Box Turtle Bulletin

France Sets A Date

In an interview with AFP, French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said that a draft law allowing same-sex marriage will be approved by government ministers on October 31. The bill, which will be presented to  President Francois Hollande’s cabinet, has drawn fierce opposition from the country’s religious leaders and more than 1,200 French mayors or deputy mayors:

Xavier Lemoine, a mayor who has said he will not allow gay weddings to take place in his town hall in the Paris suburb of Montfermeil, said the proposed legislation would be a disaster for society.

“I can refuse to apply the law if the law is tyrannical,” he said. “Above all else, I have to respect my conscience.”

The mayors’ petition against gay marriage is being orchestrated by Jacques Bompard, mayor of the southern French town of Orange and a member of the far-right National Front. The 1,200 signatures represent less than one percent of the total number of mayors and deputy mayors in France.

Hollande predicts that the bill will become law in mid-2013, and claims to have enough cross-party support to get the measure passed. Eight European countries, including six in the EU, provide full marraige equality for same-sex couples.

Ugandan MP Failed In Call for Africa-Wide Support for Anti-Homosexuality Bill

Uganda President Yoweri Museveni at the Golden Jubilee Independence ceremony in Kampala (Photo by Faiswal Kasirye/Daily Monitor)

Uganda is marking its 50th anniversary as an independent nation this week with dignitaries flying in from all over the world. But as neighboring Kenya’s Daily Nation reported, Uganda’s proposal to execute gay people has become a “blot” on that nation’s Jubilee celebrations when the subject came up in “the otherwise languid Pan African Parliament“:

Dr Moussa Idriss Ndele from Chad moved the motion in recognition of Uganda’s big day which was seconded by his Kenyan counterpart Mr Gideon Mung’aro and unanimously adopted by the House. MPs praised President Yoweri Museveni, saying his leadership had seen Uganda move from a dictatorship to democracy. …But a remark by South African opposition MP Santosh Vinita Kalyan challenging Uganda government’s hostility towards homosexuality momentarily changed the momentum of the debate.

(South African opposition MP Santosh Vinita) Kalyan, the Democratic Alliance’s party whip had started off by showering praises on the Museveni government for placing health ‘on top of its agenda” citing the fight against the AIDS pandemic as an example. However, she said, homophobia was “a blot” in the progress the Ugandan government had made.

“Uganda has a blot in terms of its stand and attitude towards homosexuals. Regrettably, they want to criminalise homosexuality,” Ms Kalyan said while supporting the motion on Uganda.

The issue,she said, was not about “whether one supports homosexuality or not” but it is about their human rights. She praised her country’s constitution saying it allowed gays and lesbians their rights.

Uganda MP Cecilia Atim Ogwal (SABC)

Ugandan MP Cecilia Atim Ogwal stood up to announce that she was proud of Uganda’s proposal. According to the South African Broadcasting Corp:

Ugandan parliamentary member Atim Ogwal Cecilia Barbara told the PAP seating: “Africa must stand up. We must pass a resolution condemning homosexuality because it is not an African culture. We are not allowed to practice polygamy in other countries, why should we be forced to do what is not natural?”

Ogwal offered a second resolution “to uphold the value of God and values, of Africa,” saying:

“We abhorr homosexuality and value our God, culture and there is no way we shall allo a man to step on top of another man or a woman to lie on top of another,” said Ms Ogwal, the leader of Uganda’s delegation to the continental Parliament.

Ogwal’s resolution failed:

South African parliamentary member Santosh Vanita Kalyan says the resolution that Uganda is calling for, is “bizarre.”

Kalian went further to say: “It will never pass in this parliament, especially from members like us who feel that the rights of all should be respected.”

Also making their point across, Namibian member of parliament Peter Katjavivi said: “If that is acceptable to a particular member state, let it be.” But Katjavivi was quick to point out that such a resolution “should never be made a continental-wide affair. We should respect laws as they affect individual countries”, he went on to say.

Here is SABC television’s report:

The Daily Agenda for Wednesday, October 10

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Ashland, OR; Atlanta, GA; Bakersfield, CA; Ft. Meyers, FL; Jacksonville, FL; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Tucson, AZ; Winston-Salem, NC.

AIDS Walks This Weekend: Louisville, KY; Sacramento, CA; Tucson, AZ; Watertown, NY.

Other Events This Weekend: Iris Prize Film Festival Cardiff, UK; Gay Day at Disneyland, Hong Kong, China; Chéries-Chéris Film Festival, Paris, France; Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, Seattle, WA.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Newsweek’s “Queer People”: 1949. In the mid-twentieth century, reactions to homosexuality fell into two camps. On one side were those who held that such “sexual perversion” was a criminal act which should be treated harshly by the courts. The other side, which saw themselves as more enlightened, saw homosexuality as a mental illness which merited pity rather than punishment. On October 10, 1949, Newsweek published an editorial titled “Queer People,” which came down squarely in the first camp:

The sex pervert, whether a homosexual, an exhibitionist, or even a dangerous sadist, is too often regarded merely as a ‘queer’ person who never hurts anyone but himself. Then the mangled form of one of his victims focuses public attention to the degenerate’s work. And newspaper headlines flare for days over accounts and feature articles packed with sensational details of the most dastardly and horrifying crimes.

The editorial reviewed The Sexual Criminal, a book by J. Paul DeRiver who headed the Los Angeles Police Department’s Sex Offenses Bureau. Newsweek lauded the “factual scientific book” with 43 case histories, including “lots of very queer people” including “the sadistic pedophile,” “zoophiles, psychopaths who who performed sadistic acts on animals, and the necrophiles, who …commit acts of moral degeneracy upon or in the presence of dead bodies.” Eugene D. Williams, a California “special assistant attorney general,” wrote the introduction to the book, in which he warned that “the semihysterical, foolishly sympathetic, and wholly unscientific attitude of any individual engaged in social work and criminology to regard sex perverts as poor unfortunates who are suffering from disease and cannot help themselves, has a tendency to feed their ego.” To which Newsweek added:

A sterner attitude is required, if the degenerate is to be properly treated and cured. Williams suggests that the sex pervert be treated, not as a coddled patient, but as a particularly virulent type of criminal. “To punish him,” he concludes, “he should be placed in an institution where the proper kind of rehabilitory work can be done so that, of capable of being brought to the realization of the error of his ways, he may be brought back to society prepared to live as a normal, law-abiding individual, rather than turned out as he now is from the penitentiary, confirmed in his perversion.

CT Supreme Court Declares Ban on Same-Sex Marriage Unconstitutional: 2008. In Kerrigan v. Commissioner of Public Health, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled in a 4-3 vote that the state’s constitution , 289 Conn. 135, 957 A.2d 407, is a 2008 decision by the Connecticut Supreme Court protects the right to same-sex marriage. The decision made Connecticut the third state, after Massachusetts and California, to have its state supreme court declare a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. California’s decision would be repealed by Proposition 8. In accordance with the Connecticut Supreme Court’s order, the state began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples on November 12, 2008.

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?

Anoka continues its war against gay teens

Once again, Anoka Minnnesota is in the news. And once again it’s due to absurdly anti-gay behavior.

You may recall that until 2009 the Anoka-Hennepin School District had a policy which banned teachers from referring to homosexuality “as a normal, valid lifestyle.” And you may know that in 2009 the policy was changed to require that teachers “remain neutral” (actually an improvement). The result of the ban was that teachers were afraid to protect gay kids from bullying, lest any defense be deemed un-neutral. In 2010 Justin Aaberg, a 15 year old student, was tormented daily to the point where he finally took his own life. He was one of nine such students that year.

In response, the school board denied that there was a problem with bullying and refused to change the policy. They said that parents who complained that their kids were being bullied were liars.

After teachers began abusing gay students in class, the Minnesota State Department of Human Rights rebuked the school and the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights held an investigation. Rolling Stone magazine wrote about “One Town’s War on Gay Teens”, and Justin Aaberg’s mother Tammy plead for her representative, Republican Michelle Bachmann, to take action.

But it seems that Anoka has no problems with dead gay teens. The Parents Action League, one of only 26 certified anti-gay hate groups in the US, fought to keep anti-gay animus present on the campus. At one point they demanded that rather than be free from bullying, gay kids should be offered ex-gay therapy. Rep. Bachmann, who shares the views of the hate group and whose flamboyantly effeminate husband runs an ex-gay counseling center, refused to assist the kids who were being bullied.

It wasn’t until the Southern Poverty Law Center sued that things changed. In March of this year, the school board settled the lawsuit and agreed to establish anti-bullying programs specifically addressed to meet the needs of gay youth.

But that was the school, not the community. And anti-gay hostility in Anoka rages on.

In response, some in the community stepped up and tried to provide a safe space for LGBT youth. Supported by First Congregational UCC, last August Tammy Aaberg took her pain and turned it into power by creating a non-profit called Justin’s Gift to “help fill the following needs: belonging, self-esteem, self-respect, and ultimately a realization of their importance in the world.”

It seems inconceivable that a group which was created for no other purpose than to help kids in crisis would have opponents. Who wants to dismiss, harm, or cause grief to a kid in crisis?

But as inhumane as that may seem to us, Anoka Minnesota is home to just that mindset. (Minnesota Public Radio)

Organizers of an annual Halloween parade in Anoka denied a request from a gay youth group to walk in this year’s parade.

Justin’s Gift, a nonprofit group created to support gay youth after several suicides in the Anoka-Hennepin School District, received a letter dated Sept. 25 denying their request to walk in the Oct. 27 parade. The letter is signed by the parade chair, who included only her first name, Liz.

“At this time we are unable to accept your application for the parade,” the letter said. “We have reached our maximum for walking units.”

No, they weren’t “pushing the HomoSEXshull Agenda”. As far as I can tell, they had no plans to advocate for opposition to Minnesota’s propose anti-gay marriage ban. They just wanted to march down the street as their favorite fairy tale character. And this is a big deal in Anoka, which imagines itself to be the Halloween Capital of the World. (Conveniently ignoring that half a million people – gay and straight – pack the streets for West Hollywood’s Halloween Carnival.)

Although there is room for “units from all over the midwest“, there’s no place in Anoka for 30 gay kids.

“The kids are pretty upset,” Fietek said. “We’re trying to show these kids that they’re part of the community and unfortunately it backfired and sent a completely different message.”

I have no problem calling this one like I see it. Anoka has yet again shown itself to be a haven for bigots and the enemy of their own LGBT children. If you agree, there is a petition on Change.org

No, Anoka will not change its mind. They will continue to bar the gay kids. But at least they will do so knowing that they do so with the contempt of decent people across the country and the world.

Arkansas Pol: “Why Didn’t Jesus or Paul Condemn Slavery?”

Last May, Dan Savage got into all kinds of trouble for suggesting that the Bible didn’t just condone slavery, but also provided instructions on how Christians could own slaves correctly. Only a little more than five generations ago, about half of American Christians — “good Bible-believing Christians” — read those very same scriptures the same way. Today, very few Christians do, and the very idea of one man owning another person and that person’s spawn to do with whatever he pleases is an odious moral outrage to Bible-beleiving Christians — now that they have set aside those particular verses and concluded (even if they won’t admit to it out loud) that the Bible simply got it wrong on one of the most critical moral arguments our country has ever faced. And if Bible-believing Christians can do that when figuring out whether slavery is moral or not, they can do that with other topics — the morality of nationalism, racism, women’s rights, and, yes, gay rights — that the Bible also got wrong.

Of course, if you absolutely cannot accept the fact that the Bible got anything wrong, then it seems to me that you would have no other recourse but to agree with GOP Arkansas state Rep. Loy Mauch, who in 2003 penned this letter to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette:

Nowhere in the Holy Bible have I found a word of condemnation for the operation of slavery, Old or New Testament. If slavery was so bad, why didn’t Jesus, Paul or the prophets say something?

This country already lionizes Wehrmacht leaders. They go by the names of Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Custer, etc. These Marxists not only destroyed the Constitution they were sworn to uphold, but apostatized the word of God. Either these depraved infidels or the Constitution and Scriptures are in error. I’m more persuaded by the word of God.

It turns out that Mauch wrote several letters defending slavery and the Confederacy to the Democrat-Gazette, and in at least two of them he referred to the Bible to support his position, as did an extraordinary number of American Christians just 150 years ago. In 2009, he repeated himself here:

… If slavery were so God-awful, why didn’t Jesus or Paul condemn it, why was it in the Constitution and why wasn’t there a war before 1861?

The South has always stood by the Constitution and limited government. When one attacks the Confederate Battle Flag, he is certainly denouncing these principles of government as well as Christianity.

This places Christians’ approach to the Bible in sharp relief: Either the slavery is a moral failing and the Bible got it wrong, or the Bible is always right, and therefore Mauch is right and anyone who disagrees with the Bible’s instructions on slavery is at least anti-Christian and possibly in league with Hitler and Stalin. Most Christians have accepted the former position — including the Southern Baptists — even if they cannot bring themselves to acknowledge what that means for the principle of Biblical inerrancy. But it is distressing to notice how often others find ways to agree with Mauch.

The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, October 9

TODAY IN HISTORY:
South Africa Strikes Down Sodomy Law: 1998. South Africa’s penal code defined sodomy as a Schedule 1 offense, like murder or rape, and was punishable by life imprisonment. Another law, Section 20A of the Sexual Offenses Act, which outlawed any behavior “at a party” — defined as a gathering of two or more men — that would be an invitation to sexual activity. Under that law, any hint of a proposition or even a glance, could lead to an arrest. The laws had been mostly ignored — South African cities had been host to Gay Pride parades for more than a decade — but that didn’t stop two prisoners in Cape Town from being charged with sodomy after engaging in consensual sex in 1997. But South Africa’s Constitutional Court responded to a suit brought by the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality and struck down the country’s harsh sodomy law along with Section 20A of the Sexual Offenses Act.

The ruling, written by Judge Lori Ackerman with a concurring ruling by Judge Albie Sachs, held that the decision violated South Africa’s new post-Apartheid 1996 constitution which made South Africa one of the first countries in the world to outlaw discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The justices ruled that the decision was “part of a growing acceptance of difference in an increasingly open and pluralistic South Africa,” which included gays already serving openly in the military and the police force providing domestic partnership benefits for same-sex couples. The ruling African National Congress had earlier decided not to oppose the lawsuit. The ruling was made retroactive to the adoption of an interim constitution of 1994, which also prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Simeon Solomon: 1840. He was the last child to be born into a prominent Jewish family in London. When he was about ten years old, he began to learn to paint from his older brother, and a few years later he attended Carey’s Art Academy. Later, as a student at the  Royal Academy, he became a prominent member of the Pre-Raphaelite Circle, and he held several acclaimed exhibitions at the Royal Academy between 1858 and 1872. Many of his paintings were drawn from his Jewish background, consisting of scenes from the Hebrew bible and ordinary Jewish life, and he was hailed as the “darling of the Pre-Raphaelits.” His paintings also explored, at the very least, affections between men. In 1871 Simeon Solomon privately published his poem “A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep.” John Addington Symonds would note that the themes of same-sex love in the poem was “the key to the meaning of his drawings.”

The Sleepers, and the One that Watcheth (1870, click to enlarge)

Solomon’s career though was ruined in 1873 when he was arrested at a public toilet and fined £100 for attempted sodomy. He was arrested again the next year in Paris and was sentenced to three months in prison. He never recovered. From then on, he was hobbled by alcoholism and became destitute. He would pass his remaining years in and out of the workhouse where he continued to paint, but both the quality and quantity of his work was severely impaired by his drinking. He finally collapsed in central London and died of bronchitis and alcoholism in 1905. Poet and critic Arthur Symons, on learning of Solomon’s death, lamented, “There is nothing in this world so pitiful as a shipwreck of a genius.”

Nona Hendryx: 1944. The Trenton, New Jersey-born singer, producer, songwriter, author and actress was one third (with Patti LaBelle and Sarah Dash) of the trio Labelle, whose greatest hit was 1974’s “Lady Marmalade.” Beginning in 1977, Hendryx embarked on a solo career, but struggled to repeat the success of LaBelle. She wasn’t without work though, as she provided background vocals for the Talking Heads and became a part of New York’s underground rock, R&B and dance scene. As the eighties progressed, she collaborated with Keith Richards, Peter Gabriel and Prince for several of he solo release. In 2001, she came out as bisexual in an interview with The Advocate, and became a gay rights advocate. In 2008, she joined Cyndi Lauper for her True Colors tour.

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 is DESPERATE for small donors

We have long known that the National Organization for Marriage has been funded by a small handful of very significant donors. What I suspect is that once the nature of these donors is known and affiliates eliminated, it may turn out to just be one or two entities.

Whether it is the case that NOM is nothing other than a front for the Roman Catholic Church or it turns out that the few donors are all unrelated, they most definitely want to keep their identity secret. They have been fighting tooth and toenail to fund anti-gay campaigns without the public finding out who is behind their facade.

But they may be recognizing that their deception is about to come to an end. Although they are blustering and making absurd claims about the ruling, it seems that the State of Maine is going to finally be able to identify who has been dumping money into their state in hopes of denying gay Mainers their civil rights.

And NOM is running scared. They need to dilute their donor base as quickly as possible with as many small donors and individuals as possible.

The first indication of this effort was their oddly named Keep the Republic and Marriage website. They appealed to the pride of “traditional marriage” supporters and called for them to add their name (and make a donation). But in the week since launching the effort, they have 138 names. If you back out two blank names, Danilo Ramirez (who put his name down five times), and the employees/board of NOM, you end up with only maybe 125 donors. Not good.

So now they’ve doubled down. Literally.

I’m familiar with “matching grants”, where a donor agrees to match every dollar that is pledged during a set period. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen a double-matching grant, where for every dollar given a single donor gives two. But that’s what NOM is doing.

That’s right! Your gift of $50 will result in $150 to NOM. $100 becomes $300. $500 turns into $1,500. And if we reach our goal of $1,000,000, NOM will receive a total of $3,000,000 to protect marriage from Obama and his friends in the homosexual lobby!

They have a grand total of less than $80,000 in small donor dollars. And they have multi-millions to spend. They are desperate to say “we have thousands of donors and the average gift is $150”. And it doesn’t look like they are going to be able to do anything close to that.

Baptist Post on differences between Romney and Obama on equality

The Baptist Post has identified what it considers to be substantial differences between the two candidates when it comes to equality. While I’m sure their audience has a different response to the article, I thank them for providing such a clear distinction.

When future historians write about the 21st-century debate over gay marriage, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama will be featured prominently.

Romney was governor of Massachusetts when the state’s highest court issued its first-in-the-nation decision legalizing gay marriage, and he not only fought to have the ruling overturned but also supported an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would define marriage as between a man and a woman.

Obama voted against that federal marriage amendment as a U.S. senator, and once he was president he became the first sitting U.S. president to oppose the Defense of Marriage Act and also to endorse gay marriage.

While I very much doubt that Mitt Romney will garner more than a footnote in future historians’ discussion about equality, the article does list a number of differences and is worth reading as a reminder of how the two candidates view your citizenship, your rights, and your humanity.

His California Reparative Therapist Said He’d Be Straight in Six Weeks

Mathew Shurka’s parents flew him to California for “treatment” when he came out to his father at sixteen.

“To see that the government is really taking action to put a stop to this, especially for minors who are usually put into this therapy because of their parents, is a great thing. I’m really happy to see that those kinds of actions are being taken.”

It’s not a gay thing

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Every day en route to work, I’m greeted by a billboard telling me “Obama supports gay marriage.” It then asks if I do, while recommending that I “vote Republican.”

Really? That’s supposed to be my voting criterion? Why are decisions like choosing presidents or chicken sandwiches now a gay thing?

Go read the rest of it. And then read the comments.

Congressman: Evolution, Embryology, Big Bang Theory are “Lies Straight From the Pit of Hell”

These are the kinds of leaders who voters are sending to Washington:

God’s word is true. I’ve come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell. And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior. You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I’ve found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I don’t believe that the Earth’s but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says.

And what I’ve come to learn is that it’s the manufacturer’s handbook, is what I call it. It teaches us how to run our lives individually, how to run our families, how to run our churches. But it teaches us how to run all of public policy and everything in society. And that’s the reason as your congressman I hold the Holy Bible as being the major directions to me of how I vote in Washington, D.C., and I’ll continue to do that.

“Six days”: Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA)

How he votes in Washington, D.C. is no small thing. Dr. Paul Broun (R-GA) — yes, he’s a medical doctor who doesn’t believe in embryology — sits on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. In other words, a man who beleives that the earth is literally about 9,000 years old and that it was created literally in six days sits on a committee to decide how science dollars are spent.

A Broun spokesperson said that the congressman’s remarks, which were made at a sportsman’s banquet at Liberty Baptist Church in Hartwell, Georgia, were off the record, which the Associated Press calls unlikely. “The banquet was advertised; Broun spoke before an audience; and the video of his remarks was posted on the church’s Web site.” And for emphasis, I’d like to add that the web site was on The World Wide Web.

Russia’s Supreme Court Places Limits on “Gay Propaganda” Laws

The Supreme Court of Russia has upheld a ban on “gay propaganda” that was enacted in the Arkhangelsk region, but placed some very specific limits on the law. According to RIA Novosti, the ban only applies to “direct promotion of homosexual relations among minors“:

Pickets in support of and public discussions on gay rights remain legal despite the ban, passed by the Arkhangelsk Region’s legislature last fall, the court said. Informing minors about homosexual relations is also allowed as long as the information remains neutral in tone, the court said in a ruling passed in mid-August but not publicized until this week.

A similar law  was passed in St. Petersburg in February, and it was announced that the Moscow City Council and Russian Parliament may consider similar proposals. Similar measures are also in place in the Ryazan and Kostroma Oblasts.

Is Homosexuality Unnatural?

This is the last of John Corvino’s video series:

Marriage is on the ballot in four states this year. Voters in Maine, Maryland, and Washington will decide whether same-sex couples will be allowed to marry, while Minnesota voters will determine whether to write discrimination into their state’s constitution. The National Organization for Marriage (NOM), the Witherspoon Institute, and many, many other organizations are mobilizing their resources to push their anti-gay arguments.  Professor John Corvino is intimately familiar with those arguments, having just published a book with NOM’s co-founder Maggie Gallagher titled Debating Same-Sex Marriage, the only book ever endorsed both by Rick Santorum and Dan Savage. Corvino has also posted a valuable series of videos taking apart those arguements, one by one. You can see the entire series here.

The Daily Agenda for Monday, October 8

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Major Advertisers Boycott Controversial “Marcus Welby., M.D.” Episode: 1974. By the early 1970s, the National Gay Task Force had positioned itself as the primary watchdog of the national media’s portrayal of gay people, and because of that, some producers and networks began soliciting advice from the group whenever plots involved gays and lesbians. But whether they accepted the advice from the NGTF or not was another matter altogether, as evidenced by one of the earliest consultations from ABC. The network was planning an episode of Marcus Welby, M.D. called “The Outrage,” which depicted a junior high school boy named Ted who was forcibly raped by a male science teacher. The storyline was unusually graphic for its time, describing Ted’s intestinal damage and hemorrhaging. Ted refuses to talk about what happened, fearing that being raped meant that he was gay. While Ted is in surgery, police arrest the teacher for trying to molest another boy. Ted awakes from surgery ready to testify, and the investigating officer congratulates him for handling the situation like a “real man.” ABC defended the episode by saying it was about pedophilia, not homosexuality. But the storyline played much too closely to the old stereotype of gay men forcibly preying on children.

This wasn’t the first time Marcus Welby, M.D. had drawn the ire of gay activists. The year before, an episode titled “The Other Martin Loring” featured a man whose  alcoholism, weight problems, depression and diabetes were blamed on his repressed homosexuality, which itself was depicted as a mental illness. By the end of the episode, Dr. Welby advised Loring to see a psychiatrist so that Loring will win his “fight” to live a “normal” life. About three dozen gay activists occupied ABC’s offices, but the network refused to alter the episode.

With “The Outrage,” ABC may have wanted to avoid a repeat of that noisy experience, but why they decided to consult with the NGTF is a mystery since the network refused to take the NGTF’s concerns seriously. The only positive outcome of that consultation was that it gave the NGTF, along with the Gay Activist Alliance, a head start in organizing a massive national campaign aimed not only at the network itself, but also at its affiliates and advertisers. On that last point, the GAA had a particular advantage: one of its members worked in ABC’s computer room and had access to the network’s advertising accounts. Whenever an advertiser cancelled, the employee would pass the information on to the GAA, and it would soon appear in major newspapers — sometimes before the network’s vice president knew about it.

Meanwhile gay advocacy groups around the country staged noisy protests outside of stations in Los Angeles, San Francosco, Chicago, Denver, and Washington, D.C., along with several smaller market stations in Ohio, Iowa, Mississippi, Texas and Idaho. The first station to announce it was dropping the episode was Philadelphia’s WPVI, which was under intense pressure from the city’s very active gay community. Mark Segal, who had already established himself as a masterful “zapper” of live television when he interrupted Walter Cronkite’s CBS newscasts (see Dec 11), may well have been a strong motivator behind WPVI’s decision. “We are gratified by Channel 6’s decision,” he told the press.” It is the first time they have made such a decision in regard to us and we salute them. We hope it will be the first step between us and the station that will result in a better understanding of our position.”

Altogether, seventeen ABC affiliates ended up dropping the episode, and at least seven major sponsors had pulled out, including Colgate-Palmalive, Lipton, Breck and Gillette. The protest was marked as a success in newspapers across the country, but it proved to be a very temporary one: just one month later, NBC would air an episode of Police Woman titled, “Flowers of Evil” (see Nov 8), which TV Guide called “the single most homophobic show to date.”

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 7

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations Today: Baltimore, MD (Black Pride); Belgrade, Serbia (Cancelled!); Dallas, TX (Black Pride); Ft. Worth, TX; Orlando, FL.

AIDS Walks Today: Dallas, TX.

Other Events Today: Gay Days, Anaheim, CA; Alaska Pride Conference, Anchorage, AK; Floatilla, Hong Kong, China; Key West Bear Fest, Key West, FL; Black and Blue Festival, Montreal, QC; Chéries-Chéris Film Festival, Paris, France; Rainbow Festival, Phoenix, AZ.

Charles H. Hughes, founder and editor of journal Alienist and Neurologist

THIS MONTH IN HISTORY:
An Organization of Colored Erotopaths: 1893. Charles H. Hughes, a St. Louis physician, former superintendent of Missouri’s State Lunatic Asylum in Fulton, and the respected founder and editor of the journal Alienist and Neurologist (“Alienist” was a ninetheenth century term for psychiatrist), published a lengthy paper in the October 1893 issue titled “Erotopathia — Morbid Erotism,” which he had presented to the Pan-American Medical Congress a month earlier. In this paper, he set out to distinguish various forms of sexuality and categorize them according to whether they were products of “the neuroses or the neuro-psychoses” which he described as “resistless” or were instead subject to “the resistible involvement of the will… simple moral vice, uninfluenced or unextenuated by neural disease.” He added: “The sexually insane must be differentiated from such of these perverts as are not damaged in mind to the degree of insanity; a difficult task, yet one now imperatively demanded of psychiatry.”

Some of those “perversions” did not yet have commonly accepted names, and so in the case of homosexuality, he needed to tie together several terms used by several other authors: “Westphal, Moll, Krafft-Ebing and many others have presented instances of sexual perversion under the titles of “Erninger and Conträre Sexualempfindung,” psychopathia-sexualis, homo-sexuality, etc., the anima muliebris in corpore virili inculsa (a female psyche confined in a male body), according to Ulrichs, himself a sexual pervert, and reasserted by Magnan, Kiernan, Gley and Lydston.” The fact that Hughes used the word homo-sexuality, which had been introduced into the English language just a year earlier when Richard Von Crafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis was published in its first English translation, indicates Hughes’s keen interest on the subject. And that Hughes recognized the difficulty of assigning blanket categories gay people as either morally bankrupt or mentally insane — and Hughes appears not to have entertained any other option — reflected the limited parameters of debate then taking place in psychiatry.

And Hughes was, among many things, a lover of debate, and his journal reflected Hughes’s encyclopedic ranges of interests. What makes perusing old copies of Alienist and Neurologist so fascinating is the collection of reprinted letters, anecdotes, speeches, news items, magazine articles, and just about anything else that remotely touched on psychiatry in the nineteenth century. On example was a suicide note from a young gay man in St. Louis (see Feb 25) which Hughes included in “Erotopathia — Morbid Erotism.” Another example is these three paragraphs which appeared later in that same October 1893 issue that included Hughes’s talk on “Erotopathia”:

Postscript to Paper on “Erotopathia.” — An Organization 0f Colored Erotopaths. — Apropos of my paper on “Erotopathia,” I am credibly informed that there is, in the city of Washington, D. C., an annual convocation of negro men called the drag dance, which is an orgie of lascivious debauchery beyond pen power of description. I am likewise informed that a similar organization was lately suppressed by the police of New York city.

In this sable performance of sexual perversion all of these men are lasciviously dressed in womanly attire, short sleeves, low· necked dresses and the usual ball-room decorations and ornaments of women, feathered and ribboned head-dresses, garters, frills, flowers, ruffies, etc., and deport themselves as women. Standing or seated on a pedestal, but accessible to all the rest, is the naked queen (a male), whose phallic member, decorated with a ribbon, is subject to the gaze and osculations in turn, of all the members of this lecherous gang of sexual perverts and phallic fornicators.

Among those who annually assemble in this strange libidinous display are cooks, barbers, waiters and other employes of Washington families, some even higher in the social scale — some being employed as subordinates in the Government departments.

[Sources: Charles H. Hughes. “Erotopathia — Morbid Erotism.” Alienist and Neurologist 14, no. 4 (October 1893): 531-578. Available online here.

Charles H. Hughes. “An organization of colored erotopaths.” Alienist and Neurologist 14, no. 4 (October 1893): 731-732. Available online here.]

“I don’t want to marry anyone for at least two years.”(Click to enlarge.)

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Liberace’s “Girl” Meets Mom: 1954. Whenever I have a “This Month in History” piece, that’s generally because I don’t have any historical items that corresponds to this particular day in history. And that was true for today as well until at the last minute, while I was browsing through old newspapers posted online — I was totally looking for something else — I happened to come across this:

Liberace’s Girl Meets Mom, But No Wedding, By George!

Hollywood, Calif., Oct 7. — Pianist Liberace says that “there isn’t a word of truth to the report that I am engaged” to marry dancer Joanne Rio.

The report popped up yesterday and Liberace promptly denied it.

He said: “I was misquoted and I am very embarrassed for Joanne, who is a lovely girl and an understanding friend.

“I don’t want to marry anyone for at least two years — until I’ve made the motion picture I am planning for Warner Brothers and have a chance to tour Europe, which I plan to do next year.”

Friends say he dates other girls, but that Joanne is the only one he brings home to mother.

Miss Rio is a pretty brunette. She is the daughter of Eddie Rio, West Coast head of the American Guild of Variety Artists.

Liberace had no sooner announced his engagement to Rio when he quickly backtracked before the day was out. It appears that Joanne Rio was something of an on-again/off-again for Lee. They even appeared together a month later on the cover of TV Guide, where Rio was introduced as Liberace’s “favorite date.” “If it’s God’s will that Liberace and I get married, then we will. I’m leaving everything in God’s hands,” she told the magazine. God’s hands, apparently, were busy elsewhere.

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?