Box Turtle Bulletin

Michael Lucas on party and politics

Porn king Michael Lucas has an op-Ed in the Advocate discussing why he is not (yet) a Republican.

Here’s the simple truth: I’m not a Republican. And here’s the less simple truth: I wish I could be.

I’m an intensely political person by nature, so it’s infuriating not to have a party that I can support. In many ways, that party should be the GOP. As an entrepreneur and an individualist, I am drawn to the Republicans’ hands-off approach to fiscal policy. But although I believe that government should not interfere with business, I believe just as strongly that religion has no business in government.

Lucas’ perspectives are probably more common than many bloggers and blog readers suspect.

The Daily Agenda for Wednesday, October 24

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Taipei, Taiwan.

AIDS Walks This Weekend: Washington, DC.

Other Events This Weekend: MIX Copenhagen Film Festival, Copenhagen, Denmark; Florence Queer Film Festival, Florence, Italy; Halloween in New Orleans, New Orleans, LA.

THIS MONTH IN HISTORY:
A Doctor Looks At Love and Life: 1926. The October 24, 1926 edition of The New York Times reviewed a book that was somewhat unusual for its day. Dr. Joseph Collins was a physician and neurologist for the New York Neurological Institute, and also something of a polyglot. He was the first to review James Joyce’s Ulysses for The New York Times, and his earlier books included Sleep and the Sleepless (1912), My Italian Year (1919), The Doctor Looks at Literature (1923) and The Doctor Looks at Biography (1925).  His latest endeavor, The Doctor Looks at Love and Life, had a clear division between the first part, “Love” which was specific to the issues of sex and matrimony, and the second part, “Life,” in which Collins took a literary view of psychology and education. For us, our interest lies in the first part of the book, particularly in chapter IV which is titled “Homosexuality,” a chapter which marked Collins as something of transitional figure in the nascent knowledge of homosexuality in the popular literature during the first decades of the twentieth century:

It will probably be difficult to convince the generation succeeding ours that, when this country was at the zenith of her commercial prosperity, it was improper to utter the word homosexuality, prurient to admit its existence and pornographic to discuss the subject. It was proper to read novels in which it was treated more or less openly if the setting was European: decadent people in decadent countries. Here, if it existed at all, it could not flourish; our soil is unfavorable, our climate prejudicial, our people, too primitive, too pure.

…It is impossible to make the average American believe that homosexuality is not necessarily a vice, or that its possessor is not what is called a degenerate. It may be a vice and the possessor of it may be immoral or unmoral, but the majority of homosexuals, male and female, are not degenerates, to use that word in its colloquial sense. Genuine homosexuality is not a vice, it is an endowment. …I have known many well-balanced homosexuals of both sexes. Some of them have made distinctive positions for themselves in various fields of activity from arms to the pulpit. … As a rule, they are persons of taste, refinement and sensibility. Many of them seek aid to be relieved of a burden which they find intolerable; if they attempt to deliver it in the way nature suggests to them, the State puts them into prison.

It is important to say that while Collins was a transitional figure, he was not a transformative one. He sharply criticized much of what had been written before about homosexuality: that it was a viscous crime, a sign of madness, or the result (or cause) of hereditary degeneracy of a race whose evolution was being adversely disrupted by the modern world (see Sept 3 for a brief discussion of degeneracy theory). But suggesting that homosexuality is an endowment is not to suggest that homosexuality is normal.  “They are not nature’s elect, but deviates who will one day disappear from the world when we shall have guessed the last riddle of the sympathetic nervous system and the ductless glands,” he wrote with the typical optimism that infected virtually the entire medical profession of his day. But on the other hand, he believed that it wasn’t just nature that gave gay people a raw deal; society also had its share of guilt:

They are not degenerates… The rank and file of the world considers them degenerates, a blot on its escutcheon, a bar sinister in its pedigree. The world may do them an injustice, but nature has done them a far graver one. They are victims of Fate, the only ones that do not excite our compassion: and all because we cannot or will not distinguish between the work of God and Satan. … We are shorter of tolerance in this country than of any other virtue.

As I said, Collins was not a transformative figure. While he argued strongly that society should break from the past in how it regarded gay people, he could not accept the views coming out of Europe which held that homosexuality was just another variation of human sexuality. Those views he considered “pornographic” and dangerous, and on this point Collins suddenly becomes positively Victorian, if not Puritan:

Moreover, there has grown up around it an enormous literature, some of which may have been begotten in the interest of science, but most of which has been claimed by pornography. Strangely enough, this literature has come largely out of the country that precipitated the World War and that was decimated by the war. Ulrichs, Krafft-Ebing, Freud, Stekel and dozens of their countrymen have flooded the Western world with it. Their writings were promptly translated and published in this country, and though it has been claimed that their sale is restricted to clergymen, physicians, lawyers, social workers, etc., the books have been sold to high grade imbeciles, esthetes and flappers, pruriency mongers and potential perverts, to their great injury. To those for whom it is said they were intended they have been a fountain of misinformation, a flood of misrepresentation. One might readily gather from reading the latest one from Vienna that there were no normal people left in the world.

This is what makes Collins’s book so fascinating. Unlike the books by Ulrichs, Krafft-Ebing, etc., — the sale of which was often restricted to professional readers for fear of running afoul of obscenity laws — Collins’s book was marketed directly to the average lay reader in homes across America. Unlike other books which were also marketed to the mass market, Collins refrains and even denounces the kind of demonization of gay people which so many other “expert” doctors foisted on the American public. And it is in that sense that I argue that Collins was a transitional figure. Through the rest of his chapter, he makes clear that it is the duty of science to figure out how to cure and prevent homosexuality’s development (and he optimistically believed, in 1926, that science stood at the threshold of that very accomplishment). And yet it would take many more years before other books on sexuality and relationships targeting the mass market readership would begin to provide this kind of outlook:

I have but small hope that I shall be able to convince the majority of my readers that urnings are not monsters in human form whose salutations should be met with sneers and overtures to friendship with a kick; nevertheless, in view of the fact that my experience has taught me that they are not necessarily morbid or mad, and that many of them suffer through their sex-allotment, I construe it to be my duty to interpret them as it is society’s duty to understand them.

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?

LCR: No Deal On ENDA (Updated)

Ben Adler at The Nation wrote earlier today that the Log Cabin Republicans endorsed Gov. Mitt Romney for President in exchange for a Romney’s support for ENDA — or at least a nod that Romney would support ENDA without saying publicly that he would support ENDA so that he doesn’t piss off his ultra-conservative supporters. Now Chris Geidner at BuzzFeed has the insta-flop to the mini-flip:

The head of Log Cabin Republicans Tuesday night denied reports that his organization’s late endorsement of Mitt Romney came as part of a secret deal in which the Republican presidential candidate agreed to sign the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

Cooper acknowledged that he “discussed legislative vehicles and executive actions with Romney regarding workplace non-discrimination, including ENDA.” But he insisted the endorsement did not come in response to a Romney campaign pledge to sign ENDA — noting, “I did not say Romney would sign the current form of ENDA.”

I gotta say, the more I learn about this, the angrier I get. We’re supposed to believe that there was some kind of vague understanding aof a hint of a promise — or no, maybe not a promise; maybe just an understanding — from a candidate who has had absolutely no compunction about changing his stand depending on who happens to be standing in front of him at the time. And that, as flimsy as it is, is enough for Log Cabin Republicans to endorse a candidate whose policies for the LGBT community are no better than a previous sitting president who they declined to support in 2004?

Look, I get that Log Cabin Republicans are, well, Republicans, and I absolutely appreciate the difficult role that they play in advocating on behalf of gay Republicans in a party that, broadly speaking, would rather not have them around. But when they withheld their support for Bush in 2004, LCR demonstrated that there were limits to how far they would be pushed around. And when they endorsed McCain in 2008, they explicitly referred to their principled stand in 2004 to applaud McCain for opposing the Federal Marriage Amendment. In 2012, LCR abandoned those principles when they endorsed Romney with nothing in return. Nothing, except some gossamer-thin suggestion that somebody on his staff might have said something kinda positive, depending on you you look at it, and depending on what time of the day it is. So what LCR ends up doing is they are rewarding a candidate whose policies will directly and adversely effect the very constituency that LCR claims to represent. And pretend that this is some kind of victory. That’s not advocacy. That’s a sell-out.

Update: By the way, from a year ago:

The Republican National Committee has named a prominent gay Republican to its finance committee, marking an important fundraising outreach effort to a constituency long ceded by the party.

R. Clarke Cooper, who is executive director of the gay group Log Cabin Republicans, will help the RNC’s fundraising efforts for the 2012 cycle. Cooper is one of the first openly gay members of the party to serve in such a prominent role, and his appointment is a signal that RNC Chairman Reince Priebus is willing to reach out to communities that have traditionally been neglected by the party.

“I am honored to be a part of the Republican National Committee’s effort to advance a pro-growth, pro-free enterprise agenda, especially while working to elect and reelect pro-equality Republicans to office all across the country,” Cooper said in a statement. “Chairman Priebus has demonstrated that he believes inclusion wins and that our party is strongest when we reach every community. I look forward to working within the party to help ensure we are victorious next [sic] November.”

Stroke a few egos, invite someone on a prestegious board, and suddenly the LCR is endorsing someone they never would have endorsed eight years ago. The LCR now has its constituencies crossed. It is not an advocacy group on behalf of LGBT Republicans. It is an advocacy group on behalf of the Republican Party to LGBT Republicans.

Did Romey Promise to Pass ENDA to Secure LCR Support?

Ben Adler at The Nation went digging:

I called LCR’s executive director, R. Clarke Cooper, to find out.

Romney’s greatest asset as a politician is his total lack of integrity, honesty or consistency. He is perfectly willing to go before the religious right one day and pledge fealty to them, and the Log Cabin Republicans the next day to do the same. And, apparently, that is what he has done, in private. Cooper asserted repeatedly that, “with a President Romney we’re confident we can work with him [on ENDA].” But when asked why, Cooper offered only reasons that Romney should work with them: that discrimination is a form of economic inefficiency and impediment to job growth. But you could make the same argument to any president. The question is what Romney has said that gives them such confidence. Cooper says, “Romney been clear in his opposition to workplace discrimination.” As I’ve written before, Romney has spoken of his personal preference not to practice discrimination, but he has not actually publicly called for outlawing workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Cooper said he would e-mail me Romney quotes I may have missed that do call for such legislation, but as of this writing he had not done so.

As I continued to press this point, Cooper blurted out, “Have you met with Romney’s domestic policy team?” And therein lies the answer to how Romney secured LCR’s endorsement. His advisers have privately assured LCR that Romney supports ENDA, even though he so fears the wrath of the religious right that he will not adopt this position in public.

Nardelli v. Gagnon continues

Dr. Robert Gagnon may have decided to ignore Jean-Fabrice Nardelli, a classical philologist at l’Université de Provence, but Nardelli is not choosing to do the same. Nardelli has revisited Gagnon’s assertions and pretentions and now has given us a second, revised edition of his monograph.

While Nardelli certainly has the scientific (and scholastic and intellectual) advantage, I think it is his logic and wordsmanship that make this an enjoyable read.

I don’t entirely agree with Nardelli on every point. For example, I think that orientation – or at least a self-awareness of attractions and one’s difference from the majority – has a strong essentialist component. But his criticisms are nevertheless presented in a way that delights and encourages thought rather than invite challenge. Here’s a sample:

Gagnon is nothing but an entrenched essentialist student of homosexuality and a believer in the framework theological-scientific of the male and female sexes who will never admit that biological sex is dependent on culture and ideology, therefore historically determined, and that his critical box of tools amounts to the following analogy : provided that the lexemes ‘red’, ‘blue’, and ‘white’ appear in a short passage which, conjecturally, could be made to yield the ideas of ‘country’ or ‘nation’, he trumpets that it must be the United States and nothing else, although France has indeed the same colours in her flag.

ROBERT GAGNON’S THE BIBLE AND HOMOSEXUAL PRACTICE
TEN YEARS AFTER: A NON-THEOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT.

SECOND, REVISED EDITION

Globe endorses Tisei

The Boston Globe, the city’s more liberal newspaper, has issued an editorial endorsing Republican Richard Tisei. Endorsing a Republican is a rare move for the Globe and the decision is based both in a familiarity and comfort with Tisei and with growing frustration over Democrat John Tierney’s increasingly difficult-to-believe protestations of innocence in his family’s illegal offshore gambling operation.

There’s longstanding evidence of Tisei’s willingness to defy his party and even public sentiment at key points; he voted against rolling back the state income tax from 5.3 percent to 5 percent because he didn’t think the state could afford to do so. He argues that, because he would be the only openly gay Republican to be elected to Congress, he would have a national profile of sorts. He would, and he should use it to press for tolerance and moderation among his fellow Republicans.

The other reason to support Tisei is to underscore the principle of accountability — to make clear that service in elected office is conditioned on leveling with the electorate, and in responding to legitimate inquiries, in a way that John Tierney has not done.

Neither his brother-in-law’s involvement in an offshore gambling operation nor the fact that his wife received significant payments for handling his brother-in-law’s money should, by itself, disqualify Tierney from further service. Yet his insistence that he knew nothing about the matter strains credulity. And his efforts to fend off inquiries into the subject — for instance, by trying to stage-manage how the issue might be discussed in debates — seem high-handed and disrespectful of voters’ legitimate concern.

Currently polls are slightly favoring Tisei and the Globe’s endorsement could carry weight. Should Tisei win, he will be the first non-incumbent Republican to be openly gay when elected to Congress.

Log Cabin’s disappointing endorsement

Log Cabin Republicans has endorsed Mitt Romney for president. While it is a “qualified endorsement”, I’m not certain that it is either deserved or wise.

I share the organization’s frustrations with President Obama. The economic condition of our nation is lamentable and the president’s policies do not align with what I believe to be sound economic theory or principled fiscal responsibility. I do not share his views about the international role of our nation and his priorities are not my own. The three debates have left me convinced that he has no solution and will, at best, be a placeholder until someone better and wiser can be elected.

But LCR did not issue a “not Obama” endorsement. They have endorsed Mitt Romney. And while he is no Rick Santorum, he has not impressed me as a man of vision and firm principles.

LCR rightly notes that Romney’s pledge and pander to the National Organization for Marriage is no indication that if elected Romney would push for a federal marriage amendment. Nor would he seek to reinstate Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

But Mitt Romney likely would instruct the Justice Department to defend DOMA (should it still be in the courts) and would reverse a number of policy positions that impact gay federal employees. And these decisions would not only be harmful to LGBT Americans, they would harm the nation. They would continue the divisive and destructive culture war and diminish our standing in the world.

There is within Log Cabin Republicans’ endorsement statement one sentence that gives me hope; they state that the endorsement is not free.

While “not free” can mean most anything, within this organization’s history it has been a literal term. LCR has negotiated with campaign’s in previous years to move the Republican Party outside its comfort zone: policy positions, speakers at the national convention, campaign language. These have been trades that have been of substantial substance and required clearance at the highest level.

So it is possible that LCR has negotiated with the candidate for something beneficial to our community. It’s late in the game, so I can’t imagine what could be the issue – and I may never know. So this is for me little more than a vague hope to give small comfort to a disappointment.

The text of the endorsement:

Log Cabin Republicans Endorse Mitt Romney for President

We Are Americans First

Presidential endorsements are serious business. The decision to say, “we stake our name and our reputation” on a candidate’s worthiness for the nation’s highest office says as much about an organization’s principles as it does the candidate.

As the only Republican organization dedicated to representing the interests of LGBT Americans and their allies, Log Cabin Republicans work within the GOP to make the conservative case for pro-equality policies and legislation. Since Log Cabin’s founding in the late 1970s, we have believed in a simple idea: building a stronger, more inclusive Republican Party requires Republicans reaching out to Republicans.

The freedom to work without fear of discrimination, the freedom to serve in our nation’s military, and the freedom to marry are all issues of vital importance. As we considered our endorsement decision, we did not degrade these issues as irrelevant, nor did we overlook the harm that is done to the Republican brand when our standard-bearers appear to be caught up in an outdated culture war.

But as we condemn the aspects of the GOP platform which work to exclude our families, we are still able to cheer the vision for America which was presented in Tampa, where success is a virtue, equal opportunity is ensured, and leaders recognize that it is the American people, not government, that build our nation and fuel its prosperity.
We believe that President Obama has broken his promises to our country. Rather than focusing on job creation, he pushed through an extremely partisan, expensive and intrusive healthcare bill, presided over a United States credit downgrade, and has made no credible attempt to cut spending as our national debt has topped $16 trillion. Our nation is in a financial crisis, and we are in desperate need of a change in course.

If LGBT issues are a voter’s highest or only priority, then Governor Romney may not be that voter’s choice. However, Log Cabin Republicans is an organization representing multifaceted individuals with diverse priorities. Having closely reviewed the candidate’s history and observed the campaign, we believe Governor Romney will make cutting spending and job creation his priorities, and, as his record as Governor of Massachusetts suggests, will not waste his precious time in office with legislative attacks on LGBT Americans.

We are confident that there will be no retreat from the significant gains we’ve made in recent years, most importantly on repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” With regard to the LGBT issue most likely to reach the president’s desk and most vital to many in our community today – workplace nondiscrimination – we are persuaded that we can work with a Romney administration to achieve a desirable outcome. And for those people who point fearfully to potential vacancies on the United States Supreme Court, we offer a reminder: five of the eight federal court rulings against DOMA were written by Republican-appointed judges. Mitt Romney is not Rick Santorum, and Paul Ryan is not Michele Bachmann. Otherwise, our decision would have been different.
After long consideration, weighing input from our members and chapters, and dialogue with the Mitt Romney campaign and the candidate, the National Board of Directors of the Log Cabin Republicans have elected to issue a qualified endorsement for Governor Romney for president.

Significance of a Qualified Endorsement

The qualified nature of this endorsement means that Log Cabin Republicans will be most active in our support for House and Senate candidates. Our membership base and network of chapters nationwide will be actively supporting our allies in Congress as part of the National Republican Congressional Committee’s “Operation Rolling Surge” deployment program.

Our greatest efforts will be directed at electing pro-equality leaders like Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), the first Republican to cosponsor the repeal of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act; members of the House LGBT Equality Caucus like Representatives Nan Hayworth and Richard Hanna of New York; and staunchly pro-equality challengers like Linda McMahon of Connecticut and our very own Richard Tisei of Massachusetts, who will become the first openly gay Republican elected to Congress. While many of our members will also be working hard on behalf of Governor Romney, growing the pro-equality Republican presence in the House and Senate is our highest electoral priority this year.

Regarding the governor’s signature on the National Organization for Marriage pledge during the Republican primaries
From the day Governor Romney signed this pledge, Log Cabin has been outspoken in our opposition to this exercise in an outdated politics of division. Even with this endorsement, we will continue to voice our disagreement with any call for a constitutional amendment federalizing a definition of marriage that excludes LGBT families.

However, 2012 is not 2004. The Federal Marriage Amendment has been voted on twice, and each time has failed with bipartisan opposition. Marriage equality is now the law in six states and the District of Columbia, and polls consistently show a slim but growing majority of Americans supporting the freedom to marry. Even among Republicans, support for the freedom to marry is growing. Particularly in today’s economic climate, there is simply no appetite to pass or even seriously consider any such amendment.

While even the suggestion of enshrining discrimination in our nation’s most precious document is deeply offensive, there is a significant difference between a valid threat and an empty promise made to a vocal but shrinking constituency. In our judgment, the NOM pledge is ultimately merely symbolic and thus should not be the basis of a decision to withhold an endorsement from an otherwise qualified candidate, particularly given the gravity of the economic and national security issues currently at stake.

Conclusion

There has been discussion about whether we, as members of Log Cabin Republicans, are LGBT first or Republican first. Ultimately, we believe the answer is neither. We are Americans first, and as such, must stand for what we believe is right for our country.

Our endorsement of Mitt Romney is not free. We commit, here and now, that we will work with the party as we are able, and challenge the party as it is necessary, to ensure that it lives up to its highest ideals of limited government and individual freedom.The Log Cabin Republicans motto is “inclusion wins.” If LGBT Americans are serious about winning equality for all, rather than merely playing politics, Republicans must be part of the team.

“Uncle Toms” Endorses Romney

Over the weekend, it looked like Gov. Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign might have cracked the door open a tiny bit on marriage equality when senior campaign advisor Pat Buchanan said that Romney “very much supports traditional marriage, but he’s also a very strong advocate for the Tenth Amendment. It’s a state issue.” That seemed to signal a move toward a more moderate position, one in conflict with Romney’s previously stated support for the Federal Marriage Amendment which would have the effect of overriding the Tenth Amendment when it comes to marriage equality. Chris Geidner noticed that late Saturday afternoon and wondered if this signaled a change in Romney’s position on the FMA. His post was up at Buzzfeed for all of an hour before he updated it to reflect a clarification by campaign advisor Bay Buchanan:

“Governor Romney supports a federal marriage amendment to the Constitution that defines marriage as an institution between a man and a woman. Governor Romney also believes, consistent with the 10th Amendment, that it should be left to states to decide whether to grant same-sex couples certain benefits, such as hospital visitation rights and the ability to adopt children. I referred to the Tenth Amendment only when speaking about these kinds of benefits – not marriage.”

And so it is against that backdrop that this email landed in my inbox this morning:

LCR Executive Director R. Clarke Cooper

After careful consideration and consultation with our members and chapters, as well as communication with Mitt Romney and his campaign team, the National Board of Directors of the Log Cabin Republicans has elected to endorse Governor Romney for president.

The decision to endorse is the right one for our members, our community, and for the nation as a whole,” said Log Cabin Republicans Executive Director, R. Clarke Cooper. “Despite our disagreement with Governor Romney on the issue of marriage, on balance it is clear that in today’s economic climate, concern for the future of our country must be the highest priority. We are Republicans, and we agree with Governor Romney’s vision for America in which success is a virtue, equal opportunity is ensured, and leaders recognize that it is the American people, not government, that build our nation and fuel its prosperity. On issues of particular concern to the LGBT community, we believe Governor Romney will move the ball forward compared to past Republican presidents. No matter who is in the White House, it is crucial our community always has a credible voice speaking out on behalf of LGBT Americans. Log Cabin Republicans will be that voice to President Mitt Romney.”

A bit of history is instructive. In 2000, members of the gay community met with then-Gov. George W. Bush, who didn’t make any specific promises but pledged to listen to our concerns. As governor of Texas, he had built a reputation for working across party lines (it would only be as President that he would take the “my way or the highway” approach to governing) and so those gay Republican leaders came away from that meeting taking Bush at his word. The Log Cabin Republicans endorsed him in 2000.

But in 2004, when Bush was campaigning in support for the Federal Marriage Amendment, the Log Cabin Republicans stood on principle and refused to endorse him, specifically calling out Bush’s support for FMA in their announcement. Instead of an endorsement, they left it to individual members to decide on their own how and whether they wanted to support Bush’s re-election. That stand was not without cost; a small Republican-above-all-else faction within LCR broke away to form GOPRound, and that group has been hobnobbing with the likes of Ann Coulter ever since.

In 2008, LCR pointed to Sen. John McCain’s vote against the Federal Marriage Amendment as part of their justification for endorsing him against then-Sen. Barack Obama. LCR ignored McCain’s support for California’s Prop 8 and Arizona’s Prop 102, but with his opposition to the FMA, it appeared that LCR’s principled stand in 2004 was intact.

But with this endorsement, whatever principles that LCR might have had have now been shattered into a million little pieces. “We Are Americans First,” proclaims the LCR email this morning in an insulting headline that tells us that gay couples who want to marry and build a family are lesser Americans than others.

NOM’s pledge (Click to enlarge)

While it is unlikely that a Federal Marriage Amendment will make it out of Congress anytime soon, it is a certainty that a Romney Justice Department will relieve the House Bipartisan Legal Advisory Committee of its $1.5 million-and-rising chore of defending the Defense of Marriage Act in court. Romney signed the National Organization for Marriage’s five-point pledge, point three of which was to “defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act vigorously in court” and the fifth point was to work to roll back the District of Columbia’s marriage equality law. Romney is also running on what is arguably the most overtly homophobic Republican Party platform in history, a platform that LCR had already embarrassed themselves when they tried to whitewash it in their press release.

What makes the LCR’s move so craven is that there is a very good possibility that Section 3 of DOMA might be declared unconstitutional within the next year, and a similarly good possibility that almost a third of Americans will live in a state that grants marriage equality. This year might effectively be the FMA’s last gasp as a rallying cry, just as the repeal of DADT is now largely conceded to be a done deal.  There is a possibility that 2012 might be the last year in which they would have had to take what would have been seen by future Republicans as both a principled and prescient stand for the American families that they claim to represent. Instead, LCR sold those families out for a pat on the head and little else, revealing them as the partisan hacks they truly are.

Nearly two months ago, Rep. Barney Frank stirred a hornet’s nest when he called LCR “Uncle Toms.” That’s a serious charge, one that caused a lot of consternation within the gay community. We can still argue over whether that is a fair characterization, but that argument now is overshadowed by this endorsement which will go down as a shameful moment for LCR. Truly shameful. But hey, maybe Ann Coulter can now be their new bestest friend forever.

The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, October 23

Lt. Gen. Lewis B. Hershey

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Draft Board Head Says Being Gay Is One Way To Beat the Draft: 1965. Lt. Gen. Lewis B. Hershey, 72, had headed the Selective Service System since 1940, when he organized the Service after Congress authorized the draft for World War II. Establishing a national system of local draft boards was challenging, so was keeping the system operating while balancing the concerns, more or less, of five president, Republican- and Democratic-led Congresses, and millions of families whose sons would find themselves the recipient of a letter from Uncle Sam with the salutation, “Greetings!” Part of the systems success could be found in the autonomy that was granted to local draft boards. The Selective Service Law gave those local draft boards complete discretion in deciding to grant or deny deferments.

But as the Vietnam War escalated and students became restive with anti-draft demonstrations, Hershey found himself with a new set of challenges. In 1965, Hershey was still unfazed, calling the early anti-draft movement “a complete flop.” But he did express one concern to a United Press International reporter: “My real concern is that some local boards may react to all of this agitation by canceling student deferments. I hope that won’t happen. It would be unwise, because the national interest is served by keeping young men in college to complete their education.”

As for the “agitators,” Hershey said that of the two million college men, “only a tiny fraction of one percent have been involved in staging protest parades, burning draft cards or other demonstrations of unwillingness to serve in the armed forces. … The effect on our ability o meet draft calls has been negligible, and I am confident it will remain negligible.” Hershey had also learned that some young men were trying to beat the draft by deliberately flunking the mental and physical exams. “We also have ingenious ways of detecting these little frauds,” he said. “There are always some people who try to fool the examiners. But only a very few get away with it.” And with draft calls shooting up to 45,000 men a month, the armed forces had relaxed their examination requirements somewhat. “A man with a high school diploma is now virtually assured of acceptability,” Hershey said.

But there was still one sure-fire way to beat the draft: “If he tells the examiner that he’s a homosexual, he’ll be rejected. We recognize that he might be lying, but a person who’ll say that has certainly got something wrong with him. We have enough men to defend this country without having to draft self proclaimed homosexuals.”

Le Journal de Montreal’s front page coverage of the Truxx and Le Mystique raids (click to enlarge)

Demonstrations Against Montreal Police Raids: 1977. About two thousand of Montreal’s gay community took to the streets and jammed downtown Ste. Catherine Street very early on Sunday morning shouting “fascist dogs” and “gestapo” at motorcycle police who were called to clear the area. The focus of the anger was the brutal “morality squad” raids early Saturday morning at Truxx and Le Mystique, two gay bars. Police barged in wielding machine guns and bullet-proof vests as they arrested 144 men for being in a “bawdy house” or for “gross indecency” — common charges for anyone who was thought to be gay. Those raids capped two years of nearly constant police harassment and raids which had begun as a campaign to “clean up” the city in preparation for the 1976 Olympics. But with this latest raid, the gay community fought back in what was later dubbed, “Quebec’s Stonewall.” Also different this time, gays and lesbians had the news media’s support. By the end of the year, the Parti Québéois adopted Bill 88 which ensured that sexual orientation would be covered under the province’s Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms which prohibited all forms of discrimination. However, the change failed to have much of an appreciable affect, and  police raids would continue until Montreal’s “other” Stonewall rebellion in 1990 following a riotous raid of a loft party.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Jean Acker: 1893. She appeared in several silent films in the 1910s and 1920s, thanks, in part, to a relationship she struck up with another silent film actress, Alla Nazimova, who introduced Acker to a group of lesbian and bisexual actresses known as the “sewing circle.” Acker’s greatest claim to fame, however, is in her real-life role as Mrs. Rudolph Valentino. They married in 1919 after a two month courtship, but the marriage was reportedly never consummated (it’s said that she locked him out of the hotel bedroom on their wedding night). They filed for divorce a few years later. In 1923, Acker met former Ziegfeld Follies girl Chloe Carter, and they remained together for the rest of their lives. Acker died in 1978 of natural causes and was buried next to Carter.

Lilyan Tashman: 1896. The actress got her start in vaudeville and Broadway before moving to Hollywood to become a well-known film star. Most of her roles were that of a “bitchy” other woman or as a sharp, clever villainess. She married a vaudevillian performer  in 1914, but they divorced in 1921. In 1925, she married openly gay actor Edmund Lowe, and they had what Hollywood reporters described, perhaps with a bit of snark, as an “ideal marriage.” The couple entertained lavishly at their home, where their weekly parties reportedly becoming “full-blown orgies.” One reporter described her as “the most gleaming, glittering, moderne, hard-surfaced, and distingué woman in all of Hollywood.” She died young, at the age of 37, of cancer shortly after filming her final film in New York in 1934.

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?

NOM update

It’s been a while since we bopped over to the National Organization for Marriage’s website to see how things are going. But here’s how they’re doing:

Dump Starbucks – NOM has been dumping Starbucks for at least as far back as April, so by now anyone who is going to boycott Starbucks has pretty much already signed their pledge, leaving it peaked out at 48,382. They’ve only picked up about 3,000 signatures in the past 3-4 months. Needless to say, Starbucks isn’t trembling.

Dump General Mills – This dump was even smaller. At 24,611 individuals pledging to “look for substitutes” to General Mills brands, this is a colossal failure.

Keep the Republic and Marriage – Concerned that the world is going to discover any day now that almost every single cent they have comes from the Roman Catholic Church or one of it’s adjunct organizations, NOM started this website to rally their followers to donate and get on their list. It’s not going so well. In the three weeks that they’ve been pushing this project, they have managed to get 371 signatures on their roster, several of which are employees and Board Members.

Matching Pledge – Also about three weeks old is NOM’s double-down matching pledge. It’s doing a little better, but if their goal was to pick up small donors I don’t think they’ve done that. With one week to go until the election, NOM has raised $539,367 of their million dollar goal (bringing the total donation to $1,618,101). If we were to assume that this was related to their Republic marriage list, that would be about $1,500 per donor (an unlikely idea) so we can white off the “gee, look at our everyday average-joe contributors”.

But, then again, this is all just dressing and for show. NOM doesn’t need donors or supporters; their funding source has very very deep pockets.

Romney loses “Republican at heart”

Y’all may have heard of a sweet lil’ girl named Kelly Clarkson. The first winner of American Idol, she turned her moment in the sun into a strong decade long career, giving us such hits as A Moment Like This, Since You Been Gone, Because of You, Walk Away, My Life Would Suck Without You, Mr. Knowitall, and the ubiquitous (What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You) Stronger.

Being a Texas girl, Kelly calls herself “a Republican at heart.” But she told a British tabloid that she just can’t vote for Romney: (Daily Star)

Kelly added: “I’ve been reading online about the debates and I’m probably going to vote for Obama again, even though I’m a Republican at heart.

“I can’t support Romney’s policies as I have a lot of gay friends and I don’t think it’s fair they can’t get married.

“I’m not a hardcore feminist but we can’t be going back to the 50s.

Can I mark it “none of the above”?

Ain’t ‘bama grand? Where else can you have an elected official implying that even though he’s the (newly re-partied) Democrat, he’s a better candidate because he’s only a raging homophobe and not one of them there homoSEXshulls himself. From the Facebook page of Alabama State Rep. Daniel Boman (D-Sulligent):

Who would you vote for on Novemeber 6, 2012 between the following two candidates:

1) A republican who is a homosexual who has a voting record of voting AGAINST ALL homosexual legislation. Further, this particular homosexual congressman has ALL homosexuals working on his congressional staff

OR

2) A democrat who is a straight male, but has no voting record for or against homosexual legislation.

And, though he don’t come right out and say so, I assume that good-ol’-boy Boman ain’t got him no homoSEXshulls on his staff, no sirreee bob.

Now Boman’s claims that it’s all hypothetical and he’s not trying to imply anything about his opponent, Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Haleyville). So if you want to know if Aderholt is a homoSEXshull, call him and ask him. And while Aderholt’s record is about what you’d expect from an Alabama Republican (vile), he did at least have a good come-back: (AL.com)

Contacted for a response to Boman’s tactics, Aderholt’s campaign offered only this: “When someone is making a fool of himself, we hate to interrupt,” said Aderholt campaign spokesman Brian Rell today.

But don’t you go thinking Boman’s a hater. No, no. He thinks that being one of them homoSEXshulls should disqualify a person from holding public office, but only if they are conservative. Ya know, cuz that not just homoSEXshullism, that’s not just an office full of them there homoSEXshulls for your staff, that’s downright homoSEXshull hypocrisy. Lordy!

But back to the question.

Who would I vote for? Neither. Or maybe I’d just mark the ballot “the biggest homophobic asshat in the race” and let them argue over which one I meant.

Email of the Day

Give me money and magical things happen…

To date, no state has approved homosexual “marriage” when it was decided by popular vote. I believe in my heart that Washington will not be the first.

Public Advocate has been fighting for real marriage in Washington State for months now. In just the past week, Public Advocate supporters raised thousands of dollars to alert Washington voters to the threat facing real marriage in their state. And now thousands of ads are running in the state exposing the truth.

The Homosexual Lobby is desperate to get at least one win this election for their radical agenda. Their allies are pulling out all the stops to see Referendum 74 passed. But I am proud to say , Public Advocate is standing squarely in their path.

…P.S. Please chip in with a donation of $10 or more to help Public Advocate fight for traditional values.

I think its hilarious that he says that “supporters raised thousands of dollars,” and that “now thousands of ads are running in the state” as though a single time given to him had anything to do with those ads. We know where that money really goes, which is why I recommend Delgaudio’s group to everyone who wants to donate money to fight marriage equality in Washington or anywhere else.

The Daily Agenda for Monday, October 22

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Surgeon General Urges Frank Sex Ed to Combat AIDS: 1986. While the Reagan White House would become widely remembered for its reticence to discuss the AIDS epidemic, the administration’s point man on health matters, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop had no qualms about addressing the topic head on. On October 22, 1986, Dr. Koop issued what The New York Times called “an unusually explicit report to the nation” calling on schools and parents to have “frank, open discussions” with very young children and teens about AIDS.

Koop wrote in the report, “Many people, especially our youth, are not receiving information that is vital to their future health and well-being because of our reticence in dealing with the subjects of sex, sexual practices and homosexuality. ‘This silence must end. We can no longer afford to sidestep frank, open discussions about sexual practices — homosexual and heterosexual. Education about AIDS should start at an early age so that children can grow up knowing the behaviors to avoid to protect themselves from exposure to the AIDS virus.” His report also addressed several myths that were floating around about AIDS, stressing that HIV was not spread by common everyday contact like shaking hands, hugging, kissing, coughing or sneezing, nor is it spread from contact with toilet seats, food prepared by people with AIDS, or eating utensils.

This report marked the end of a long and puzzling period of silence about the AIDS epidemic, both from the administration and from Koop himself. He later wrote in Koop: The Memoirs of America’s Family Doctor that in 1983, Assistant Secretary of Health Ed Brandt had excluded him from the Executive Task Force on AIDS, an act which was the start of a long series of battles he had with others in the administration who effectively muzzled him from speaking on the topic. He was even forbidden from talking to Congressional representatives about it. That exclusion finally ended in the summer of 1985, after Brandt had left and Koop was able to join the task force and become the administration’s public spokesperson on AIDS. In February 1986, Reagan asked him to write a report on AIDS, and Koop worked feverishly not only to complete the report, but to get it past some in the administration who opposed any discussion on AIDS.  After Koop’s press conference on October 22, some in the White House made a last ditch attempt to modify or “bottle up the report,” as  he put it, but “eventually the presses rolled, the mail trucks ran, and the report went out.”

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Lord Alfred Douglas: 1870. Nicknamed “Bosie,” Douglas was best known as the lover of Oscar Wilde. Their affair began at around 1891 even though Wilde was already married and had two sons. Friends described Douglas as spoiled, reckless and extravagant, perhaps in a bid to emulate Wilde’s own flamboyance.  Douglas’s father, The Marquess of Queensberry, soon became suspicious of the relationship between his son and Wilde, and tried to disown him. Douglas refused, and tensions escalated. When Queensberry publicly insulted Wilde by leaving a visiting card at a club on which he had written, “For Oscar Wilde posing as a sodomite,” Wilde responded by suing Queensberry for libel. When Queensberry was declared not guilty, attention then turned to Wilde himself, who was arrested and tried for sodomy and “gross indecency” based on evidence presented at Queensberry’s trial. Wiled was convicted in 895 and sentenced to two years of hard labor. Douglas was forced into exile in Europe.

While Wilde was in prison, he wrote his famous letter, De Profundis, to Douglas, describing in detail what he felt about him, and making clear in no uncertain terms that the two men were lovers. He was never allowed to send it while in prison, although he may have sent a copy after his release. After Wilde’s death, portions of De Profundis were published in 1912, which led Douglas to denounce Wilde as “the greatest force for evil that has appeared in Europe during the last three hundred and fifty years.” He also began a “litigious and libelous career,” suing and being sued for criminal libel over the next decade. In 1923, he was convicted of libeling Winston Churchill, saying Churchill was part of a Jewish conspiracy to kill the British Secretary of State for War, for which Douglas spent six months in prison. Apparently that experience made him more sympathetic to Wilde’s experience, and his attitude softened. He died in 1945 at the age of 74.

Robert Rauschenberg: 1925. Born to a blue-collar, fundamentalist family in Port Arthur, Texas, Rauschenbeg studied at the Kansas City Art Institute, the Académie Julian in Paris, and at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. It was at Black Mountain College where Rauschenberg studied painting under Josef Albers, a Bauhaus founder, but the strict Bauhaus principles of “uninfluenced experimentation” taught Rauschenberg to do “exactly the reverse.” The otherwise experimental nature of Black Mountain however encouraged him to explore and collaborate with a wide range of interdisciplinary artists, including performances with composer John Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham.

Monogram (1955-1959)

He had married, briefly from 1950 to 1953, and that union produced a son. After that marriage ended, he spent a year with painter Cy Twombly before embarking on a personally and professionally fruitful relationship with Jasper Johns. Rauschenberg and Johns remained together for the next eight years, exchanging ideas, critiquing each other’s work, and together establishing a new approach to art. Their personal relationship and professional collaboration would end up defining a new approach to art, one which sought to bridge the gap between art and life — especially the deeply introspective and sometimes obtuse art of Abstract Expressionists. Their approach was to combining found common objects — quilts, newspapers, tires, brooms, and all kinds of salvaged objects — with images from pop culture, as a kind of foreshadow for Andy Warhol’s work a decade later. Rauschenber called his works “combines,” and some of his most famous ones were Monogram (1955-1959, which included a stuffed goat with a tire around its abdomen) and Canyon (1959). In Factum I (1957), he created a painting that the spontaneous drips, splashes and smears of paint popularized by Action Painters like Jackson Pollack, and then questioned the entire process by faithfully reproducing his painting in Factum II.

After Rauschenberg’s relationship with Johns ended in 1961, Rauschenberg began working with silkscreen printing for a series of paintings what included news photographs. He designed sets and costumes for Merce Cunningham, and other experimental choreographers. In 1983, he won a Grammy Award for his album design for the Talking Heads’ Speaking in Tongues. In 1998, the Vatical commissioned a work based on the Apocalypse to commemorate the controversial Franciscan priest Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, who reputedly displayed stigmata on his hands, feet and side, and who had died in 1968. That work covers a massive window of Pio’s new pilgrimage church in Pio of Pietrelcina, which was designed by Architect Renzo Piano. The work was a particular challenge for Rauschenberg, who grew up in the austere Church of Christ and who hadn’t attended church since his twenties. “I bet you’ll be a Catholic before you finish the project,” the Franciscan prior in charge of the project told Rauschenberg. “And I suppose you’ll be an artist,” Rauschenberg replied. He died in 2008 at his home on Captiva Island, Florida.

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?

Ted Haggard Endorses Civil Marriage Equality

The world is a funny place. Now Ted Haggard – yes that Ted Haggard, is endorsing civil marriage equality. (OnTop)

While Haggard supported the 2006 referendum which amended Colorado’s Constitution to say that only heterosexual couples may marry in the state, he now argues otherwise.

In the online debate against Rabbi Benjamin Hecht, director of Orthodox Jewish think tank Nishma, Haggard said he sees a distinction between biblical law and civil law.

“We’ve reached a point where human dignity and mutual respect is so important,” Haggard said. “If someone is dealing with same-sex attraction or homosexuality, and they want someone to be their life partner of the same gender, though we would oppose that in our churches, it should be allowed by the state.”

It’s easy to dismiss Haggard as a joke. But let’s remember that he was the leader of the National Association of Evangelicals and is still a pastor, of sorts, and in connection with that community. His statement is a bit of a milestone.