Education Forum, a non-partisan think tank that advocates a message of gay acceptance among conservatives and people of faith throughout the United States. Mr. Angelo is a longtime resident of Manhattan, where he serves as a GOP District Leader. He was an Alternate Delegate for Newt Gingrich in the 2012 election cycle.

That last sentence is a bit of an eyebrow raiser and is either a very good thing or a very bad one.

If Angelo played a role in Gingrich’s evolution on marriage equality, then he is an ideal choice for leading the organization. If however, the change was unrelated and Angelo supported him despite his deplorable record without any awareness of his newer perspectives, then I have to question his wisdom and commitment to changing the Republican Party.

Welcome out, Matt Dallas

From 2006 to 2009, Matt Dallas was the lead on Kyle XY, a science-fiction mystery drama on the ABC Family channel. Today he officially came out and, in a tweet, announced the name of his fiancé.

Log Cabin doubles down on Hagel

Click to enlarge.

Log Cabin Republicans has released a second full page ad, this time in the Washington Post, criticizing the record of Chuck Hagel, former Republican Senator from Nebraska. Hagel will be formally nominated later today by the President for the position of Secratary of Defense.

This ad was limited to gay issues and addressed the “totality” of Hagel’s record (from LCR press release):

• In 1996 Hagel said he supported the Defense of Marriage Act, a federal law defining marriage as one man and one woman. He also supported a state constitutional amendment barring gays from marrying.
• In 1998 Hagel opposed the nomination of James Hormel as Ambassador to Luxembourg, arguing that an “openly, aggressively gay” man should not selected to represent the U.S.
• In 1999 Hagel Opposed repealing the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, saying, “the U.S. armed forces aren’t some social experiment.”
• In 2005, in reaction to a federal judge’s ruling that Nebraska’s voter-passed ban on same-sex marriage violated the constitutional rights of lesbians and gay men, Hagel opposed the decision saying, “I am hopeful the federal appeals court will recognize the rights of Nebraskans to determine their own laws governing marriage and reverse this decision.”

Barny Frank Scales Back Criticism of Hagel

In remarks to the Boston Globe, retired Rep. Barny Frank (D-MA) has scaled back his criticism of former Sen. Chuck Hagel’s (R-NE) pending nomination as Defense Secretary. But before getting to his latest comments, I think it’s important to review his previous statements in order to provide full context. On December 19, after Hagel’s anti-gay comments from 1998 came to light but before he issued his apology, Frank ignored those earlier anti-gay statements and instead focused on charges that Hagel was either an anti-Semite or, at best, not a friend to Israel. Frank opinion then was:

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who is Jewish, said he did not object to what has become one big point of contention about Hagel: an allusion to the “Jewish lobby,” in reference to advocates for Israel in Congress and elsewhere.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having Portuguese lobbies, Jewish lobbies, Greek lobbies,” Frank said. “I think he’d be very good. … You need someone intelligent to help cut that budget.”

After Hagel apologized, Frank changed his mind on New Year’s Eve:

Then-Senator Hagel’s aggressively bigoted opposition to President Clinton’s naming the first openly gay Ambassador in U.S. history was not, as Sen. Hagel now claims, an aberration,” Frank said. “He voted consistently against fairness for LGBT people and there does not seem to be any evidence prior to his effort to become Secretary of Defense of any apology or retraction of his attack on James Hormel.”

Frank added, “And to those of us who admire and respect Mr. Hormel, Sen. Hagel’s description of him as aggressive can only mean that the Senator strongly objected to Hormel’s reasoned, civil advocacy for LGBT people. I cannot think of any other minority group in the U.S. today where such a negative statement and action made in 1998 would not be an obstacle to a major Presidential appointment.”

Today, Frank began walking that back:

“I was hoping the president wouldn’t nominate him,” Frank told the Globe today.

“As much as I regret what Hagel said, and resent what he said, the question now is going to be Afghanistan and scaling back the military,” Frank said. “In terms of the policy stuff, if he would be rejected [by the Senate], it would be a setback for those things.”

…”With the attack coming out of the right, I hope he gets confirmed,” Frank said today.

I don’t think Frank is being inconsistent. He’s framing his support for Hagel based on the larger question of what a Defense Secretary will be called upon to do in the coming months. But when it comes to LGBT policy, it’s worth noting that all policy originates in the White House, and the buck will always stop there. And this particular president — who dismantled DADT, who is acting on the conviction that DOMA is unconstitutional, who has come out in support for marriage equality — has earned a measure of latitude that no other president has come close to deserving in all of American history, at least insofar as LGBT policies are concerned. I will have more thoughts on this topic later.

Update: I want to add that this in no way means that I find Hagel’s apology acceptable as a final word. It opens a door, but that doorway is yet to be walked through.

The Daily Agenda for Monday, January 7

Merry Christmas! Yes, today is Christmas day — if you grew up in or are a member of an Orthodox Church which follows the Julian calendar. That would include churches in Ethiopia, Russia, Georgia, Armenia, Ukraine, Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Moldova. (Greek, Bulgarian, Romanian, Antiochian and others celebrates Christmas on December 25). Christmas day formally ends the 40-day Nativity Fast. In Russia, the main celebration takes place on Christmas Eve, where the family returns home from services for the traditional “Holy Supper” consisting of 12 dishes, one for each of the apostles. In Georgia, people dress up and go an an “Alilo walk” and wish each other Christmas greetings and hand out sweets to children. Serbs spread their Christmas celebrations out over three days with numerous feasts, gatherings and traditional activities for each day.

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Court Hearing In Lawsuit Against Scott Lively: Springfield, MA. Last March, the Center for Constitutional Rights announced that they were suing Scott Lively in Federal District Court on behalf of Sexual Minorities Uganda for Lively’s “decade-long campaign he has waged, in coordination with his Ugandan counterparts, to persecute persons on the basis of their gender and/or sexual orientation and gender identity.” He is being sued under the Alien Tort Statute, which provides federal jurisdiction for “any civil action by an alien, for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.” Oral arguments on Lively’s motion to dismiss are set for today before Judge Michael A. Ponsor at the Federal Courthouse in Springfield, Massachusetts. Oral arguments are set for 11:00 a.m. For those planning to attend either the hearing or a planned rally, CCR provides this advice:

WHEN: You are advised to arrive at 9:00am. The hearing is at 11:00am, however, word is that Lively’s people have been advised to arrive at 9:30am. It also takes one hour in advance to allow time for going through courthouse security. After the argument, there will be a press conference and rally in front of the courthouse, organized by CCR and the Stop the Hate and Homophobia Coalition of Western Massachusetts.

Prior to the hearing, starting at 10:00am, the Stop The Hate And Homophobia Coalition is organizing a “stand-out” along State Street in front of the courthouse, where we will be holding supporting signs and informational flyers.

CCR and Sexual Minorities Uganda are also organizing a Twitter Rally from 12:00 noon to 2:00 p.m. EST using the #StoptheHate hashtag.  CCR will hold a press conference in front of the Court House after the hearing, which is expected to take less than two hours. You can learn more about the lawsuit at the CCR’s website. Vince Warren, CCR’s Executive Director, wrote this op-ed for The Washington Post.

Murder, she wrote.

THIS MONTH IN HISTORY:
Phyllis Lyon Kills Ann Ferguson: 1957. When the Daughters of Bilitis began publishing The Ladder in October 1956, it’s masthead identified its first editor as Ann Ferguson. In the second issue, Ferguson penned a short article addressing the first problem they encountered in publishing what would become the nation’s first magazine for lesbians. As Ferguson explained it, too  many people feared “that names on our mailing list may fall into the wrong hands, or that by indicating interest in this magazine a person will automatically be labeled a homosexual.” She assured readers that subscribers included all kinds of people, including lawyers, social workers, psychiatrists, business, and other professionals. She also assured readers that “Daughters of BIlitis is not outside the law — we advocate no illegal actions by anyone.”

Ferguson revealed that the organization had obtained legal council and would file for incorporation under the laws of California. She also explained a recent Supreme Court decision which upheld the rights of citizens to refuse to reveal to Congressional committees the names on subscription lists or lists of purchases. So in addition to the organization’s own bylaws prohibiting the disclosure of The Ladder’s subscription lists, “the decision also guarantees that your name is safe!”

Ferguson had been at the helm for only thee months when the January 1957 issue included this startling announcement:

ANN FERGUSON IS DEAD!
I confess. I killed Ann Ferguson. Premeditatedly and with malice aforethought. We ran an article in the November issue of THE LADDER entitled “Your Name is Safe”.” Ann Ferguson wrote that article. Her words were true, her conclusions logical and documented — yet she was not practising what she preached.

Somehow it didn’t seem right,

She spent some time considering the situation. Then came to a conclusion. At the November public discussion meeting of the Daughters of Bilitis we got up — Ann Ferguson and I — and did away with Ann. Now there is only Phyllis Lyon.

Seriously, my pseudonym was taken in the first place without much thought. Somehow, it seemed the thing to do. But all it did was create problems. If you’re going to write under a pseudonym then you should go by that name in personal contacts. But everybody connected with the Daughters of Bilitis already knew me as Phyllis and the attempt to call me Ann confused everyone, including me.

I’m sure that I’m not placing myself in any jeopardy by using my real name — and I’m only simplifying matters and practising what I preach.

Phyllis Lyon (see Nov 10) with her partner Del Martin (see May 5) were among eight women who founded the Daughters of Bilitis in 1955 (see Oct 19). In 2008, they Phyllis and Del became the first same-sex couple to be legally married in the state of California. Del passed away later that year. At last report, Phyllis still lives in their home in San Francisco.

[Sources: Ann Ferguson. “Your Name Is Safe!” The Ladder, 1, no. 2 (November 1956): 10-12.

Phyllis Lyon. “Ann Ferguson Is Dead!” The Ladder, 1, no. 4 (January 1957): 7.]

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Jann Wenner: 1946. He founded Rolling Stone in 1967 when he was just 21, after borrowing $7,500 from family members. In 1977 he founded Outside magazine, and in 1985 he bought a share of US. In 1995, he separated from his wife, Jane Wenner, to live with Matt Nye, a former model and fashion designer. Jann and Jane have never divorced — she is still vice president of Wenner Media — and Jann and Matt are still together. In addition to the three sons he had with Jane, Jann and Matt also have three children.

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Be in love with love

Eric Marcoux and Eugene Woodworth, 1955

What do you do when you walk into a restaurant, meet a man, and feel the universe respond? Well, if it’s 1953, and you are BTB reader Eric Marcoux, you spend the next 60 years with him. So far.

Take a moment to read this Oregonian interview with Eric and Eugene. It is charming and sweet, yet reflective of the humility and genuine wit and wisdom that I’ve come to expect from Eric’s correspondence.

Q: What advice would you give to new couples today?

Marcoux: God, that’s just a terror of a question. To know it’s not easy, and leave if it’s toxic. Wait long enough to know whether or not it’s toxic or just a pain. And be in love with love.

Woodworth: The main thing that I come back to is commitment. You have to decide from the very beginning whether it’s going to be a committed relationship for a long period or if it’s just going to be as long as it lasts. Which is what most people do. They fall in love with lust instead of love. And they think that when the sex starts getting bad, that’s the end of the relationship. That’s the beginning of the relationship! That’s when you start working on it.

The Daily Agenda for Sunday, January 6

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Suspect Arrested In Miami “Hairdresser Murder” Case: 1955. Only a day had passed since Miami Beach police were called to an apartment on 82nd Street where William Bishop’s roommates discovered his dead body on the floor of an enclosed porch (see Jan 5). When police arrived, they examined his nude body with his hands tied behind his back, his ankles tied together, and a dish towel and handkerchief fashioned into a gag around his mouth. The Dade County sheriff’s legal-medical advisor told reporters that Bishop probably died from strangulation, but he wouldn’t be able to make a final determination until an autopsy was performed. A separate Associated Press report the next day would reveal that the autopsy showed that “Bishop died of strangulation and that he had been sexually abused.”

If this were Dragnet’s Sgt. Joe Friday briefing reporters on the case, those would have been, in his words, “just the facts, ma’am.” But this murder had taken place against the backdrop of a long-running anti-gay witchhunt (see Aug 3, Aug 11, Aug 12, Aug 13 (twice that day), Aug 14, Aug 26, Aug 31, Sep 1, Sep 2, Sep 7, Sep 15, Sep 19, Oct 6, Oct 20, Nov 12 and Dec 16), and The Miami News was often eager to fan the flames of anti-gay prejudice throughout much of the year. They played this latest incident they way they played all of the other developments: to maximum effect. In yesterday’s report, Bishop was identified as a hairdresser — not just once but four times, including twice in the headlines, just in case anyone missed it. The reporter, Frank Fox, dutifully pointed out that the roommates were also a hairdresser and a florist, and they were “hysterical” — Fox used that word twice — when they called the police. Police allowed Fox a close-up look at the body so he could report, in detail, Bishop’s “silk dressing gown sash” which was used to tie Bishop’s hands together. Fox apparently was also given the run of the apartment. He described the full layout of the U-shaped apartment and “the reading matter about homosexuals” scattered about. Fox did leave it to the homicide detective to say openly what Fox and his Miami News readers already concluded: “It looks to me like a sadistic murder.”

Detective Charles Sapp handcuffs Thomas F. McDonald

William Bishop’s death looked like it was shaping up to being just one more crime that police and the public would refuse to take seriously. Which makes it all the more surprising when the following day, police announced the arrest of “a 21-year-old Korean War veteran” by the name of Thomas Francis McDonald. Miami News reporter Sanford Schnier described him as a veteran of the U.S. Army Signal Corps, a private first class who served “11 months in Korea with the 71st Regiment, 7th Infantry (Hourglass) Division as a switchboard operator (with) several battle stars who, in effect, had little choice but to attack William Bishop. The story went like this:

McDonald, who has a wife and 6-month-old child, related this story: He left home several days ago feeling despondent over an argument with his wife and because of the recent deaths of his mother and father. He checked into the Tuscany Hotel in Hollywood, and came to Miami Beach Tuesday night. In a 74th Street bar he met Bishop. They played shuffleboard and had a few drinks, he said. Bishop invited him to his apartment and he accepted.

When they go there, McDonald stated, Bishop “tried to make some improper advances towards me. I hit him with my first three or four times, and he struck back and got me on the jaw twice. He fell when I hit him again.”

The, he said, he tied him up “Because I figured he might follow me,” and left the scene. He went back to Hollywood, checked out at 7:15 a.m. yesterday and came back to Miami, where he planned to check in.”

Asked by detectives if he knew Bishop was a homosexual, McDonald answered, “I never had any use for them and I still don’t.”

McDonald, 210 pounds and 5 feet, 11 inches tall, said he took Bishop’s gold watch, $5 in case, two shirts and a tan sport jacket, which he was wearing when arrested. McDonald admitted in his statement to Miami Beach police that ho took a ring from Bishop and hocked it later in the day at a Miami pawnshop for $35.

“I swear he was breathing when I left; you got to believe me,” he implored detectives.

That’s how the story ended on January 6: a burly Korean war vet and married father who attacked a silk dressing-gowned hairdresser. It would appear that, in The Miami News’ opinion, the case was more or less closed — except for the small matter of a dead body. The News dropped the story until May, when a judge ruled that McDonald was competent to stand trial and jury selection began. The story then fell back off of the paper’s pages, so I don’t have much information about what happened during the trial until May 24, when the paper’s late edition carried a very brief one-paragraph description of McDonald’s testimony:

Accused Testified in Murder Trial.
Thomas F. McDonald, accused of murdering William B. Bishop, took the stand in his own defense today and reiterated that Bishop was still alive when he left Bishop’s apartment at 235 82nd St., Miami Beach, the night of Jan 5. McDonald, a 21-year-old Korean veteran, told the court that he beat, bound and gagged the 29-year-old hairdresser because he was “acting like a mad dog.”

Later that day, the jury found McDonald guilty of murder, “and recommended mercy, thus saving him from death in the electric chair.” Fortunately, Florida law placed a limit to that mercy: a life sentence was the mandatory minimum. McDonald was formally sentenced to life on May 27.

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The Daily Agenda for Saturday, January 5

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Kinsey’s “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” Released: 1948. The dry, scientific, statistics-laden Sexual Behavior in the Human Male was published by W.B. Saunders, a respected publisher of medical textbooks and journals who had no idea what they were getting into when they agreed to publish this book. Their experience was with a limited customer base where a run of 5,000 copies was considered a huge success. W.B. Saunders ended up publishing a quarter of a million copies during that first year instead.

The only person who wasn’t surprised by the runaway success of what became known simply as “The Kinsey Report” was Alfred Kinsey himself. He and his colleagues had spent the previous nine years interviewing nearly 12,000 people across the country, asking them questions covering more than five hundred details of their intimate, sexual lives. When the book was finally published, America was emerging from the frugality that marked the Great Depression and World War II, full of economic and cultural vitality and itching to settle down in their Levittown houses and start making thousands of babies. The Kinsey Reports quickly entered popular culture along with Tiki-chic, bachelor pads, and a huge post-war baby boom. Sex was breaking out all over, and “Kinsey” became a popular code-word for anything risque. It also introduced millions of Americans to the notion that gay people — and a lot of other people as well — were have gay sex. Now more than sixty years later, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (and its companion volume, 1953’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Female) are still the books that everyone loves — especially those who have never read them. They are also the books that social conservatives love to hate, blaming them for sparking the sexual revolution of the 1960’s. For more information about the book’s impact, you can check out our report, “According To The Kinsey Reports,” which was written on the occasion of the book’s sixtieth anniversary.

“Male Hairdresser” Found Murdered: 1955. Miami’s Miami’s long-running anti-gay witchhunt had been going on for  much of 1954 (see Aug 3, Aug 11, Aug 12, Aug 13 (twice that day), Aug 14, Aug 26, Aug 31, Sep 1, Sep 2, Sep 7, Sep 15, Sep 19, Oct 6, Oct 20, Nov 12 and Dec 16), but it almost seemed as though things might be calming down again for South Florida’s gay community as the new year began. Those hopes were shattered when Miami Beach police were called to an apartment when a resident discovered that his roommate, 29-year-old William B. Bishop, had been murdered. The Miami News’ front page report was very nearly as “hysterical” as the phone call that Bishop’s roommate reportedly made to police when he discovered the body. According to The Miami News:

Bishop’s nude body was trussed with handkerchiefs, a silk dressing gown sash and an electric wire cord, and he had been wounded. The exact cause of his death was unknown hours after one of the nearly hysterical roommates notified police at 8:10 a.m. Beach detectives and sheriff’s office homicide investigators found the body on the terrazzo floor of a jalousied porch in the apartment at 235 82nd St. Bishop shared the living quarters with two friends.

“Edward Hedgepeth, left, and William H. Tower, roommates of slain William B. Bishop, are escorted to a telephone by Officer C.E. Hobson of Miami Beach. The two said they slept undisturbed while Bishop was dying on apartment porch. — Miami Daily News photo by Spencer.

The Miami News didn’t identify Bishop as gay, but it may as well have. Not only was he identified as a “male beautician” in the headline, but his two room mates were also identified by name and professions: another hairdresser and a florist. The florist, William H. Tower, 22, told detectives that he went to bed at 6:30 p.m. the night before while the other roommate, Edward B. Hedgepeth, 27, went to bed at about 11 p.m. Neither of them heard anything unusual overnight. When Tower got up the next morning, he found Bishop on the porch.

Detectives apparently regarded the crime scene as quite a spectacle, and they invited reporters onto the porch to get a closer look at the body. The Miami News happily supplied the details:

Bishop’s hands were tied behind him with a man’s handkerchief and the dressing gown sash, which were twisted together. The wrists and ankles were bound together with the electric extension cord, and a dish towel and another handkerchief were knotted around the face as a gag. … John Berdeaux, sheriff’s homicide investigator, said: “It looks to me like a sadistic murder.”

The police also appeared to have allowed reporters to go through the apartment as well:

A desk in the apartment was littered with reading matter about homosexuals, including the book, “Strange Loves,” by Dr. LaForest Potter. The book was described on the jacket as a study in sexual abnormality.”

Reporters also drew parallels to another unrelated murder which had occurred the summer before of a “Coral Gables schoolboy (who) was found dead in a tree near his home… The youth had been bound with rope to a pole held between forks in a tree.” After noting that that crime was still unsolved (in fact, investigators weren’t even sure whether that death was a murder or suicide), the reporters apparently ran out of anti-gay stereotypes to exploit, and so the article came to an end.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Kay Lahusen: 1930. Her life partner, pioneering lesbian rights advocate Barbara Gittings, was probably more famous, but Kay Lahusen was an equal partner in the couple’s active participation in the early gay rights movement. She had been raised in Cincinnati by her Christian Science grandparents, and she encountered her first crisis over her sexuality while still in high school when she fell in love with another girl and developed what she thought was “the world’s greatest friendship.” But that friendship also stirred feelings of love, desire, and sex, “just like straight people feel. I have to tell you, I had a breakdown over this revelation.” She went to bed and stayed there for two weeks. When her grandparents called a Christian Science practitioner to the house to pray over her, Lahusen decided that she had no choice but to figure out how to pull herself up and deal with the situation head-on. “I just decided that I was right and the world was wong, and that there couldn’t be anything wrong with this kind of love.”

After a difficult breakup with that same girlfriend in college, she moved to Boston to work in the Christian Science Monitor’s reference library, where she observed that “they filed homosexuality under ‘vice’.” In 1961, she read Voyage from Lesbos: the Psychoanalysis of a Female Homosexual by New York psychiatrist Richard Robertiello, she contacted the author and asked where she could learn more about other lesbians. He told her about the Daughters of Bilitis and gave her a copy of the group’s magazine The Ladder. “So I wrote to DOB in New York and who got my letter but Barbara.” Gittings, who had organized the first DOB chapter in the East Cost when she established the New York chapter, invited Lahusen to a DOB meeting. Barbara herself was out of town, but Kay met four others at that small get-together. A short time later, Kay met Barbara at a DOB picnic in Rhode Island. “When I met Barbara at the picnic, I thought she was a very interesting person. I was quite take with her.” That meeting marked the start of a powerful lifelong personal and political partnership

Photo of Lilli Vincenz, by Kay Lahusen, on the January 1966 cover of The Ladder

Together, they established a much more politically active wing of the Daughters of Bilitis, and their strong push for visibility came to epitomize the East Coast approach to gay advocacy. When Barbara began editing The Ladder in 1962, she pushed the magazine into a much bolder direction. She quickly replaced the magazine’s hand-drawn covers with photos of real lesbians, photos which were often supplied by Kay — credited as “Kay Tobin” because, she said, “Lahusen is too hard to pronounce.” By then, Lahusen was becoming “the first gay photojournalist” by photographing an increasing number of gay rights pickets on the East Coast.

Kay Lahusen, walking a picket line in front of Independence Hall in 1969, just a few days after the Stonewall rebellion.

It was those pickets, including at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall (see Jul 4), the White House and Pentagon (see Jul 31), which became a source of growing tension between the East and West Coast branches of the DOB. Lahusen and Gittings, along with other East Coast gay rights activists like Frank Kameny (see May 21) and Randolphe Wicker, believed that a more direct and confrontational approach was needed if anything was truly going to change, and they were increasingly frustrated by the cautious and accommodating approach advocated by West Coast leaders. When the national DOB became paralyzed over how to respond to a police raid on a lesbian bar in Philadelphia, Lahusen and Gittings decided it was time to move on.

After leaving DOB in 1966, they began working with other men and women on the East Coast through a host of other organizations, including the Homophile Action League, the East Coast Homophile Organization (ECHO), the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations (NACHO) and, after Stonewall, the Gay Activist Alliance (GAA). They also played key roles in the drive to get the American Psychiatric Association to drop homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. Kay’s activism continued into the 1980s when, after becoming a realtor, she organized a group of agents to march in New York’s Gay Pride Parade. Kay and Barbara remained together for 46 years, until Barbara’s death from breast cancer in 2007. Key currently lives in an assistance living facility in Pennsylvania.

[Source: Eric Marcus. Making History: The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Equal Rights : 1945-1990 : An Oral History (New York: HarperCollins, 1992).]

Alvin Ailey, Jr.: 1931. It can be said that Alvin Ailey single handedly elevated African-American dance from popular steps to modern art. It’s hard to imagine African-American modern dance without his Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, even though he was always proud of the fact that his dance company was integrated. Ailey combined modern dance with classical styles, bringing together a long, unbroken leg line (“a ballet bottom”) and a dramatically expressive upper torso (“a modern top”). “What I like is the line and technical range that classical ballet gives to the body. But I still want to project to the audience the expressiveness that only modern dance offers, especially for the inner kinds of things,” he once explained. His signature work, Revelations, drew on his memories of his early childhood in Texas, combining elements of blues, spirituals, and gospel music with a thoroughly modern choreography. His 1970 American Ballet Theatre commission, The River, had the ABT’s ballet company employing classical dance styles with the music of Duke Ellington.

Ailey relative openness about his sexuality was the source of continued tensions between him and his mother. When he was dying of AIDS in 1989, he asked his doctor to announce that he had died of a blood disorder to spare his mother the social stigma of dying from AIDS. Considering the many barriers that Ailey smashed to smithereens during the course of his career in dance, his final act stands as a sad anomaly. And yet his work endures. His dance troupe carries on his legacy through performances, commissions and in providing higher education to dance students through The Ailey School.

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

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Identifying your (dwindling) opposition

On NomBlog, the National Organization for Marriage describes a letter issued in opposition to equality as “An extraordinary show of support for true marriage by a wide spectrum of faith communities in Illinois”. But that letter illustrates just how narrow that spectrum has become.

There are a variety of signatories on the bottom, but the logos atop the letter tell the story.

Our denominational opposition in Illinois consists of:

* Catholic Conference of Illinois
* Anglican Church in North America
* The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
* The Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago
* The Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod

That may seem like a “wide spectrum” at first glance, and quite diverse, but when you look closer it reveals how few denominations have signed on to oppose civil marriage in the state. Our opponents are the Catholic hierarchy (lay Catholics support equality), Mormons, Muslims, and two Protestant denominations: the churches that left the Episcopal Church when she became pro-gay, and the smaller of the two major Lutheran churches (the other blesses same-sex unions).

It can no longer be said that the battle over civil marriage is between the gay community and people of faith. Far too many in the religious community have either disengaged or defected to our side.

– TK

Congratulations Tammy

Yesterday history was made when Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis) was sworn in as the first openly gay US Senator.

Of course there have been many many Senators for whom all evidence suggests that they were gay, but Tammy is the first to achieve entrance to that most exclusive of societies on her own terms and without any sense of shame or secrecy, which makes this accomplishment particularly noteworthy.

The Daily Agenda for Friday, January 4

THIS MONTH IN HISTORY:
The Bicycle in the Treatment of Homosexuality: 1892. In the late 1800s, the entire country was swept up in a massive bicycling craze. We tend to think of bicycling today as a hobby or recreation, but in the late 1800s, it was an amazingly practical, efficient, cheap and speedy way of getting around. Before the bike came along, transportation was either by horse (cumbersome and expensive) or by foot (slow). By 1885, over 400 bicycle factories were working non-stop to keep up with demand. That year alone, Americans bought 2 million bikes, one for every 27 people in the country.

Bicycling also had the added benefit of being healthy exercise. And so it should come as no surprise that it would inspire doctors to find novel prescriptions for their patients’ ailments. Dr. Graeme M. Hammond of New York City wrote to the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease about the new  contraption’s ability to calm his patient’s nervous disorders. He presented thirteen cases, which included “one of sexual perversion, and the thirteenth case was one of abnormally developed sexual appetite”:

CASES XII. and XIII. both suffered from abnormal sexual appetites. Case XII. a young man, twenty-four years of age, had observed for the past year a gradually increasing desire for members of his own sex. He had been able to control his appetite so far, but was fearful lest it should finally overcome him and lead him to perpetrate acts which were naturally abhorrent to him. Case XIII. was a man, thirty years of age, whose naturally vigorous sexual appetite had been fed by indulgence, till it seemed as if the gratification of his desires was his only object in life.

I have observed during my twenty years experience among athletes, that physical fatigue is antagonistic to the sexual appetite, and that men who devote their lives to the cultivation of their physical strength are seldom, if ever, immoderate sexually, and during the periods of active training are often abstemious simply from lack of desire. Energy, which, in others might be expended sexually, is in them consumed by hard physical work. It has, therefore, been my custom in those cases, in whom I have considered it advisable to diminish or to abolish the sexual appetite, to prescribe severe and fatiguing exercise in conjunction with suitable medicinal treatment. I have found nothing more serviceable than the bicycle to accomplish this object. It should be used daily, preferably in the afternoon, and the patient should be directed to ride long distances at a rapid rate of speed, not carrying it to such an extent as to produce exhaustion, yet sufficiently so to induce well-marked fatigue.

Both of these patients have repeatedly told me that a hard ride would invariably abolish all sexual desire, even if the appetite was at its strongest just before the ride was taken. Of course, medicinal treatment was administered in both instances; but there can be no doubt that their recovery was hastened and facilitated by the hard physical labor they were subjected to by the use of the bicycle.

Paging NARTH…

[Source: Graeme Hammond. “The bicycle in the treatment of nervous diseases.” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 17, no. 1 ( January 1892): 36-46.]

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Michael Stipe: 1960. Stipe met bandmate Peter Buck at a record store in Athens, Georgia, that Peter managed. “He was a striking-looking guy and he also bought weird records, which not everyone in the store did.” Buck later recalled. They formed R.E.M. with Bill Berry and Mike Mills, and with Stipe as lead singer. The band’s first album, Murmer (1983), found critical success, even though critics couldn’t make out the lyrics due to Stipe’s mumbling. His vocal styling continued on their second album Reckoning (1984), by which time Stipe’s mumbling became fodder for parodies. Stipe answered his critics: “It’s just the way I sing. If I tried to control it, it would be pretty false.”

In 1985, R.E.M. finally began to hit their musical stride when Stipe decided to enunciate more clearly for Fables of the Reconstruction. The clearer singing began to reveal an earnest, albeit nonlinear, writing style in his lyrics. That nonlinearity extends to his personal life as well: he doesn’t consider himself gay. “I don’t,” he reiterated in 2005. “I think there’s a line drawn between gay and queer, and for me, queer describes something that’s more inclusive of the grey areas.” In a 2011 interview, Stipe said that he was “around 80-20” gay, but still prefers to identify as queer. “A lot of younger people have a much more it-is-what-it-is approach to sexuality. The black and white binary approach just does not work. So you find the terms that make you most comfortable.” R.E.M announced their retirement as a band in September 2011.

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?

Satan Was A Breech Birth

This guy claims he was cured of the gay. Yeah, right. When demons fly out of my butt…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iTYbHWGQME4

Illinois Senate Committee Approves Marriage Equality Bill (UPDATED)

There’s been a lot of back-and-forth confusion confusion. First, the Religious Freedom and Marriage Fairness Act, which would grant marriage equality to same-sex couples, was going to come up for a vote today in the Senate Executive Committee. But that looked like it would take too long for the bill to make it to the Senate Floor before the current legislature expires on Wednesday (January 9). So instead, it was decided that it would be attached as an amendment to another bill having to do with car rental agencies that was already on the Senate floor. That way, it could be voted on today. But then, two key supportive Senators were called away from the floor for family emergencies, so that wasn’t going to happen.

And that’s when NOM’s Brian Brown sent out this celebratory email:

We’ve just received word that Illinois Democrats have canceled plans to vote on same-sex marriage this week, unable to secure enough support to guarantee passage. Publicly, they’re saying that it’s just because some of their supporters are out of town, but we are hearing that your pressure is part of the reason legislators don’t want to vote on this issue.

There’s a long way to go, but suddenly same-sex marriage in Illinois isn’t as inevitable as everyone said. …Meanwhile, there’s plenty of work still to be done, and I need your help right now to keep the pressure on.

That pressure, of course, was money. Send him money. Lots of money:

We are calling on all GOP donors to immediately stop funding to the Illinois GOP, and to let the party know that you will be withholding any future donations as long as Pat Brady is head of the party. Instead, I would urge you to take those dollars that you would normally give to the Republican Party, and give them to NOM, or to one of the wonderful pro-family groups in Illinois fighting to defend marriage.

But while Brown was counting his Franklins, the Senate Executive Committee went ahead and approved the original bill by an 8-5 vote, setting up a possible vote next week, assuming the Senate comes back for a special session on Tuesday to take action on the measure.

Meanwhile, the House will be in session next week where it may go ahead and approve the House version of the bill.

Update: After examining the calendar and counting the available votes — several key legislators have already bugged out on vacation on the understanding that the legislative session had, for all practical purposes, ended — Equality Illinois has determined that it will not be possible to pass the marriage equality bill before the new General Assembly meets on January 9:

“We have come so far. Just to be able to witness the historic public debate over the desire of all loving, committed couples to be able to marry in Illinois is a major accomplishment. And with the landmark action by the Senate Executive Committee in favor of the bill, for the first time ever an Illinois legislative body voted to extend the freedom to marry. Never before has the issue gone this far in the Illinois legislature,” said Bernard Cherkasov, CEO of Equality Illinois, the state’s oldest and largest LGBT advocacy organization.

“Our opponents should not believe they have turned the tide against the growing national and Illinois consensus favoring marriage equality. The clock simply ran out, and our legislative supporters ran out of time,” he said.

Equality Illinois believes that the next General Assembly will be more conducive to enacting marriage equality because that Assembly will include Democratic supermajorities in both houses.

Maggie’s column retires

For seventeen years, Maggie Gallagher has written a bi-weekly column hosted by Universal Uclick on matters of family from a conservative, mostly Catholic perspective. Yesterday was her last.

Gallagher has been a nationally syndicated columnist for over 17 years; Universal Uclick launched her first column in June of 1995. She began publishing a column twice a week, but for the last three years has written a column once a week. Maggie is particularly known for writing about life, sex, babies, marriage, and culture–culture war topics but with a civility and grace that seeks to explain, not denounce.

And, until recently, that’s a fair assessment. When I began blogging at BTB, I understood Maggie to be a gracious person motivated by a firm belief that a culture based on the teachings of her church was to the advantage of all. There were, and are, haters aplenty – but Maggie was not someone I considered in that category.

But she was writing at that time for the team that appeared to be winning. All the points on the scoreboard were on her side and its not so hard to be magnanimous to the folks you just stomped all over.

But political will has shifted. Equality is now the presumed eventual winner. It’s harder to be nice.

And it’s also tough to become the face of the enemy. To be considered Hater-in-Chief when you do not see yourself in those terms at all. Maggie went into the marriage battle believing that she was on good terms with gay people and simply had the opposite side in a civil debate over how best marriage should be constructed. She found herself the most hated woman since Anita Bryant.

And, I believe it got to her. Her speeches picked up tones of bitterness and anger. And as the issue became increasingly personal, Maggie’s activism shifted from supporting the existing exclusions in marriage to opposing gay rights generally and, at times, gay people. She became what her critics said she was.

And that is sad. Not only for her but for us.

As the nation moves on the path to fuller inclusion, we are all best served by opposition that is driven by principle rather than animated by animus. Our arguments are best honed on the rebuttal of those who seek not our destruction but simply want what is best for the nation.

And that is what Maggie was at one important point on our journey.

Yes the end of Maggie’s column is another victory for equality. It is one more indication that the war is won and now we are just fighting the battles that lead to terms of peace.

But it is also – to me anyway – a sad thing. I think our culture was strengthened by her firm voice and it was, indeed, the presentation of our opponents’ best arguments that allowed us this victory. She stated her best case, and spoke with courage and passion, but ultimately the nation heard her clearly and rejected her view.

Maggie will continue writing and speaking. But is is a shadow of her confident period. Now there is defeat in her eyes and desperation in her encouragement. Her time has passed and her voice has been quieted.