Box Turtle Bulletin

Uganda’s Parliament Speaker Promises to Revive Anti-Homosexuality Bill

Uganda’s Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga returned home to Entebbe Airport to a hero’s welcome after attending a meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Quebec, Canada. The rally at Entebbe’s airport was organized by religious leaders, former Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba Buturo, and  Anti-Homosexuality Bill sponsor M.P. David Bahati. She told supporters and the press that she would instruct the chair of the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee “to quickly bring the report on the Anti-Homosexuality Bill” to the House floor for a vote.

Kadaga was also defiant in the face of threats by several foreign governments to withhold aid and visas if the bill passes. “If the price of aid is going to be the promotion of homosexuality in this country,” she told supporters, “I think we don’t want that aid.”

Kadega made those remarks in response to criticisms by Canada’s Foreign Minister John Baird over Uganda’s proposal to execute gay people and for its refusal to protect LGBT people in the country. As Uganda’s independent Daily Monitor reported last Thursday:

She told IPU organisers that she was not aware that the assembly had been summoned to promote gay rights.
Earlier, at the inaugural plenary on Monday, Mr Baird had demonised Uganda on allegations of persecuting sexual minorities. The Foreign Minister referred to the specific incident of gay-rights activist David Kato, who was bludgeoned to death in January 2011.

Responding to the unprovoked Baird attack, Ms Kadaga said: “When we came for this Assembly, to which we were invited, we expected respect for our sovereignty, our values and our country … “I, therefore, on behalf of the Ugandan delegation, and, indeed, the people of Uganda, protest in the strongest terms the arrogance exhibited by the Foreign Minister of Canada, who spent most of his time attacking Uganda and promoting homosexuality.”

…For that matter, Ms Kadaga said: “If homosexuality is a value for the people of Canada they should not seek to force Uganda to embrace it. We are not a colony or a protectorate of Canada. The subject under discussion is ‘Citizenship, Identity and Linguistic and Cultural Diversity in a Globalised World’, please stick to it.”

No Ugandan politician has ever lost anything by resorting to appeals to Uganda’s sovereignty. Until just fifty years ago, Uganda was a British colony subject to the whims of a (white) government on a different continent and more than four thousand miles away. Uganda recently celebrated is fiftieth anniversary this past summer. On Friday, Daily Monitor reported that Kadaga’s comments were receiving considerable support from among its readers:

By press time, Ms Kadaga’s retort carried in the Daily Monitor yesterday had attracted numerous comments on this newspaper’s web site with most of them applauding her for defending the culture, values and norms of Ugandans from “Western cultural perversion”.

In one of the comments, an online reader writes: “Hahaha!! I have read so many of these forums but trust me, I have never seen so many comments yet all speaking with a single voice! Kudos Ugandans, I am proud of all of ya (sic). It means all is not lost of our society.”

The incident in Quebec also elicited this comment from the government:

Weighing in on the diplomatic spat, State minister for International Relations Henry Okello Oryem said the position of government is that sodomy is a crime and that Uganda does not persecute sexual minorities. “We have no business with the people who are behind closed doors but those who flaunt sexual activities in public will be dealt with,” Mr Oryem said.

Mr Okello Oryem observed that in Britain – Uganda’s former colonial master – the law books described “sodomy as a crime long before Uganda even got its independence”.

Ugandan police have routinely shut down conferences in which human rights for gay people were a topic of conversation, including a workshop in Entebbe in February and another conference in June. Speaker Kadaga promised then that the Anti-Homosexuality Bill would be taken up in the next session of Parliament. The Second Session of Parliament has been meeting since August.

In September, British national David Cecil was arrested and charged with “disobeying lawful orders” when he staged a pro-gay play at a small theater in a Kampala suburb after the Media Centre refused to allow him to mount the production at the National Theatre. Cecil was released on bail pending trial, where he faces the possibility of two years in prison.

The Anti-Homosexuality Bill was reintroduced into Parliament last February and referred to the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee for possible modifications. When the same committee considered the bill in May of 2011, the committee recommended a sly change to the bill, removing the explicit language of “suffer(ing) death,” and replacing it with a reference to the penalties provided in an unrelated already existing law. That law however specifies the death penalty. Which means that the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee actually recommended that the death penalty be retained through stealth while the bill’s supporters publicly stated that the penalty had been removed. The previous Eighth Parliament expired before the house could vote on the committee’s recommendations. After the Ninth Parliament convened, the original language of the bill, including its death penalty, was reintroduced and referred back to the same committee.

The Daily Agenda for Wednesday, October 31

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebration This Weekend: Palm Springs, CA.

AIDS Walk This Weekend: San Luis Obispo, CA.

Other Events This Weekend: Fall Diversity, Eureka Springs, AR; Side By Side LGBT International Film Festival, St. Petersburg, Russia.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
That Most Detestable, Horrid, and Abominable Crime Called Buggery: 1848. The following court record was entered:

The indictment against the prisoners was as follows: —

“Central Criminal Court, to wit the jurors for our Lady the Queen upon their oath present that Edwin Gatehouse, late of the parish of Lambeth, in the county of Surrey, and within the jurisdiction of the court, labourer, and William Dowley, late of the same place, labourer, being persons of depraved and unnatural dispositions,in the 12th year of the reign of our Sovereign Lady Victoria, by the grace of God of the united kingdom of England and Ireland, Queen, defender of the faith, with force of arms, at the parish aforesaid, in the county aforesaid, and within the jurisdiction of the said court, in a certain room there unlawfully and wickedly did meet, and were then together for the purpose of committing with each other that most detestable horrid, and abominable crime called buggery; and did then and there unlawfully and wickedly lay their hands upon each other with intent then and there feloniously, wickedly, diabolically, and against the order of nature to commit and perpetrate with each other the detestable, horrid, and abominable crime aforesaid. To the great displeasure of Almighty God, to the evil example of all others in the like case offending, and against the pace of our Lady the Queen, her crown and dignity. And the jurors aforesaid, upon their oath aforesaid, do further present that the said Edwin Gatehouse and William Dowley, being such evil disposed persons as aforesaid, afterwards (to wit) on the day and year aforesaid, with force and arms at the parish aforesaid, in the county aforesaid, and within the jurisdiction of the said court, unlawfully and wickedly did meet, and then and there were together in a certain room for the purpose and with the intent of committing and perpetrating with each other these divers nasty, wicked, filthy, beastly, and unnatural acts and practices; and that the said Edwin Gatehouse and William Dowly, in pursuance of such purpose and intent, unlawfully, wickedly, and indecently did then and there expose their naked private parts to each other, and did also then and there place their hands upon and take hold of and feel the naked private parts of each other, with intent then and there to excite and stir up in the minds of each other divers filthy, beastly, and unnatural lusts and desires, to the great scandal and subversion of religion, morality, decency, and good order, and against hte peace of our Lady the Queen, her crown and dignity.”

At the close of the case for the prosecution, Ballantine, for the prisoner, Gatehouse, objected that neither of these counts disclosed any offense. The second count was clearly bad within the principle of the cases recently decided. It did not allege that the place where the exposure took place was public; and even if it was public, the exposure was only to one person, which was not sufficient. Indecency, to be criminal, must be in a public place, and in the sight of divers of her majesty’s subjects. The first count also was bad. It did not aver an attempt to commit buggery, but a mere intention accompanied by an act indicative of that intention. Such intention was not criminal. To constitute an offence, some act in pursuance of such intention, and as a commencement to the actual crime of buggery, must be shown.

The Common Sergeant. — The judges have not yet expressly decided that the second count is bad, but in accordance with the cases which have been decided, I think they would hold it to be bad. I shall therefore tell the jury that, as to that count, they must against acquit the prisoner. An intent to commit sodomy, must, I think, be charged and proved. But this is, in my opinion, done in the first count; and at present, I see no reason for holding that that count is bad. But before judgment is given, I will consult some of the judges; and if necessary, reserve the point for consideration of all judges.

The Jury found the prisoners Guilty on the first count.

Judgement was respited.

[Source: Chris White’s Nineteenth-Century Writings on Homosexuality: A Sourcebook (London: Routledge, 1999): 42-43. In a footnote, White writes, “I have been unable to determine the fates of Gatehouse and Dowley.”]

Time Magazine’s “The Homosexual: Newly Visible, Newly Understood”: 1969. Mainstream news media was slow to wake up to the cathartic effect the Stonewall rebellion had on the gay community in 1969. The New York Times buried the story on page thirty-three, and didn’t bother to mention why the patrons of the Stonewall Inn fought back. The New York Daily News reported the whole thing, on page thirty, and only from the police’s point of view (“3 Cops Hurt As Bar Raid Riles Crowd”). The Daily News followed on July 6 with the infamous report, “Homo Nest Raided, Queen Bees Are Stinging Mad.” The most extensive reporting on the riot was in a series of articles by the Village Voice. It’s reporting was, by turns, both sympathetic and mocking, with the mocking parts sparking an angry protest by the Gay Liberation Front (see Sep 12).

On October 31, Time magazine noticed the rapidly growing visibility of the post-stonewall gay community with its cover story “The Homosexual: Newly Visible, Newly Understood.” Written by contributing editor Christopher Cory, researched by Madeleine Berry, and reported by Ruth Galvin, the magazine sought to provide a comprehensive view of what was still a very controversial and touchy topic:

Their new militancy makes other citizens edgy, and it can be shrill. Hurling rocks and bottles and wielding a parking meter that had been wrenched out of the sidewalk, homosexuals rioted last summer in New York’s Greenwich Village after police closed one of the city’s 50 all-gay bars and clubs on an alleged liquor-law violation. … Some 50 homophile organizations have announced their existence in cities across the country and on at least eight campuses. … W. Dorr Legg, educational director at Los Angeles’ 17-year-old ONE, Inc., claims, “I won’t be happy until all churches give homosexual dances and parents are sitting in the balcony saying ‘Don’t John and Henry look cute dancing together?'”

The article introduced its readers to two terms they likely hadn’t encountered before: “fag hags” (“the parlor darlings of wealthy ladies”) and “homophobic,” which just might be the first instance in which the newly-coined word appeared in a mainstream publication. (If readers are aware of an earlier use of the word in a mainstream outlet, please let me know either via email or in the comments.) Gay marriage, however, was not what we would think of today: “Marriage in these circles can involve a homosexual and a busy career woman who coolly take the vows for companionship—and so that they can pool their incomes and tax benefits for a glittering round of entertaining.” It also gave an approving nod to those who feared that these “newly visible” and gays were taking over the world:

Is there a homosexual conspiracy afoot to dominate the arts and other fields? Sometimes it seems that way. The presence of talented homosexuals in the field of classical music, among composers, performers, conductors and management, has sometimes led to charges by disappointed outsiders that the music world is a closed circle. The same applies to the theater, the art world, painting, dance, fashion, hairdressing and interior design, where a kind of “homintern” exists: a gay boss will often use his influence to help gay friends. The process is not unlike the ethnic favoritism that prevails in some companies and in big-city political machines; with a special sulky twist, it can be vicious to outsiders. Yet homosexual influence has probably been exaggerated. The homosexual cannot go too far in foisting off on others his own preferences; the public that buys the tickets or the clothes is overwhelmingly heterosexual.

According to Time, it was the straight world that kept the gay one in check. Otherwise “Homosexual taste can fall into a particular kind of self-indulgence as the homosexual revenges himself on a hostile world by writing grotesque exaggerations of straight customs, concentrates on superficial stylistic furbelows or develops a ‘campy’ fetish for old movies.” That was just before the article went on to acknowledge the important literary contributions of Oscar Wilde, James Baldwin, W.H. Auden, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee and others. But then Time effectively dismissed those artists with a quote from The New York Times Drama Critic Clive Barnes: “Creativity might be a sort of psychic disturbance itself, mightn’t it? Artists are not particularly happy people.”

Time identified, broadly, six types of homosexuals, starting with “The Blatant Homosexual”:

This is the eunuch-like caricature of” femininity that most people associate with homosexuality. In the 1960s he may be the catty hairdresser or the lisping, limp-wristed interior decorator. His lesbian counterpart is the “butch,” the girl who is aggressively masculine to the point of trying to look like a man. Blatants also include “leather boys,” who advertise their sadomasochism by wearing leather jackets and chains, and certain transvestites, or “Tvs.”

“The Secret Lifer”:

The other 90% of the nation’s committed inverts are hidden from all but their friends, lovers, and occasionally, psychiatrists. Their wrists are rigid, their “s’s” well formed; they prefer subdued clothes and close-cropped hair, and these days may dress more conservatively than flamboyant straights. Many wear wedding rings and have wives, children and employers who never know. … To lead their double lives these full or part-time homosexuals must “pass” as straight, and most are extremely skilled at camouflage. They can cynically tell — or at least smile at — jokes about “queers”; they fake enjoyment when their boss throws a stag party with nude movies.

“The Desperate”:

Members of this group are likely to haunt public toilets (“tearooms”) or Turkish baths. They may be pathologically driven to sex but emotionally unable to face the slightest strains of sustaining a serious human relationship, or they may be married men who hope to conceal their need by making their contacts as anonymous as possible.

“The Adjusted”:

By contrast, they lead relatively conventional lives. They have a regular circle of friends and hold jobs … Their social lives generally begin at the gay bars or in rounds of private parties. Often they try to settle down with a regular lover, and although these liaisons are generally short-lived among men, some develop into so-called “gay marriages.” …

“The Bisexual”:

Many married homosexuals are merely engaging in “alibi sex,” faking enjoyment of intercourse with their wives. Some researchers, however, have found a number of men and women who have a definite preference for their own sex but engage in occasional activity with the opposite sex and enjoy it.

“The Situational-Experimental”:

He is a man who engages in homosexual acts without any deep homosexual motivation. The two Kinsey reports found that almost 40% of white American males and 13% of females have some overt sexual experience to orgasm with a person of their own sex between adolescence and old age. Yet a careful analysis of the figures shows that most of these experiences are only temporary deviations. In prisons and occasionally in the armed forces, for example, no women are available.

But for all of Time’s attempts to paint a comprehensive overview of this “newly understood” minority, Time betrayed an abysmal lack of actual understanding. “The homosexual subculture, a semi-public world, is, without question, shallow and unstable,” it concluded, before devoting several more paragraphs to conjectures of what causes homosexuality. Virtually of the “experts” that Time consulted on cited early childhood experiences as the cause. It also concludes with the verdict that homosexuality is, at the very best, a “crippling maladjustment”:

A violently argued issue these days is whether the confirmed homosexual is mentally ill. Psychoanalysts insist that homosexuality is a form of sickness; most homosexuals and many experts counter that the medical concept only removes the already fading stigma of sin, and replaces it with the charge — even more pejorative nowadays — that homosexuality is pathological. The answers will importantly influence society’s underlying attitude. While homosexuality is a serious and sometimes crippling maladjustment, research has made clear that it is no longer necessary or morally justifiable to treat all inverts as outcasts. The challenge to American society is simultaneously to devise civilized ways of discouraging the condition and to alleviate the anguish of those who cannot be helped, or do not wish to be.

Time’s article is available to subscribers here.

Gay Advocates Protest San Francisco Examiner: 1969. This was the year when gay activists across the U.S. were declaring that a new day had come and they would no longer remain silent over outrages against the gay community. In San Francisco, the Hearst-owned San Francisco Examiner had long been a bitter foe of the gay community. Over several weeks in October, 1969, the paper had run a series of article’s about the city’s so-called “breakfast clubs,” after-hour underground clubs that sold low-grade liquor without a license. Most of those articles targeted straight clubs, but an October 24 installment in the series called attention to “The Dreary Revels of S.F. ‘Gay’ Clubs,” which describe the city’s “deviant establishments”:

The Corral is now, appropriately enough, home to the Holy Cow night club (via Goole Street View)

San Francisco has more than a fare share of “gay” breakfast clubs. The “gay” clubs are gay in name only. Actually, the are sad, dreary after-hours traps here homosexuals and weird “straight” types gather for their sick, sad revels. … Take the Corral at 1535 Folsom Street. … Here the virile, ultra-male is wined and dined and wooed by other semi-males with flexible wrists and hips, and bona fide females have a strictly zero rating. The bar and outlying tables are occupied by types who undulate and wriggle, whose voices are an octave higher or lower than they should be, and whose manual contacts with their associates are lingering and tender.

Folsom street became “Queer street,” and the article was particularly obsessed with drag queens and cross-dressers. They were “drag-darlings,” “the pseudo-fair sex,” “hybrid blossoms,” and “counterfeit femininity.”

One week later, sixty members of the newly-formed Gay Liberation Front (GLF) and the long-standing Society for Individual Rights (SIR) began a peaceful picket at the Hearst Building demanding, among other things, that the paper fire reporter Robert Patterson. About an hour into the protest, someone inside the building opened a third floor window and dumped a bag of purple printer’s ink onto the protesters below. In response, the protesters began blotting the windows and sides of the building with purple handprints, and someone smeared the words “Gay Power!” on the white wall. SIR president Larry Littlejohn later recalled:

The old Hearst Building today.

At that point, the tactical squad arrived — not to get the employees who dumped the ink, but to arrest the demonstrators who were the victims. The police could have surrounded the Examiner building and found out who did it but, no, they went after the gays. It was just incredible how stupid the police could be. Somebody could have been hurt if that ink had gotten in their eyes, but the police came racing in with their clubs swinging, knocking people to the ground. It was unbelievable.

The pitched battle quickly became bloody. Two officers threw a lesbian into the asphalt and then arrested her for obstructing traffic. Many others were knocked against the curb and suffered head wounds. Another lost his teeth when he was thrown into the paddy wagon. Twenty-one protesters were arrested; no one from The Examiner was charged.

[Source: Edward Alwood. Straight News: Gays, Lesbians and the News Media (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996): 92-94.]

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?

Unification Church (a.k.a. “Moonies”) President Touts Church Ties To Ex-Gay Leader

Warren Throckmorton discovered a video which appears to link Richard Cohen, head of the International Healing Foundation, with the Unification Church founded by Sun Myung Moon. The church, whose members are known as “Moonies,” is now headed by Moon’s son, Hyung Jin Moon.  On October 7, 2012, the younger Moon was holding a town hall meeting at the Unification Bay Area Family Church where he fielded a question on homosexuality:

Richard Cohen is a member in our movement who has worked on this tremendously, the whole issue. Even as you mentioned, you said that people are gay through no fault of their own. But of course this is debatable; that’s an assumption. Richard Cohen actually debates that assumption. He’s actually an expert on this issue and so maybe we can connect you to him, Richard Cohen. If you could, give your contact information to Dr. Grubb, we will try to connect you to Richard Cohen. I think in our movement he is probably the foremost expert on that whole issue, and hopefully he can contribute and helping us with programs in the future as well.

Cohen has claimed that he left the Unification Church in the 1990s. He had been a member of thee Unification Church for twenty years, and he acknowledged that his marriage was arranged by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon himself.  In 2007, the Freedom of Mind Network, a cult-watch organization, had listed Cohen’s group as a Moon Cultural and Social Front. Cohen called the charge a “slander.”  (Cohen’s International Healing Foundation is no longer listed.)

Cohen had once played a prominent role in the ex-gay movement. In addition to authoring books in which he claims to be an expert on the subject, Cohen founded the horribly mis-named Parents and Friends of Gays and Ex-Gays (PFOX). He fell out of favor in 2005 when he accomplished the rather remarkable feat of embarrassing the entire ex-gay movement by demonstrating his unorthodox “holding” technique for “curing” gay people with CNN’s Paula Zahn. He compounded that embarrassment by appearing on The Daily Show six months later to demonstrate those same techniques. More recently, Cohen has tried, unsuccesfully, to rebrand his organization as a gay supportive group as a cover for his continuing stealth ex-gay activities.

Cohen was permanently expelled from the American Counseling Association in 2002 for multiple ethical violations.

A testament to love

You will need tissues. You will.

A year ago, my Uncle Tom died of cancer in the arms of his partner of 33 years.

We knew he would pass quickly after we brought him home from the hospital. But his partner wanted his last hours to be in their home. Not knowing whether he would hang on for days or hours, I offered to stay overnight so Scott could rest. I had the privilege of being there for their last 24 hours together. My self-assigned role was to remain awake so Scott could sleep.

Go read the rest at the Duluth News Tribune.

But be sure you have tissues. You have been warned.

Callous from Dallas: Maurine Dickey

Meet Maurine Dickey.

No, she’s not a drag queen – that Texas Republican oh-so-smart 1980’s Clairee Belcher housewife look is her real persona, and as for the name… well, sometimes fate has a quirky sense of humor.

Maurine is one of five Dallas County Commissioners and her smile is not quite so superior today. Maurine just lost a vote in the commission (party line 3-2) on a bill (she opposed) and Dallas County will now give a stipend to reimburse gay and unmarried employees who are in domestic partnership arrangements and who pay for their partner’s health insurance. (Dallas Morning News)

The policy caps the stipend at the amount the county would pay for a married employee’s spouse. It is not available for employee’s whose partner has access to health care coverage through their own employer. Employees must sign an affidavit that defines the relationship as a domestic partnership and prove that they and their partner have lived and operated a household together for at least six months.

Now as we know, this is far from equal. I very much doubt that most employees’ partners can get insurance at or below the county’s negotiated rates or with anywhere near the benefits. But it still was too much for Maurine. Poor Maurine.

Republican Commissioner Maurine Dickey said the county was essentially creating a special pool of people for whom to provide separate benefits. She questioned whether commissioners should create special health care programs for obese people, smokers or people who drive blue Pontiacs made before 1978.

First off, let me say that Maurine is right. The county did give special rights and separate benefits. This stipend isn’t available to all employees on an equal basis and it is absolutely true that this is unfair. I oppose creating special pools of people. I oppose separate benefits.

Except Maurine seems to have forgotten one itsy-bitsy little thing: the county wasn’t the one who created this special pool of people; she and her buddies did that. In 2005, the Texas folk who think like Maurine looks decided that of all the people who share their lives with the one they love and who vow life-long devotion and care, they would exclude one group from the legal protections of marriage. It was the Maurine Dickeys of Texas who created that “special pool of people” to set aside and treat differently.

And it was Maurine and crew who decided that the benefits of gay employees would be different. Gay employees don’t want “separate benefits”, they want to be treated exactly like Maurine. And if Maurine doubts this then let’s trade; let the gay employees have the full legal protections of marriage and Maurine can get a stipend.

To complain that the weak secondary provisions which go a little ways to make up for the burden of your discrimination are “special”, to begrudge the crumbs tossed in the direction of those you’ve barred from the banquet, to be dismissive to those whom you’ve already unfairly deprived from equality under the law, that is callous and cruel.

Sandy Spawns A Monster

Flooding at Ground Zero (AP Photo/ John Minchillo)

Hurricane Sandy smashed into a cold front from the west and a cold blast from Canada just before making landfall during high tide and a full moon near Atlantic City, where its counter-clockwise winds drove a massive record-breaking storm surge into New York and Long Island. If it were possible to construct a more perfect storm, there is little else that the imagination could conjure that would possibly make the situation any worse.

Weather radar as of Tuesday morning (Weather Channel)

This morning, Sandy is no longer a hurricane, but it is still a powerful superstorm by any measure. There are massive power outages throughout the Eastern U.S. Eighty homes were burned to the waterline in Rockaway. Water treatment plants and wastewater plants are flooded and out of service. High winds and heavy rains are inside a massive arc that ranges from New England into Canada, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia. Parts of West Virginia, eastern Kentucky and the western portions of Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania are experiencing a massive blizzard with high winds and flooding, with whiteout conditions reported in some areas. There is nothing normal about this storm, which will continue to wreck havoc for at least another day or so as it moves inland.

New York blogger Joe.My.God has managed to stay online throughout the night with live updates, and Buzzfeed’s Andrew Kaczynski has a live Tumblr. It will undoubtedly be weeks before power and transportation links are restored, followed by many months and perhaps years of hard work before things return to normal. Our thoughts, prayers and attention are focused this morning on our readers in those areas affected by this storm. Please be safe.

The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, October 30

THIS MONTH IN HISTORY:
The Treatment of Homosexuality by Aversion Therapy: 1966. Doctors had been using painful jolts of electricity to try to torture homosexuality out of people since 1935 (see Mar 15 and Sep 6), and so the report that appeared in the October 1966 edition of Medicine, Science and the Law (remember, homosexuality was still against the law in most states, Canada and the UK) is depresingly similar to so many other cases that have been published in the medical literature. In this one, “The Treatment of Homosexuality by Aversion Therapy,” Dr. Northage Mather, a consultant psychiatrist at Crumpsall Hospital in Manchester, England, described “a particular technique in behaviour therapy for homosexuality, developed over the past three and a half years”:

The patient, to whom the treatment is carefully explained, is then shown a large series of slides and a number of films of both males and females, clothed and unclothed, from which he selects a number of both sexes in varying degrees of attractiveness to him. Each patient thus draws up his own particular hierarchies for both sexes. He then lies on a bed in a darkened room, watching a screen upon which these slides are thrown. The slide first used is that of a male which is only mildly attractive, and the patient has in his hand a switch by means of which he can remove the slide from the screen. If after eight seconds he has not removed it, he receives an electric shock which has previously been determined as unpleasant to himself. The shock continues until he presses the switch. During the eight seconds anxiety and tension are created and relief is obtained by an active movement on his part. Once the patient is regularly performing avoidance responses to a male slide in this way he is placed on a schedule of reinforcement so that one-third of his attempts to avoid are successful (reinforced), one-third are delayed for varying intervals of time (delayed), and one­third are held up for so long that he does receive a shock (non-reinforced). These three types of trial are randomly alternated. The purpose of this schedule is to reduce the likelibood of relapse.

In an endeavour to make females less unattractive, especially as many homosexuals also experience anxiety with females, or with the thought of sexual contact with females, relief from anxiety is associated with the immediate presentation of a picture of the female as soon as the patient himself removes the male slide by means of the switch. In two-fifths of the trials the pressing of the switch therefore by the patient not only removes the male slide but replaces it with the female slide which is the most attractive one in the hierarchy which he has previously drawn up. The female slide is removed by the therapist after approximately ten seconds, and before the request of the patient, so that eventually the patient is motivated to request the return of the female slide. This is granted in a random manner to prevent the patient predicting the consequences of removing the male slide.

Each treatment session lasts about twenty minutes, twenty-five presentations being given. Inpatients receive two sessions of trealment per day, outpatients according to patients’ own convenience.

You read it right: inpatients and outpatients. Of the thirty-six subjects in these experiments, fourteen were directly or indirectly referred by a court, and six more were patients at the psychiatric hospital. Only sixteen appeared to be there of their own accord. Eight more beyond the thirty-six had dropped out. One of the dropouts was “of hysterical personality (and) was so frightened of the treatment that he only attended twice.” Another insisted that he receive electric shock therapy under an anesthetic, which of course would have negated the effects of the treatment. Mather attributed three other dropouts to their “gross personality disorders with histories of antisocial and psychopathic behaviour.” What that is supposed to mean is unclear, particularly considering that Mather described homosexuality as “giv(ing) rise to a considerable amount of individual suffering, as well as being responsible for many anti-social acts such as larceny, blackmail, robbery with violence and murder.” And in Mather’s view, if someone was homosexual, then it was obvious that there was something wrong with them. Of each of the patients he evaluated, he was determined to find some kind of problem, even if it was an undefined “self-insecure obsessional personality trait.” Being sent to a shock doctor at a psych ward can have that effect on people.

The treatments continued until the patient managed to show “a change of interest occurs or it becomes clear that no change is likely.” That usually happened after about fifteen to twenty “treatments,” although some were subjected for up to thirty. If a patient was found to have slipped up during a years’ worth of follow-ups, more “booster” treatments were administered. It’s no surprise then that Mather reported that twenty-five showed some “improvement.” The extent of that change however is hard to judge, given the skimpy details he provided, almost all of which were self-reports from patients who were being subjected to torture. “Honest, Doc, I love women now!”, you can easily imagine the conversation going. As for the eleven who stubbornly refused to “improve,” well, it wasn’t the doctor’s fault. They were the ones with “weak-willed personality disorders” or “hysterical or attention-seeking personality disorders.” Naturally.

Mather would go on to become a well-respected leader in Britain’s psychiatric profession. In 1981, he was elected president of the Manchester Medical Society. His 2003 obituary in the British Medical Journal states that during his thirty years at Crumpsall Hospital (now North Manchester General Hospital), he had “(built) up a well known department.” He also was involved in criminal investigations and prosecutions, and served on the parole board.

By the way, forty-three years later, the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homoseuxality (NARTH) cited this very study among a host of other obsolete aversion therapy studies to claim that people can change their sexual orientation.

[Source: Northage John de Ville Mather. “The treatment of homosexuality by aversion therapy.” Medicine, Science and the Law 6, no. 4 (October 1966): 200-205.]

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?

Gay GOP supporter bashing a hoax

It turns out that the bashing of Ryan Wood, as reported by Daily Caller, was a hoax. Over the past day Mr. Wood ratcheted up his claims, asserting that he had been threatened in a series of emails by Philip Frank, the partner of Mark Pocan, the Democratic opponent of the candidate that Wood was supporting.

Kyle Wood, a campaign worker for the Republican congressional candidate Chad Lee, today recanted his statements about being assaulted and choked at his home on Oct. 24, according to Madison police.

The department updated its incident report late Monday afternoon after Wood met with detectives.

Captain Joe Balles, commander of the South District, confirms that Wood recanted his allegations of the beating.

Although he would not go into detail about the case, Balles said, “I updated that press release because I felt it was imperative we get something out there because of the politically charged background this was happening in.”

This is a sad thing. There simply is no winner today. Someone in our community has behaved abominably, has taken the compassion of better people and sought to use it for political advantage. And in the process he hurt a number of people.

He hurt his campaign. Mr. Lee, who put out a press release condemning the attack, now looks like a fool and will lose support from many who will assume that this was a campaign tactic used with his knowledge and approval.

He hurt the political process. These sort of stupid tactics bring down the image of all of those who seek to serve the public. They make the nobility of democracy seem cheap and tawdry.

He hurt Mark Pocan. Of course Pocan wants to win, but he doesn’t want to win on these terms. He wants to take his place in Congress holding the support of the constituents for his articulated positions, not because he opponent was disgraced by a volunteer.

He hurt other gay Republicans. Those who look for reasons to think that gay Republicans are despicable have now found another one.

And he hurt our community. Those who look for reasons to think that all gay people are despicable will not differentiate between parties. In fact, the same anti-gay activists who have been screaming all weekend about how the gay community are intolerant will be giddy with delight at the opportunity to say we are all liars.

And he hurt himself. Iit is also likely that there will be some legal repercussions to this behavior. But worse for Mr. Wood is the personal hurt he has enacted on himself. Not only has he lost the trust or respect of those who know him, but he’s lost his own claim on integrity. And things of this sort take a toll on one’s soul. The mirror is never so kind again.

Last week we said that “Regardless of where we stand on the election of various candidates or our opinions about those who support them, all of us at Box Turtle Bulletin condemn the attack described in the story in no uncertain terms.” That remains true – except that the attack described in the story didn’t happen.

And now we are again united in condemning the extremely irresponsible action of Kyle Wood. That is never, EVER, an acceptable behavior.

The Financial Meltdown

A few weeks back I asked for help doing researching the financial meltdown that we’re all still suffering from. Many thanks for your replies, and I’ve now finished making a video about it. I won’t embed it here as it’s a bit off-topic but you can view it at this link. With the election coming up, this is a good time to remind ourselves just how just much folly a deregulated Wall Street can bring down on us.

Email of the Day

You there?

Jim,

I know right now you are being bombarded by election season emails — and I am worried my critical message
may have gotten buried in the mix.

You see, we have no time to spare.

I can’t even wait until after the election when the flood of emails will slow down.

My friend, your Public Advocate is facing a legal threat that could completely shut us down — and it could
come any day!

If you haven’t read it yet, please see my email below for the whole story.

Yeah, I read it. It was boring. Just as boring as this one. But somehow I doubt your flood of emails will subside after November 6. So take it from this blogger: not everything you write is Pulitzer material.

Guess Who Got Blamed For “Frankenstorm”

Because hating Israel is so gay. Or something.

Just last August, Hurricane Isaac hit New Orleans seven years later, on the exact day of Hurricane Katrina. Both hit during the week of the homosexual event called Southern Decadence in New Orleans!

Hurricane Sandy is hitting 21 years to the day of the Perfect Storm of October 20, 1991. I write about this in my book as America Has Done to Israel. This was the day that President George Bush Sr. initiated the Madrid Peace Process to divide the land of Israel, including Jerusalem. America has been under God’s judgment since this event. Both of these hurricanes were cause by freakish weather patterns that came together to create

Twenty-one years breaks down to 7 x 3, which is a significant number with God. Three is perfection as the Godhead is three in one while seven is perfection.

It appears that God gave America 21 years to repent of interfering with His prophetic plan for Israel; however, it has gotten worse under all the presidents and especially Obama. Obama is 100 percent behind the Muslim Brotherhood which has vowed to destroy Israel and take Jerusalem. Both candidates are pro-homosexual and are behind the homosexual agenda. America is under political judgment and the church does not know it!

The best part:

The storm is projected to come right over my house, so it might curtail the prayer meeting if the power is knocked out.

By the way, Reb. John McTernan, founder of Defend and Proclaim the Faith ministries, is a nonpartisan nutcase:

Do you think that a pro-homosexual Mormon that wants to divide Israel,as he said during the last debate, is going to be blessed by God? Come on,as it is time to repent before the Lord for who has been raised up to run for president. America is under political judgment. Romney is a curse on America just as was Obama.

The comments are even more entertaining than McTerna’s post.

Romney’s Most Consistent Position Ever

Video of Gov. Mitt Romney speaking to an audience of conservative Repblicans in South Carolina is now making the rounds in which he exclaims, “Some gays are actually having children.” This speech is part of a pivotal moment in political life of the Massachusetts governor when, in 2005, Romney embarked on a year which The Wall Street Journal called a year of key policy shifts in anticipation for a possible presidential run.

This video is recirculating after last week’s Boston Globe’s account of how Romney’s lawyers reviewed each and every birth certificate issued to a child of same-sex couples, and the September revelation of Romney’s distinctly unempathetic meeting in 2004 with Massachusetts gay activists, including Julie Goodridge who had successfully sued to be allowed to marry. That’s the meeting where Goodridge asked Gov. Romney what she should tell her eight-year-old about why her parents couldn’t marry, and he responded, “I don’t really care what you tell your adopted daughter. Why don’t you just tell her the same thing you’ve been telling her the last eight years.” After looking at all that, The Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky observed:

For a guy who has flip-flopped on every topic under the sun, there is one issue on which Mitt Romney has been remarkably constant over the years. If gay people give you the heebie-jeebies, Mitt’s your man. He’s been as constant as the northern star.

But even Romney’s most consistent mpossitions has as its inception a moment of inconsistency. When he tried to unseat Sen. Ted Kennedy in 1994, he claimed that he’d be “better than Ted for gay rights.” But that was almost two decades ago, and he was speaking to the Boston-based LGBT newspaper Bay Windows. And we all know about his habit of telling the audience in front of him what they want to hear at the very moment they are in front of him. That is the only thing that’s really consistent about him. Except, of course, when that audience happens to include Julie Goodridge.

SCOTUS to discuss Prop 8 in November

AFER, the Boies/Olson team, are reporting that the Supreme Court will discuss several cases on November 20, including Perry v. Brown, the Prop 8 case. They will decide at that time whether to grant review and announce their decision on Monday, November 26.

Should they grant review, the case will be heard at some point in the next six or so months. If not, the stays will be lifted and marriage will become equal again in California.

The Daily Agenda for Monday, October 29

THIS MONTH IN HISTORY:
A Letter from an Invert: 1919. Through the early part of the twentieth century, American medical and psychological writers began taking an increasing interest in homosexuality (or “sexual inversion,” “contrary sexual feeling,” “perverted sexual instinct,” or any number of other terms which they had yet to settle on). One of the professional journals to actively investigate all aspects of sexology was the Journal of Urology and Sexology under the editorship of William J Robinson, a physician, sexologist , birth control advocate, and department head of Genito-Urinary Diseases at Bronx Hospital Dispensary.

But it was rare to hear from “inverts” themselves. Last July, we reprinted one letter to the editor from 1919 which gave some indication of the frustration that many felt due to the severe societal disapproval that was prevalent a the time (see July 30). Three months later, that same journal published another letter “from an invert”:

To the EDITOR:
I know you will disagree with me, but it is my belief that two men who love each other have as much right to live together as a man and woman have. Also that it is as beautiful when looked at in the right light and far more equal!

There are many men who believe as I do. One might say they are abnonnal. Does that have anything to do with the right or wrong of the question? To sleep all day, to work all night, is an abnormal condition. It isn’t natural. Does that go to prove that the one who does it is right or wrong? There is that abnormal condition; to bring in a moral question would be foolishness. “Wrong” and “abnormal” seem to mean the same thing to many people. Or shall I put it — “wrong” and “unnatural”? From the way people look at me who know my belief, you would think me a leper or a negro! *

May I not have as high an ideal in my love toward men, as a man has towards a woman? Higher, no doubt, than most men have toward women? Higher, no doubt, than most men have toward women!

The idea people hold is making me bitter. All that I might be is being killed. I can understand the thoughts of Jean Valjean, who held to his high ideals and asked only to be left alone — yet had to lose his whole life fleeing, ever fleeing, from people.

I wish the question might be discussed in your magazine. I have never known of any other magazine which gave its readers the liberty of expressing their own opinions, as gladly as your magazine does.

There are reasons (position, etc.) why it would be better to withhold my name. You need not doubt the good faith in which this letter is written.

A MAN [?].

Jean Valjean is the protagonist in Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel Les Misérables, which follows his 19-year-long struggle with the law for stealing bread to feed his sister’s children. The editor appended this footnote to the letter:

* This sentence shows that the writer is no more broadminded on the racial question than most people are on the subject of sexual abnormalities and perversions.-W. J. R.

[Source: American Journal of Urology and Sexology 15, no. 10 (October 1919): 454-455.]

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 Sunday, October 28

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Other Events This Weekend: MIX Copenhagen Film Festival, Copenhagen, Denmark; Florence Queer Film Festival, Florence, Italy; Halloween in New Orleans, New Orleans, LA; Side By Side LGBT International Film Festival, St. Petersburg, Russia.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Frank Ocean: 1987. Christopher “Lonny” Breaux was born in Long Beach but grew up in New Orleans, where he listened to local jazz music and his mom’s Celine Dion and Phantom of the Opera Soundtrack CDs. After Hurricane Katrina hit, Lonny moved to L.A., and became a songwriter for Justin Bieber, Brandy and others while working on his debut solo album for Def Jam records. But when his album remained unreleased, Lonny changed his name to Frank Ocean, joined alt-hip hop collective Odd Future, and rediscivered his DIY drive. He released his debut mixtape, Nostalgia, Ultra as a free download — unknown to Def Jam — on his Tumblr, and the buzz quickly began to spread throughout the music industry with Diddy, Jay-Z, Kanye West and Beyonce singing his praises. Critics compared Nostalgia, Ultra with Marvin Gaye’s Here, My Dear and Prince’s ballads. Rolling Stone’s Jonah Weiner called him a “gifted avant-R&B smoothie.”

On July 4, 2012, Ocean issued his declaration of independence when he posted on his Tumblr that his first love, at the age of nineteen, was with another young man of the same age. As Ocean explained to The Guardian: “I was thinking of how I wished at 13 or 14 there was somebody I looked up to who would have said something like that, who would have been transparent in that way. But there’s another side of it that’s just about my own sanity and my ability to feel like I’m living a life where I’m not just successful on paper, but sure that I’m happy when I wake up in the morning, and not with this freakin’ boulder on my chest.”

Tyler the Creator, another member of Odd Future, took to Twitter to congratulate his fellow artist, which was significant because Tyler had’s debut album had him repeating the word “faggot” and other anti-gay epithets 213 times. Hip hop impressario Russell Simmons’s support for Ocean was effusive: ” “Today is a big day for hip-hop. It is a day that will define who we really are. How compassionate will we be? How loving can we be? How inclusive are we? … Your decision to go public about your sexual orientation gives hope and light to so many young people still living in fear.”

On July 10, 2012, Ocean’s studio-released album Channel Orange debuted on iTunes for download and was streamed for free from his blog before becoming available as a CD a week later.

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?