Box Turtle Bulletin

Brazil’s largest state gets marriage equality

In May 2011, Brazil’s Supreme Court determined that the nation’s constitution guaranteed equal rights for Brazilian gay couples. However, they stopped short of marriage, opting for a civil unions structure instead.

In June 2011, a judge in Sao Paulo State, the nation’s largest and wealthies state, ruled that a civil union could be converted into marriage with judicial approval. Since that time, two Brazilian states, Alagoas and Bahia, have allowed couples to convert to marriage without judicial approval.

Now the State of Sao Paulo has changed it’s procedural rules, eliminating the two-step process altogether. (Folha de S.Paulo translated)

The new standard was published in the Electronic Journal of Justice and enters into force in 60 days.

With the measure, the gay couple no longer need to register before ordering stable marriage. Now, just as the couple go to the court and ask the wedding registry.

Also no longer need to go to court to ask for marriage or conversion of a stable union.

Ugandan Seventh-Day Adventist leader disputes support for Anti-Homosexuality Bill

Seventh Day Adventist pastor Blasious Ruguri

Earlier this week the Ugandan government owned newspaper, New Vision, reported that Pastor Blasious Ruguri, the Seventh-day Adventist church president in East and Central Africa, said the church supports the Anti-Homosexuality “Kill the Gays” Bill. Ruguri is now disputing that report. (Adventist News)

The newspaper article suggests that Pastor Blasius Ruguri fully supports proposed legislation before the Ugandan Parliament that may include incarcerating and even executing people for same sex intimate contact.

In response to those reports, pastor Ruguri today said, “It is unfortunate that the media took the liberty to extend my statements to suggest what I did not say or imply. I have never seen that bill. Mine was a general statement to disapprove of homosexual practice and behavior. Our church is a ministry of mercy, and as a minister in the Seventh-day Adventist Church I cannot condemn homosexuals to death or to hell.”

The Seventh-day Adventist Church subscribes to the biblical teaching that the practice of homosexuality is condemned by God and is forbidden, church officials said. At the same time, the church is strongly opposed to acts of violence, hatred or discrimination against a person because of his or her sexual orientation.

The Daily Agenda for Sunday, December 23

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Wild Bill Dannemeyer’s Op-Ed on Gays in the Military: 1991. It’s been a year and a day since President Barack Obama signed the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Repeal Act into law. In 1991, the debate was well underway over whether the Defense Department should rescind its policy barring gays in the military. In the pre-DADT era, the ban was a matter of DoD policy, not the law. Conservatives then, as now, wanted to keep the ban in place, and few were more hard core about it — or more obnoxious — than Rep. William Dannemeyer (R-CA). On December 23, 1991, he was true to form in his op-ed lambasting gay people with his usual class:

A very poor joke asks: What is meaner than a pit bull with AIDS? The guy who gave the dog AIDS, of course. This could be the fightingest son-of-a-gun in the whole Army. But should he be?

I have seen how aggressive the lunatics of ACT-UP can be-rioting in the streets, smashing windows, fighting with anyone in disagreement-and have often thought how effective they might be on the front lines of combat. But does this prowess and compunction for destruction automatically certify the few and the proud?

…Many people still believe that homosexual sodomy is a perverse behavior, that someone choosing to do so isn’t playing with a full deck. Survey after survey of military personnel supports this belief. …For homosexuals to blame others for reacting adversely to their chosen lifestyle is absurd. The notion of punishing “homophobes” (the label applied to people who find homosexual sodomy repugnant) in the military as perverts rather than those persons who define their very existence by a sex act is itself perverse…

Those were the arguments against gays in the military in the early 1990s. When Bill Clinton ran for President, he promised to overturn the ban. But as soon as he was sworn into office, he ran into a buzz saw of opposition led by fellow Democratic Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia. In 1993, Congress shifted the ban from administrative policy to legal imperative with the passage of the Defense Authorization Bill, which included the codification of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” into law. According to Servicemembers United, 14,346 soldiers, sailors and airmen/women would be discharged under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” over the next eighteen years.

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

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

The Daily Agenda for Saturday, December 22

TODAY IN HISTORY:
President Obama Signs DADT Repeal Into Law: 2010. It all came down to the wire during the closing days of the 111th Congress. If it hadn’t been for the heroic efforts of Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) when all hope for DADT’s repeal appeared to be dead, President Barack Obama never would have been able to place his signature on the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act of 2010. But sign it he did, and that act kicked off a nine month process to implementDADT’s repeal. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell officially came to an end on September 20. Since then, DADT’s end has been largely considered a non-event within the military. Even Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos, who had been on record as opposing DADT’s repeal, now says he is “very pleased with how it has gone.”

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

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

A very very funny comment by NOM

Over on NOMblog, the page where the National Organization for Marriage (but not yours) reports every moment the anti-gay industry has a tiny temporary advance and rants on with the same tired old objections to reality, they are apoplectic that Newt Gingrich stuck his finger in the air to see which way the wind was blowing and said, “hot damn, that’s a gale, I’d better get on the pro-gay marriage train and fast!”. But amid the shock and horror of Newt, Newt, abandoning them, was this gem:

By an overwhelming 60% margin (according to a national survey conducted by Gingrich’s own pollster, Kellyanne Conway), the American people continue to believe that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.

Ahem… perhaps Gingrich knows better than to believe Conway’s polling precisely because she’s his own pollster.

If Only the Pope Would Listen to Himself

This, ironically, is the Pope trying to make a point about homosexuality:

People dispute the idea that they have a nature, given to them by their bodily identity, that serves as a defining element of the human being. They deny their nature and decide that it is not something previously given to them, but that they make it for themselves. The manipulation of nature, which we deplore today where our environment is concerned, now becomes man’s fundamental choice where he himself is concerned. When freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God.

But I was an adolescent growing up in a conservative Catholic home, and that’s when I was disputing the idea that I have a nature, hoping instead that my sexuality was a fundamental choice I could make. Finally in the 80s I accepted I was gay and stopped stripping myself of dignity by trying to live a lie in discord with my nature.

The Pope thinks he’s arguing against homosexuality, when in fact he’s explaining why ex-gay therapy is a moral shame.

Pope Benedict XVI: Merry Christmas, and Gays Cause Families To “Vanish”

Pope Benedict XVI used the occasion of an address to the Curia to wish them Merry Christmas and gays!

“There is no denying the crisis that threatens it to its foundations – especially in the Western world,” the pope said, adding it had to be protected because it is “the authentic setting in which to hand on the blueprint of human existence”.

The 85-year-old pope, speaking in the frescoed Clementine Hall of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace, said the family was being threatened by “a false understanding of freedom” and a repudiation of life-long commitment in heterosexual marriage.

“When such commitment is repudiated, the key figures of human existence likewise vanish: father, mother, child – essential elements of the experience of being human are lost,” the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholic said.

The pope approvingly cited a paper — Reuters calls it a “study” — by France’s chief rabbi Gilles Bernheim:

Bernheim, also a philosopher, argues that homosexual rights groups “will use gay marriage as a Trojan Horse” in a wider campaign to “deny sexual identity and erase sexual differences” and “undermine the heterosexual fundamentals of our society”.

His study, “Gay Marriage, Parenthood and Adoption: What We Often Forget To Say”, argues that plans to legalize gay marriage are being made for “the exclusive profit of a tiny minority” and are often supported because of political correctness.

The Daily Agenda for 13.0.0.0.0, 4 Ahau, 3 Kankin, Ninth Lord

Today’s date in Mayan. (Glyph generated here.)

With yesterday being 12 b’ak’tuns, 19 k’atuns, 19 tuns, 17 uinals, and 19 k’in (or days)  — written as 12.19.19.17.19 — in the Mayan Long Count, some say that the world as we had known it came to an end last night at approximately midnight Guatemalan/Yucatan time. Others say baloney — it’s just another b’ak’tun. Get a grip.

The Mayans actually used four independent calendars for their reckoning of days; three of them were cyclical. The first cyclical calendar was the 365-day roughly solar calendar known as the Haab’, which, when combined with another cyclical 260 day calendar known as the Tzolkin, resulted in the longer cycle making up a 52-Haab’ calendar round. After completing a calendar round, you simply started over again. The Haab’ and Tzolkin were the everyday workhorse calendars, and they are still used in parts of the Guatemalan highlands today. The third cyclical calendar, called the Lords of the Night, is similar to our days of the week. There are nine Lords of the Night.

But those calendars aren’t what’s gotten everyone’s attention. It’s the linear calendar, known as the Long Count, that everybody is excited about. Unlike the cyclical calendars, the Long Count was a very precise way of expressing dates far into the past or future, and it marked the number of days since the start of the Fourth World. (The first three worlds were mistakes; the gods finally got it right on the fourth try.) It is based on a modified base-20 scheme, where all the units are in cycles of 20 except for uinals, of which there are only 18. A long count was worked out this way: there are 20 days in a uinal, 18 uinals in a tun, 20 tuns in a k’atun, and 20 k’atuns in a b’aktun.

A complete representation of the date was written as the Long Count, followed by the Tzolkin Date, then the Haab’ date, then the Lord of the Night. Which makes today’s date, when written in full: 13.0.0.0.0, 4 Ahau, 3 Kankin, Ninth Lord.

What makes the Mayan’s Long Count so remarkable is that it was also extendable. Once we complete 20 b’ak’tuns — that will be on Friday, October 13, 4772 — we will then start a new piktun by adding another set of digits from 1 to 20 to the front. (I guess the zero is already there; it’s just implied and therefore never written.) And there are higher orders waiting in the wings after that: kalabtuns, k’inchiltuns, alautuns… you get the picture. We can go on literally forever. All of this makes the Mayan Long Count among the most rational calendars ever created. And that coherence was made moreso by the fact that, unlike our calendar, they used zeros as part of their dating scheme.

So why did everyone get all excited over the rollover to 13.0.0.0.0? Well, according to the Mayan creation myths recounted in the Popol Vuh, the third world ended when the prior long count reached 13.0.0.0.0. People saw that and assumed that completing 13 b’aktuns was pretty important — which it was, historically. But connecting it to a prediction that the fourth world would also end after another 13 b’aktun was a stretch the Mayans apparently never made. Some inscriptions anticipate dates far beyond our own time.

Besides, these are the same people who failed to predict the demise of their own civilization somewhere between the 8th and 9th centuries — or at about 9.16.0.0.0 or so.

So contrary to popular belief, the Mayans didn’t predict the literal end of the world at the end of this b’ak’tun. They only predicted that the 14th b’ak’tun would follow the 13th, in the same way our calendar accurately predicted that the third millennium would follow the second. And just as we partied like 1999 on the last day of 1999, the Mayans threw elaborate parties whenever they crossed a major cycle on their calendar. Last night would have been the biggest party in about 394 years (144,000 days to be exact).

So with this being an open thread, what are your new b’ak’tun resolutions?

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Time Magazine’s “Opportunistic Diseases”: 1981. Nearly seven months had passed since the CDC had issued its first notice of a puzzling new condition that was appearing in gay men (see Jun 5). A month after the CDC raised the alarm, the New York Times picked up the story (see Jul 3). But beyond that, the news was slow to spread outside of gay publications. In fact, the media seemed to go out of its way to keep from looking at AIDS. Randy Shilts described the problem in And the Band Played On:

The difference, (the CDC’s James W.) Curran knew, was media attention. Once Toxic Shock Syndrome hit the front pages the heat was on to find the answer. Within months of the first MMWR report, the task force had discovered the link between tampons and the malady. Back in 1976, the newspapers couldn’t print enough pictures of flag-draped coffins of dead American Legionnaires. However the stories just weren’t coming on the gay syndrome. The New York Times had written only two stories on the epidemic, setting the tone for noncoverage nationally. Time and Newsweek were running their first major stories on the epidemic now, in late December 1981. There was only one reason for the lack of media interest, and everybody on the (CDC’s) task force knew it: the victims were homosexuals. Editors were killing pieces, reporters told Curran, because they didn’t want stories about gays and all those distasteful sexual habits littering their newspapers.

The December 21 edition of Time, which featured Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi on the cover, placed the article titled “Opportunistic Diseases” deep inside. The article provided little context, information, or hope. Truth be told, there was little to give of any of those thus far. No one knew what caused it, nor did they even know what to call it. Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome wouldn’t get its name until July 1982. Time, instead, focused on the prevailing image of gays as diseased, while simultaneously expressing surprise that lesbians weren’t coming down with the strange new infections. Of the speculations about the disease, Time wrote:

One possible culprit in the syndrome is cytomegalovirus, which is known to weaken immune defenses and can be transmitted in semen more than a year after infection. In a recent study, traces of CMV were found in 94% of homosexual men, as opposed to 54% of heterosexual men. U.C.L.A.’s Dr. Michael Gottlieb believes that CMV does contribute to the immune deficiency, but, he points out, both the virus and homosexuality “have been around for thousands of years.” Thus, he concludes, “there is a piece of the puzzle missing.”

The missing link could be “poppers,” drugs like amyl nitrate and butyl nitrate, which are said to enhance orgasm. More than 85% of the CDC patients admitted to inhaling them. Another possible explanation is the so-called immunologic overload theory, says San Francisco’s Dr. Robert Bolan. Homosexuals with many sexual partners often contract numerous venereal diseases, intestinal disruptions (gay bowel syndrome), mononucleosis and other infections, explains Bolan. “This constant, chronic stimulation to their immune system may eventually cause the system to collapse.”

All of those theories would soon be proven wrong, although some of them would continue to linger among the conspiratorially-minded AIDS deniers who insist, against all evidence to the contrary, that the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) doesn’t cause AIDS. It’s been said that there is no such thing as bad publicity. Time proved that aphorism wrong.

Kirk Murphy, in 2003

“The darkness keeps calling and I must go”: 2003. With those words written on a suicide note, Kirk Andrew Murphy ended his life in a New Delhi apartment. “”I’ll never forget this as long as I live,” said Frank, his supervisor back in Phoenix, Arizona. He was the first outside of India to receive the news. “I got a phone call from the account manager who reported to me. It was midnight or one o’clock in the morning. I was totally shook up.” Frank contacted Kirk’s sister, Maris, in New York, and together they went to India for the funeral.

What happened seemed utterly senseless to Maris, but seven years later she would learn something that would suddenly make so many things about her brother click. That’s when she learned that in 1970, when Kirk was just about to turn five years old and Maris herself was just an infant, their mother took Kirk to see a specialist at UCLA’s Gender Identity Clinic after a well-known researcher appeared on television to warn parents that gender-variant children would grow up to be homosexual. According to that researcher, UCLA had a new program, paid for with federal grants, to prevent homosexuality in children. Kirk’s mother saw that program and made an appointment. Kirk came under the care of a young grad student by the name of George Rekers, who worked with Kirk for about nine months before pronouncing him “cured.” Rekers went on to build a career on Kirk’s case, which Rekers mentioned in nearly twenty journal articles, chapters, and books. As late as 2009, referring to Kirk as “Craig,” Rekers wrote:

Follow-up psychological evaluations three years after treatment indicates that Craig’s gender behaviors became normalized. An independent clinical psychologist evaluated Craig and found that post-treatment he had a normal male identity. Using intrasubject replication designs, this published case was the first experimentally demonstrated reversal of a cross-gender identity with psychological treatment, and the journal article on this case was among the top 12 cited articles in clinical psychology in the 1970s

Kirk, at the age of 4 years and 6 months, just a few months before entering treatment at UCLA’s Feminine Boy Project (Photo courtesy of the Murphy family)

Nothing could be further from the truth. Well, it is true that Rekers’s initial case report did become one of the most widely cited articles in the 1970s. But to say that Kirk had “become normalized” according to Rekers’s definition turned out to be misleading, to put it extremely mildly. Rekers’s went on to become an important anti-gay activist. He co-founded the Family Research Council in 1983 and served as its first chairman and CEO. He also became an important figure in the ex-gay movement, serving on the Scientific Advisory Committee and the Board of Directors for the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). All that came to an end in 2009 when Penn Bullock and Brandon K. Thorp, two from the alternative newsweekly Miami New Times, photographed Rekers at Miami International Airport as he returned from a European vacation in the company of a handsome male escort.

Last year, BTB was privileged to bring you the real story of Rekers’s most famous case history. In our award-winning investigation, What Are Little Boys Made Of?, we interviewed Kirk’s family, friends and associates, and we revealed the horrible treatment that Kirk and his brother went through while under UCLA’s care, and we learned of its terrible aftermath. We also investigated the state of psychology in 1970 and its evolution in the decades since, we looked into the claims that Kirk received “independent” follow-up evaluations indicating that he was healthy and straight, and we tried to get to the bottom of who exactly was in charge of Kirk’s treatment at the hands of that inexperienced grad student.

You can find all of that information here, along with statements from Kirk’s brother and sister, eulogies from family and friends, links to original published reports about Kirk’s case and the controversy it generated among behavioral therapists, and more information on the ex-gay movement and attempts to change sexual orientation.

If Kirk were alive today, he would be 47. He is still missed by his mother, sister, brother, and everyone who knew him.

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?

Newt Gingrich Starts To Evolve

Republican Former House Speaker and GOP presidential candidate New Gingrich took time out from writing a book of historical fiction (can he really tell the difference?) to discuss with HuffPo’s about what he thinks went wrong in the 2012 Presidential election. Buried deep into the article is this nugget:

On gay marriage, meanwhile, Gingrich argued that Republicans could no longer close their eyes to the course of public opinion. While he continued to profess a belief that marriage is defined as being between a man and a woman, he suggested that the party (and he himself) could accept a distinction between a “marriage in a church from a legal document issued by the state” — the latter being acceptable.

“I think that this will be much more difficult than immigration for conservatism to come to grips with,” he said, noting that the debate’s dynamics had changed after state referenda began resulting in the legalization of same-sex marriage. “It is in every family. It is in every community. The momentum is clearly now in the direction in finding some way to … accommodate and deal with reality. And the reality is going to be that in a number of American states — and it will be more after 2014 — gay relationships will be legal, period.”

Stepping back from the political, Gingrich noted that he has a personal stake in the gay marriage debate. His half-sister works at the Human Rights Campaign. He has gay friends who’ve gotten married in Iowa. The man who once compared same-sex marriage to paganism is now worried that the Republican Party could find itself trapped in a bygone era on the matter.

There are limits to Gingrich’s evolution his grip on reality — he thinks that either he or Texas Gov. Rick “Oops” Perry would have done better against Obama than Romney. But even with his tenuous hold on reality he acknowledges of “reality” of legal same-sex marriages.

One thing I find revealing is this:

“I didn’t think that was inevitable 10 or 15 years ago, when we passed the Defense of Marriage Act,” he said. “It didn’t seem at the time to be anything like as big a wave of change as we are now seeing.”

DOMA was passed on the premise that without it, same-sex marriage would sweep the nation, which is why it had to be passed right now.  Today he admits that he didn’t think it was inevitable after all. It just goes to show how truly cynical the law really is.

Marriage is Winning

It’s been a bad year for the National Organization for Marriage. And yet they do need money do need to convince their supporters the battle is not lost. Allow me to share with you their year-end message, and also to insert my own little commentary.

NOM says:

Marriage is winning . . .

. . . with a marriage amendment passed in North Carolina and another on its way in Indiana;

This is the year NOM could no longer say same-sex marriage is rejected every time it’s put before the voters. This is the year that leaves us with a 4-state winning streak.

. . . with outspoken support from each of the leading GOP Presidential candidates, and with a strong statement in the Republican Party platform;

This is the year a presidential candidate endorsed same-sex marriage. Wait — it’s the year the winning presidential candidate endorsed same-sex marriage

. . . with five state Senators in New York who lost their jobs after betraying their constituents by legalizing gay marriage, despite massive financial support from Governor Andrew Cuomo, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the gay marriage lobby;

This is the year NOM failed to repeal marriage equality in New York and failed to gain the seats needed to do it next year.

. . . with corporations put on notice by the massive support behind NOM’s Dump Starbucks campaign and the outpouring of encouragement on August 1st, Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day;

This is the year NOM got supporters to fast for a just cause, like Gandhi. Wait, sorry, it’s the year NOM persuaded them to pig out on saturated fat. It’s also the year Starbuck’s stock price was higher at the beginning of the year than at the end — good work, NOM! And it’s the year a vast number of corporations endorsed same-sex marriage (despite being “put on notice”).

. . . with new, powerful, and compelling research by scholars like Mark Regnerus at the University of Texas, whose ground-breaking “New Family Structures Study” showed the major differences between young adults raised by same-sex parents and those raised by a married mom and dad;

This is the year NOM exposed their own intellectual and scientific vacuity by telling the world its very best bestest evidence against same-sex parenting is a study that, as it turns out, did not report on same-sex parenting.

. . . and with the United States Supreme Court deciding to hear appeals of cases on both the Proposition 8 and the Federal Defense of Marriage Act.

This is the year a 16-year-old law banning federal recognition of same-sex marriage creaked so loudly in the political and judicial windstorm that the Supreme Court realized it must decide whether to leave the law standing at all.

Each of NOM’s wins is actually a sad little loss. Aw. But they’re right about one thing, even if they don’t realize it: As of December, 2012, marriage is winning.

Trangender Activist and Pentecostal Pastor Spar On Ugandan TV

Pepe Julian Onziema, a transgender advocate with Sexual Minorities Uganda, appeared on a talk show on Uganda’s NBS television with anti-gay pentecostal pastor Martin Ssempa, who has been one of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill’s most outspoken supporters. I thought it was encouraging to see the host, reacting to Ssempa’s referring to Pepe using a female pronoun, interject strongly, “Mister Onziema!” But as you can see, that hardly deterred Ssempa from producing a banana to “explain” homosexuality.

The language is mostly in English, although they switch to Luganda from time to time. But you can certainly get more than the drift. At one point, Ssempa has gotten himself so riled up that it looks like he was about to leap out of his chair. The host was able to impose a momentary semblance of order so that this exchange could take place.

Host: Pepe, how do you want society to perceive you?

Pepe: “As a human being. As a person who is part of society…

Host: But society has rejected you.

Pepe: It has not rejected me. It is the propaganda of the likes of Ssempa. My family loves me as I am.

Ssempa quickly resumed interrupting and shouting over Onziema every time he tried to speak. But Onziema got a very good dig in at the host: “I cannot believe you put me on the show with a hooligan.”

As you can see, Ssempa remains bizarrely obsessed with gay sex. In January, 2010, he displayed gay S&M porn at a press conference while calling for the passage of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill. He did the same thing again the following month at a news conference in his church. His antics when viral later that summer with re-mixes of Ssempa’s “Eat Da Poo-Poo” talks.

Ssempa is believed to be linked to the now-defunct Rolling Stone tabloid (no relation to the U.S. publication by the same name), which launched an infamous 2010 “Hang Them!” vigilante campaign featuring LGBT advocate David Kato on the front cover. Kato, Onziema, and Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera sued Rolling Stone, and in a landmark ruling won an injunction barring the tabloid from any further outing campaigns. But Kato was brutally murdered just a few weeks later. Last month, was convicted by a Kampala court as part of the conspiracy to accuse a rival pastor of homosexuality.

The Daily Agenda for Thursday, December 20

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Frank Kameny Fired From Government Job for Being Gay: 1957. Frank Kameny was a World War II veteran and Harvard-trained astronomer working for the Army Map Service. In Eric Marcus’s compendium of oral histories, Making History, Kameny described the events that led him to a lifetime of LGBT advocacy:

When I was on assignment in Hawaii in November or December of 1957, I got a call from my supervisor in Washington, D.C., to come back at once. I told him that whatever the problem, it could wait a few days, and I returned to Washington at the end of the week. As soon as I got back, I was called in by some two-bit Civil Service Commission investigator and told, “We have information that leads us to believe that you are a homosexual. Do you have any comment?” I said, “What’s the information?” They answered, “We can’t tell you.” I said, well, then I can’t give you an answer. You don’t deserve an answer. and in any case, this is none of your business.” I was not open about being gay at that time — no one was, not in 1957. But I was certainly leading a social life. I went to the gay bars many, many evenings. I’ve never been a covert kind of a person, and I wasn’t about to be one simply because I was working for the government. I’ve never been one to function on the basis that Big Brother may be looking over my shoulder.

So they called me in, and ultimately it resulted in my termination. They did it the way the government does anything: They issued a letter. They said they were dismissing me for homosexuality. I was in shock.

…Keep in mind I had been training all of my life for a scientific career, for this kind of occupation. I was not at all familiar with the job market. When I was thrown out, I had nowhere to go. Perhaps if this had happened five or ten years later, I would have had a professional reputation to fall back on, but in this case I didn’t. For a long time I applied for jobs in astronomy, but there was nothing. Ultimately, in 1959, I got a job doing something in physics. My bachelor’s degree is in physics, in the area of optics.

But meanwhile, I had decided that my dismissal amounted to a declaration of war against me by my government. First, I don’t grant me government the right to declare war on me. And second, I tend not to lose my wars.

Kameny launched a string of appeals, first through the Civil Service commission itself, then through the courts. He took his appeals all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court — writing his own brief (which is available here) declaring the discrimination he experienced “a stench in the nostrils of decent people, an offense against morality, an abandonment of reason, an affront to human dignity, an improper restraint upon proper freedom and liberty, a disgrace to any civilized society, and a violation of all that this nation stands for.” The Supreme Court denied his petition in 1961.

Kameny went on to co-found the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., which in 1963 launched a long campaign to overturn sodomy laws. He participated in the very first picket line in front of the White House on April 17, 1965. He was also an instrumental player in the fight to remove homosexuality from the American Psychiatric Association’s list of mental disorders. In 1971, he became the first openly gay candidate for the U.S. Congress when he ran for D.C’s non-voting Congressional delegate. In 1975, the U.S. Civil Service Commission notified him that they had changed their policies and were now allowing gay people to work in federal jobs (see Jul 3). In 2009, the U.S. government officially repudiated Kameny’s firing when John Berry, the openly gay Director of the Office of Personnel Management, delivered a formal apology during a special OPM ceremony in his honor. Upon receiving the apology, Kameny tearfully replied, “Apology accepted.” He passed away in 2011 at the age of 86.

Vermont Supreme Court Rules State Must Recognize Same-Sex Unions: 1999. In a unanimous decision, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that the state must provide the same benefits, protections and obligations to same-sex couples as it does to heterosexual couples. The Supreme Court left it up to the legislature to decide how it would end the discrimination, either through marriage or through civil unions. Most state political leaders opted for the latter. State Attorney General William Sorrell, predicted, “It would likely be a civilly sanctioned relationship that would, for all intents and purposes, have the benefits and protections a traditionally married couple would have but wouldn’t be called a marital relationship. They wouldn’t be called spouses, they’d be called domestic partners, and for a number of people, that makes an enormous difference.” Gov. Howard Dean concurred, saying that same-sex marriage “makes me uncomfortable, the same as anybody else.” Beth Robinson, the lawyer for the winning plaintiffs, dismissed that idea and pressed for full marriage. “The Legislature will come to understand that as a practical matter, you can’t call it something different and have it be truly equal.”

It would take another decade before the Legislature would come to that understanding, opting instead to go for civil unions, which Gov. Dean signed into law 0n April 26, 2000. It took effect on July 1, 2000. In 2009, the Legislature revisited the issue again and passed a same-sex marriage bill with bipartisan support, only to see it vetoed by Gov. Jim Douglas (R). The legislature then overturned the governor’s veto, and same-sex marriages finally became available in the Green Mountain State on September 1, 2009.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Elsie de Wolfe: 1865. She was the legendary interior designer who finally put gloomy victorian styles out of its misery. And for that, she is hailed as America’s first decorator and her designs, nearly a century later, are still just as fresh today as they were bold in at the turn of the last century. She began her creative life as an actress in the 1890s, but her appearances were appreciated more for her stylish clothes than her performing abilities.

At about 1887, she began what was called “A Boston marriage” with Elisabeth “Bessie” Marbury — a New York socialite, literary agent, and business manager with such illustrious clients as Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, and Sarah Bernhardt. The two bought and restored Villa Trianon in Versailles, France, where de Wolfe became enamored with the light colors and brightly-lit rooms that defined French style. She then drew on those influences as she set about redecorating Marbury’s New York home by throwing out all of that dark Victorian furnishings and cluttering bric-a-brac, and people took notice. When a group of wealthy women formed the exclusive Colony Club, de Wolfe was tapped to design the clubhouse’s interiors. The Colony opened in 1907 and with it, de Wolfe’s reputation was set.

A photo from A House In Good Taste, 1913.

Instead of the dark paneled rooms and heavy atmosphere common with men’s clubs, The Colony featured light draperies, pale walls, wicker furniture, chintz — she became known as “the Chintz Lady” — and light, lots of natural light. Her design practice exploded overnight, with commissions for private houses, clubs, opera boxes, and a dorm at Barnard College. Her 1913 book, The House in Good Taste, became an instant classic which still offers timeless advice today. As she explained, “I opened the doors and windows of American and let the air and sunshine in.” That same year, her design business took up an entire floor of offices on Fifth Avenue. In 1915, she was commissioned to design a brand new townhouse for Henry Clay Frick, then the wealthiest man in America. That commission alone made her a very rich woman.

De Wolfe was an iconoclast in many ways. She single-handedly turned the design profession from a “man’s world” into one in which women could excel. She embroidered her own pillows with the motto, “Never complain, never explain.” At her home in France, she had a dog cemetery where each headstone carried the epitaph, “The one I loved the best.” And speaking of France, When World War I came along, she broke from all expectations by volunteering to become a nurse — where she was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Legion of Honour for her work with mustard gas victims. In 1926, she scandalized French society with her grand entrance to a society ball dressed as a Moulin Rouge dancer while turning handsprings — at the age of 61 — her many years of practicing yoga did well for her. Her marriage that same year to the diplomat Sir Charles Mendl was also a surprise because, as The New York Times dryly observed, “When in New York she makes her home with Miss Elizabeth [sic] Marbury at 13 Sutton Place.” Her marriage now made her Lady Mendl, immortalized in the Cole Porter lyric:

When you hear that Lady Mendl, standing up
Now turns a handspring landing up-
On her toes
Anything goes!

When World War II broke out, Mendl and de Wolfe moved to Hollywood. After the war, they returned to Villa Trianon where de Wolfe died in 1950.

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Robert Bork (1927-2012)

“Like other predispositions, toward alcoholism, for example, the urge to homosexual conduct can often be resisted, and a significant number of homosexuals respond to therapy that enables them to live contentedly as heterosexuals. The willingness to resist or seek therapy will certainly be affected by the degree of stigma attached to the behavior in question. If all traces of taint are removed, if homosexuality is made to seem completely normal, a matter of indifference to anyone else or to society, young men and women uncertain of their sexuality will be that much more likely to be drawn into a homosexual life.

“…Homosexuality, moreover, is an addictive disorder…The term “gay” makes homosexuality sound innocuous, if not appealing, but it hides the terrible reality that so many homosexuals experience.”

— Robert Bork, Slouching Towards Gomorrah, 1996.

He died today. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan thought that he would make a splendid Supreme Court justice. The Senate disagreed, and Justice Anthony Kennedy was named to the Court instead.

The Daily Agenda for Wednesday, December 19

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Michelangelo Signorile: 1960. After graduating with a degree in journalism at at Syracuse University, the Brooklyn native returned to New York where he got his first job at a public relations firm which specialized in placing stories about their entertainment clients in gossip columns. That naturally meant that he was collecting and trading in gossip, which is where he noticed the double standard in how the media glamorized the heterosexuality of celebrities while maintaining a veil of silence around anything that might be remotely gay. But it wasn’t until his friends began dying in the early years of the AIDS crisis that he began to draw a line from gay invisibility to the ease with which media and public officials could turn a blind eye on what was happening. He became an activist in 1988 when he joined ACT UP, which led to his arrest during a speech by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later to become Pope Benedict XVI) who was the Vatican’s point man on Catholic orthodoxy and the author of papers against homosexuality and against condom use to prevent the spread of AIDS. Signorile had gone simply to watch the protesters, but as he heard the Cardinal speak, he thought of the homophobia he had experienced growing up in the church, and he couldn’t contain himself. As he wrote later in Queer In America: Sex, The Media, and the Closets of Power:

Suddenly, I jumped up on one of the marble platforms, and looking down, I addressed the entire congregation in the loudest voice I could. My voice rang out as if it were amplified. I pointed at Ratzinger and shouted, “He is no man of God!” The shocked faces of the assembled Catholics turned to the back of the room to look at me as I continued: “He is no man of God—he is the devil!'”

So yeah, he was arrested, and another gay rights activist was born.

Signorile is considered the pioneer of the controversial act of outing public figures. He was the co-founding editor of OutWeek, where, in a weekly column called “Gossip Watch,” a watch column of the city’s gossip columns, he railed against the media’s double standard on how they treated gay and straight public figures, and he argued that this double standard drove the gay community to invisibility in the midst of an growing health catastrophe. He outed Hollywood producer David Geffen, who was promoting Guns ‘N’ Roses and comedian Andrew Dice Clay, two acts which were attacked for crude anti-gay lyrics and “jokes” about the AIDS crisis. He also outed gossup columnist Liz Smith and publishing tycoon Malcolm Forbes. It was actually Time magazine which coined the term “outing”, but Signorile always considered the term itself biased. He preferred to call what he did “reporting,” and insisted that it was no different from the same kind of reporting that media outlets routinely do with straight people.

Signorile later worked at the Advocate and Out magazines, and he also wrote columns for Gay.com. In 2000 he began working in internet radio, and that eventually led to the gig he has today, hosting The Michelangelo Signorile Show on SiriusXM OutQ from 2:00 to 6:00 EST. He has written three other books, including Life Outside: The Signorile Report on Gay Men and Hitting Hard, a collection of essays and columns. His 1996 book, Outing Yourself: How to Come Out as Lesbian or Gay to Your Family, Friends and Coworkers was an exceptionally valuable book to me as I was beginning my own journey of coming out.

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Uganda President’s Remarks “Split” Anti-Gay Activists

According to this NTV report, Uganda President Yoweri Museveni’s remarks last weekend has stirred some controversy, pitting die-hard anti-gay activists against fanatic anti-gay activists. (Yeah, I can’t tell the two camps apart either.) As you watch this report, it may help to have this dance card handy so you can keep the characters straight:

Pastor Solomon Male: He is against the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, not because he thinks gay people shouldn’t be jailed, but because he thinks that the law would actually end up protecting powerful gay people in government and business. In October, Male was convicted by a Uganda court of conspiring to tarnish a rival pastor’s reputation by accusing him of homosexuality.

James Nsaba Buturo: He is the former Ethics and Integrity Minister who was among the Anti-Homosexuality Bill’s strongest supporters. One U.S. State Department cable posted to Wikileaks described Buturo as “obsessed” with the bill. In this report, Buturo again claims that the death penalty provision as “a falsehood which has been spread around the world,” despite the bill’s exceptionally plain language spelling out the death penalty specifically. Buturo was among the Ugandan officials who met with American anti-gay extremist Scott Lively in 2009 just as the idea of drafting a new Anti-Homosexuality Bill was taking shape.

Pastor Martin Ssempa: The famous “Eat-Da-Poo-Poo” pastor, believed to be linked to the now-defunct Rolling Stone tabloid (no relation to the U.S. publication by the same name), which launched an infamous 2010 “Hang Them!” vigilante campaign which featured LGBT advocate David Kato on the front cover. Kato was brutally murdered just a few months later in January 2011. Ssempa was convicted in October with Male as part of the conspiracy to accuse a rival pastor of homosexuality.