Box Turtle Bulletin

The Daily Agenda for Wednesday, September 26

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Cumbria, UK; Gainesville, FL; Hong Kong, China; Moab, UT; Richmond, VA; Sedona/Cottonwood, AZ; Soweto, South Africa.

AIDS Walks This Weekend: Ann Arbor, MI; Chicago, IL; Indianapolis, IN; Jackson, MI; San Deigo, CA; Wilmington/Rehoboth, DE.

Other Events This Weekend: Get Wet, Willemstad, Curaçao; Everybody’s Perfect LGBTIQ Film Festival, Geneva Switzerland; Queer Lisboa Film Festival, Lisbon, Portugal; Queer Fest 2012, St. Petersburg, Russia.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Shirley Willer: 1922. Her childhood was hard. Her father, a judge in CHicago, was also a violent alcoholic abuser. When Shirley was nine, her mother packed up and left, taking Shirley and her younger sister with her. As Shirley got older, she managed to scrape enough money together to go to nursing school, where she learned about other women who shared some of the same romatic desires she did. When she told her mother that she was a leasbian, her mother went out and purchased a copy of Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliniess, a remarkably understanding act for a woman in the 1940s.

Willer’s oversized personality matched her physicality. She was heavyset with short cropped hair and tailored clothing, all of which made her “butch” — a term she hated for its stereotypical role-playing connotations. “Because I was heavy,” she later explained, “I looked much better in tailored clothes.” Her appearance once got her trouble with the police one night while she was headed to a gay bar. “Just the assumption that I was gay was justification enough for one policeman to pick me up by the front of my shirt and slap me back and forth. He called me names, the same ones they used now. ‘You god-damned pervert. You queer. You S.O.B.’ … I was so angry at the policeman I could have killed him! I wasn’t frightened; I was angry! He had no right to do that to me! and that’s been my attitude all my life. They have no right!”

After watching a male nurse die after being horribly treated by a Catholic hospital because he was gay, Willer was driven to become an advocate for gay rights. “Barney’s death probably had a great deal to do with my aggressiveness,” she said. She and five other women talked about forming a group, but they decided it was too dangerous to do so. But by the late 1950’s, Willer began hearing about other groups being established around the country. She learned that there was a chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis in New York City, so when she turned forty, she decided to move to the Big Apple. Upon arrival, she wrote to the DOB chapter, and Marion Glass answered with details about their next meeting. Willer and Glass met at that meeting and quickly became lovers and partners. The two turned out to be perfect complements to each other: Glass was as thoughtful as Willer was brash; where Glass was quiet, Willer was bold. Together, with Glass serving as Willer’s mentor and advisor, Willer quickly grew into a leadership role for the New York chapter. Willer become the chapter’s president in 1963, and three years later she was elected the national president of DOB

Willer’s passion as DOB president was in travelling across the country planting as many DOB chapters as possible. She was aided in that effort through the generosity of an wealthy closeted lesbian, known only as “Pennsylvania,” who wanted to contribute to DOB anonymously. Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, co-founders of the original Daughters of Bilitis group in San Francisco, were among the very few who had met “Pennsylvania.” Lyon remembered, “She was so nervous when we started talking about lesbians… up until then, she had been very poised and sophisticated, but when we started talking about lesbians she couldn’t even look at us. She started blushing and fidgeting.”

Over a five year period, “Pennsylvania” wrote more than $100,000 in checks of $3,000 each, made out to differnt DOB members each time. Those checks, in turn were turned over to the national organization with Willer being the conduit through whom those checks flowed. “Pennsylvania’s” money was first used to turn the DOB’s newsletter The Ladder into a a slick, professionally typeset magazine available on newsstands. She also funded the establishment of new DOB chapters across the country, along with Willer’s travel expenses to get them started. Willer said, “There wasn’t an operating chapter of the Daughters that didn’t receive at least six thousand dollars to put toward a building fund or toward office expenses or toward publications. … Nobody was supposed to talk about our benefactor or what she did. And this woman will never take credit for her contribution to the movement, which amounted to more than one hundred thousand dollars. But she does have the satisfaction of being able to go down the street and see a couple of guys or a couple of girls walking hand in hand, and seeing the Mafia lose control of the gay bars, of seeing homosexuality become much more acceptable.”

But Willer’s traveling in those pre-cell phone/pre-Twitter/pre-text message days meant that members of already existing chapters weren’t able to reach her when problems arose. In 1968 when Philadelphia police raided a popular lesbian bar, the local DOB chapter could’t reach Willer to coordinate a response. The resulting inaction led to the fracturing of Philadelphia’s homopbile movement (see Aug 7). Another sticking point was the DOB’s official position against picketing, a controversial position which put Willer in a no-win situation. “This split between those who wanted to make noise and those who wanted to do things quietly affected me very directly,” she recalled in 1989. “During the second half of the 1960s, I was more and more at odds with the official position of DOB.”

It was increasingly clear that for the local chapters to thrive, they needed the freedom to quickly respond without having to gain approval from the national organization, particularly when the local chapters wanted to act outside of the DOB’s restrictive one-size-fits-all policies. Marion Glass (under the pseudonym Meredith Grey) proposed a massive reorganisation in the August 1968 issue of The Ladder. Under this proposal, all DOB chapters would be autonomous and the national organization’s sole role would be limited to publishing The Ladder. But there was a hitch: the change would require the approval of the membership, and that issue of The Ladder still had no announcement of where that year’s national DOB Convention would be held. When the DOB’s finally convened their biennial convention in Aurora, Colorado on short notice, only fifteen members showed up. With so few members on hand to make such a momentous decision, the group decided to defer until the next biennial cnvention in 1970.

Willer was frustrated by the delay and decided not to stand for re-election as the Daughters’ national president. She also withdrew from gay activism altogether, and with her witdrawal, “Pennsylvania’s” dollars stopped flowing as well. Two years later, the DOB did finally vote to disband its national organization and set all of its individual chapters free. But by then, it was too late: by then only a few DOB chapters remained, and The Ladder only had another couple of years before it too went belly-up.  Meanwhile, Willer and Glass retired to Key West, Florida, where they ran a rock shop for tourists and became involved with the growing local LGBT community. Willer died on New Years Eve in 1999.

[Sources: Del Martin and PHyllis Lyon. “Shirley Willer (1922-1999).” In Vern L. Bullough’s Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context (Binghamton, NY: Harrington Park Press, 2002): 203-205.

Eric Marcus. Making History: The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Equal Rights: 1945-1990. An Oral History (New York: HarperCollins, 1992): 127-135.

Marcia M. Gallo. Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rise of the Lesbian Rights Movement (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2006). ]

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?

Supreme Court Declines Prop 8, DOMA Cases For Now

The U.S. Supreme Court has issued its Orders List (PDF: 136KB/10 pages) following yesterday’s conference session in which it was scheduled to consider whether to hear four LGBT-related cases. Today’s Order list indicates that the Supreme Court has agreed to accept six pending case, but the appeal of Hollingsworth v. Perry — the new name for Perry v. Brown, which itself was previously Perry v. Schwarzenegger, challenging the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8 — was not on the list.

It’s not clear yet though that this means that the Prop 8 case was rejected by the court. We won’t learn that until next Monday, when the Supreme Court will issue a list of cases it has decided not to hear this term. If Hollingsworth v. Perry is on that list, then the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision striking down Proposition 8 as unconstitutional will stand and California’s same-sex couples will have their marriage rights restored. But if Hollingsworth v. Perry is not on that list, then it means that the Supreme Court is still weighing whether to accept the case. It takes four justices to agree on hearing a case before it is accepted by the court.

The court also held off accepting the appeal of Windsor v. USA, which challenges the constitutionality of Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act. This case was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behal of Edie Windsor, who is required to pay $363,000 in federal estate taxes following the death of her legally-wedded wife in 2007. If she had been in an opposite-sex marriage, her estate tax bill would have been zero. Four other DOMA challenges are making their way through the Appeals courts, and the U.S. Department of Justice has asked the Supreme Court to hear three of those cases along with Windsor for a more comprehensive look at DOMA’s constitutionality.

The court has also, so far, declined to accept two other LGBT-related cases. In Diaz v. Brewer, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decided that Arizona’s Republican Gov. Jan Brewer cannot withdraw domestic parner benefits from state employees without violating the Constitution’s Equal Protection clause. And in National Organization for Marriage v. McKee, NOM is again trying to get the Supreme Court’s attention in its efforts to circumvent Maine’s finance disclosure laws. The Supreme Court refused to hear an earlier challenge from NOM in February.

Paul Ryan: Denial of Same-Sex Marriage Is Part of “Agenda of Prosperity”

Speaking at a campaign stop in Cincinnati today, GOP Vice Presidential candidate Rep Paul Ryan tied the denial of marriage equality for same-sex couples to the Romney campaign’s “agenda of prosperity.” Because, I guess, we can’t be prosperous if gay people are allowed to marry:

The things you talk about like traditional marriage and family and entrepreneurship. These aren’t values that are indicative to any one person or creed or color. These are American values, these are universal human values. And so what Mitt and I are offering is an agenda of prosperity for everybody to have a chance to climb the ladder and get out of poverty in the lives of self-suifficiency. That’s the whole point we’re offering with this five point plan.

The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, September 25

J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson at the San Deigo’s Del Mar Turf Club, 1947.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
J. Edgar Hoover’s Personal Interest in Gay Movements Revealed: 1984. An earlier cache of secret files detailing FBI surveillance on gay people had been released two years earlier (see September 9), but that release offered only a small glimpse of the magnitude of governmental spying. It would take an ACLU lawsuit on behalf of the International Gay and Lesbian Archives (now the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives) for the more important cache to be released under the Freedom of Information Act. That later release consisted of more than 5,800 papers, most of it very boring details of gay pride picnics and parades, and photocopies of magazines that were publicly sold on newsstands. Most documents focused on the Mattachine Society and ONE Magazine, the first openly gay magazine in America.

But one interesting set of papers revealed J. Edgar Hoover’s interest in the gay movement. According to a memo dated January 26, 1956, the Los Angeles field office had been asked to check on the November 1955 issue of ONE, which talked about gay people who worked for Time and The New Yorker. The LA field office concluded that the articles statement was “baseless” and recommended that “no reply be made.”

But scrawled in handwriting below the typewritten recommendation was the sentence, “I think we should take this crowd and make them ‘put up or shut up’.” Markings indicated that the handwritten statement was made by Hoover’s chief aide and lifelong special “friend” Clyde Tolson. Hoover and Tolson worked closely together in the day, ate all their meals together in the evening, were seen socializing in nightclubs, and took vacations together. When Hoover died in 1971, Tolson inherited Hoover’s estate, and accepted the flag that draped Hoover’s coffin. Tolson’s grave is just a few discrete yards away from Hoover’s in Congressional Cemetery.

Hoover also weighed in on the 1956 memo. Next to Tolson’s recommendation to keep the case files open and continue investigating was another inscription. “I concur,” it read, with the single letter “H” underneath. The next day, a telegram went to the Los Angeles office. “You are instructed to have two mature and experienced agents contact Freeman (the pseudonym for the article’s author), in the immediate future and tell him the bureau will not countenance such baseless charges appearing in this magazine, and for him to either ‘put up or shut up’.” It was signed, simply, “Hoover.”

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Pedro Almodóvar: 1952. Born in a small town in La Mancha, the trajectory of his life was rather unremarkable in the late Franco era. He went to Catholic boarding school in preparation for the priesthood, but instead found his education in the local cinema. In 1967, he moved to Madrid with the goal of becoming a film director, but since Franco had just closed the National School of Cinema, Almodóvar got a job at the state telephone company where he worked for the next twelve years. But they weren’t wasted years; he also became involved with the underground experimental theater and cinema, learning his craft using a Super-8 camera he bought from his first paycheck from the phone company.

His first feature film didn’t come until 1980. Pepi, Luci, Bom y Otras Chicas del Montón (Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls on the Heap) was filmed on a shoestring budget by a team of volunteers working on the weekends. He later described the film as “full of defects. When a film has only one or two, it is considered an imperfect film, while when there is a profusion of technical flaws, it is called style. That’s what I said joking around when I was promoting the film, but I believe that that was closer to the truth.” Seventeen more films followed, most of them celebrating the sexy exhilaration of modern Spain. International fame came with Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, which established Almodóvar as a “women’s director” for his ability to solicit powerful performances from his actresses, which has brought about comparisons to George Cukor. It also introduced the world to Spanish actor Antonio Banderas. Banderas was featured again in 1990’s Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, a controversial film for its sadomasochistic theme which earned a controversial X-rating in the U.S.

The decade’s end brought increasing critical acclaim, with 1999’s All About My Mother (with Penélope Cruz) earning an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, 2002’s Talk to Her winning an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film, and 2009’s Broken Embraces (this time starring Penélope Cruz) and 2011’s The Skin I Live In (starring Antonio Banderas) earning Golden Globe nominations. His next film, I”m So Excited, which Almodóvar describes as “a light, very light comedy,” is due for release in 2013.

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?

Lady Gaga v. Papa Ratzi

Joseph Ratzinger (you may know him as Pope Benedict XVI) was in France this weekend to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ lobby against the human rights of French gays. (Parisdespaches translated by Google)

“The family is threatened by a conception of human nature that is defective (…) defend the family and life in society is nothing but retrograde prophetic” Benedict XVI stated in particular at this meeting , before recalling that “marriage and family are institutions that must be promoted and defended from every possible misrepresentation of their true nature, since whatever is injurious to them is in fact caused injury to the society itself.”

You know, the usual “gay marriage will destroy society itself” routine.

Meanwhile just your little ol’ average Catholic girl, Stefani Germanotta (you may know her as Lady Gaga) was asked her opinion on the matter. (Pinknews)

Speaking slowly to allow a simultaneous translator to keep up with her, Lady Gaga today told Europe 1 radio: “I think that gay marriage is going to happen. It must. We are not actually equal — humanity — if we are not allowed to freely love one another.”

After being asked on the Pope’s recent comments, Lady Gaga said: “What the Pope thinks of being gay does not matter to the world. It matters to the people who like the Pope and follow the Pope. … It is not a reflection of all religious people.”

That’s actually a pretty smart response. In a nation that is at least nominally Catholic, coming from someone raised Catholic, it’s a reminder that he may have a title but when it comes down to it, this is just some guy and his views only matter if you like or respect him or think he speaks for God.

Roy McDonald (Republican Four) appears to have lost primary

The National Organization for Marriage finally has a non-made-up-totally-bogus reason to celebrate. It appears that Roy McDonald has fallen victim to their attempts to punish those Republican New York State Senators who voted for equality. (Times Union)

Marchione was up by 110 votes when counting began Monday in two counties of the 43rd State Senate District. McDonald gained 23 votes in Saratoga County, but was offset by a 26-vote pickup for Marchione in Columbia County, according to election officials in Saratoga and Columbia counties. Elections officials in Rensselaer and Washington counties tallied their absentee ballots last week.
…
All things considered, McDonald trailed by 113 votes with 50 ballots set aside.

This is very sad news and probably will hurt us on some level with close legislative votes in which we need some Republican support. But on some level, this is an inspiring story.

Sometimes victory comes in unexpected ways. Sometimes someone goes against the odds, does the right thing… and loses anyway. But there is nobility in doing the right thing because it’s the right thing, and sometimes in the loss comes a different victory, the victory of example. Of honor. Of respect. Sometimes this year’s loss gives birth to next year’s greater success.

I don’t know if this is one of those times. Maybe politicians will see McDonald as an example of why you always put the safe bet first, of why you use polls rather than conscience, of why you should kowtow to right-wing extremists. Maybe they will see this as evidence that ill will and malice are tools more effective than integrity, of how you win by following instead of leading.

But maybe (and I know I’m often too optimistic), maybe this off-the-cuff, unprepared but totally honest answer that Sen. Roy McDonald gave to the press at the time of the vote will live on to encourage others:

You get to the point where you evolve in your life where everything isn’t black and white, good and bad, and you try to do the right thing.

You might not like that. You might be very cynical about that. Well, fuck it, I don’t care what you think. I’m trying to do the right thing.

I’m tired of Republican-Democrat politics. They can take the job and shove it. I come from a blue-collar background. I’m trying to do the right thing, and that’s where I’m going with this.

Pro-Gay Flash Mobs Organize In Three Vietnam Cities

A BTB reader tipped me to this Asian LGBT web site reporting on a pro-gay flash mob dance events which were held in three cities in Vietnam: Hanoi, Da Nang, and Ho Chi Minh City:

According to the organiser’s website, some 1,200 people participated in the event in three cities which was supported by TV channel VTV6.

Le Quang Binh, head of iSEE (Institute for Studies of Society, Economy and Environment), told Fridae in a statement: “We believe many people stigmatise homosexuals and transgender people because they do not know who are LGBT. Many still believe that LGBT are abnormal people. (The) flash mob helps to show the society that LGBT are ordinary people just like others. LGBT are sons and daughters, friends and colleagues, workers and lawyers. This helps to reduce stigma and increase support for LGBT rights.”

Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party is debating whether to allow marriage or civil unions for same-sex couples.

Saland (one of the Republican Four) wins primary

Steve Saland, one of four Republicans in the New York Senate to vote for marriage, has won his primary. On election day the results were too close to call, but now that the absentee ballots have been counted it is clear. (Poughkeepsie Journal)

After the remaining absentee and affidavit ballots were counted today at the Dutchess County Board of Elections Saland received 286 and Di Carlo 217, said Fran Knapp, Democratic election commissioner.

This gives Saland a grand total of 5,288 votes and Di Carlo 5,181 votes in Dutchess and Putnam counties — a 107 vote lead for Saland.

There are 34 ballots set aside for judicial review before the results become official.

Of the four, Sen. Alesi did not run for reelection, Sen. Grisante won his primary on election night, and Sen. McDonanald’s absentee ballot count has not been completed.

Restored Hope Network’s Leadership Named

Restored Hope Network, the breakaway collection of ex-gay ministries from Exodus International, appears to have solidified at least part of his leadership. In a Facebook post, Robert Gagnon announced that he had been elected to the nascent group’s board of directors. In a follow-up comment, Gagnon provided additional details on the new group’s leadership:

Andy Comiskey is president (chair of the Board); also on the board: Anne Paulk, David Kyle Foster, Stephen Black, Ron Smith, Jason Thompson.

I’ve posted this information before, but here’s a rundown again on the named players:

Andrew Comiskey has been a major player in Exodus International from its earliest days when it started as an outgrowth of an early Southern California church movement known as the Vineyard. The Vinyard itself has roots in the late 1960s’ Jesus Movement which stood at the intersection of early contemporary Evangelical Christianity and the hippie subculture. Comiskey once served as president at Exodus International, and his Desert Stream Ministries has been among the largest and most prominent ministries in the Exodus International netwo. Its popular Living Waters program is used by many ex-gay ministries throughout the world. In April, Comiskey issued a letter to Exodus president Alan Chambers calling on him to “continue to uphold change as a reasonable goal for Christians with (same-sex attraction).” Citing Chambers’s comments before the Gay Christian Network, Comiskey worried that “Alan’s comments about change unwittingly played into the enemy’s hands.”

Robert Gagnon’s association with the ex-gay movement has been somewhat less extensive, mainly focused in providing theological support. He spoke at a Wednesday morning plenary session at a 2009 Exodus annual conference in Wheaton, Illinois. He also provided two workshops at that conference, the first on homosexuality and the Bible, and the second on the church’s response to homosexuality. In late June,Gagnon wrote an exhausting 35-page response to Alan Chambers’s recent changes at Exodus, and he has emerged as one of the sharpest and loudest critics in the popular media of Chambers’s change of direction.

Anne Pauk, an ex-lesbian and wife of former ex-gay spokesman John Paulk, is a prominent author and speaker in the ex-gay movement. She and John were a featured couple in a massive national publicity campaign in 1998 on behalf of the ex-gay movement, a campaign that landed them on the cover of Newsweek. John Paulk was serving as chairman of the board of Exodus International from 1995 to 2000 when he was photographed by Wayne Besen while leaving a gay bar in Washington, D.C. Despite the scandal, John Paul remained active in the ex-gay movement until 2003, when he left Focus On the Family and the couple resettled in Portland, Oregon and John started a catering business. Anne has continued to write books and lecture as an “ex-lesbian.”

David Kyle Foster operates Mastering Life Ministries, the television ministry behind Pure Passion, a television program broadcast on the Internet and several Christian television channels. Foster does not describe himself as ex-gay in particular, but instead points to his struggle “with a serious bondage to pornography and other sexually addictive behaviors” as his link to the ex-gay movement.

Stephen Black is the founder of Oklahoma City-based First Stone Ministry, another of the founding ministries of Exodus International in 1976. Has also been highly active in Exodus, including providing a workshop at Exodus’s annual conferences from 2008 to 2011. Black announced that his ministry officially resigned from Exodus in April, which is at about the same time of Comisky’s letter to Chambers. Further signs of Black and Comisky joining forces arose when Black announced that Comisky would be speaking at a church outside of Oklahoma City in an event sponsored and promoted by First Stone.

Ron Smith is now the director of New Hope Ministry and a member of San Rafael’s Church of the Open Door, another product of the Jesus Movement from the late 1960s. This church has a very longstanding history with the ex-gay movement going all the way back to its earliest days in the early 1970s. Frank Worthen founded New Hope as an outgrowth of the church’s “outreach” to gay people. Worthen’s ministry was one of the founding ministries of Exodus International back in 1976. Worthen also founded Love In Action, a residential ex-gay ministry which eventually became an independent organization and moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where it now operates as Restoration Path. Since Wothen’s retirement from New Hope, Smith has assumed the duties as the ministry’s director. You can find Smith’s YouTube testimony here.

Jason Thompson heads Portland Fellowship, a former Exodus International ministry which had, for a while, a reputation for avoiding at least the appearance of some of the worst excesses of the ex-gay movement. Portland Fellowship had been an Exodus Member ministry since 1988 until last month, when Thompson announced that he was pulling his ministry out of the Exodus network and aligning it with the much more hard-line Restored Hope.

I Tolerate You So Much, You Need to Shut Up and Hide!

I’ve been blogging a few years now and it’s been a long time since I read something that made me as angry as what I read last night.

Jeremy Hooper of Good As You points us to a piece by Anthony Esolen, Professor of English at Providence College. He’s writing in a Witherspoon publication — the same folks who financed the Regnerus study.

Esolen thinks well of himself — he is a great and good-hearted tolerant man, and it’s bugging the crap out of him that we homosexuals are not giving him his due. In his words:

Tolerance of wrong-doing is freely given; it is an act of graciousness, and not the paying of a debt. Therefore it rests with the offender, at the very least, to refrain from aggravating the burden of tolerance.

Esolen wants me to know that any public acknowledgement of my relationship with Will is an aggravation of Esolen’s burden. And this is Esolen being gracious.

It’s easy to summarize the man’s essay, because it says so little. It’s hard to do it using his own words, because he uses so many. But let me try. After several paragraphs invoking Thomas Aquinas and exploring Latin, Old English, and German word roots, he gives an example:

The local convenience store sells Playboy magazine. They are legally permitted to sell it. But it is a wrong; it degrades the beauty of the human body and turns sexuality from its proper sphere in marriage to the private quest for gratification. If they tacitly request tolerance, they tacitly incur a debt of reciprocity. They will keep the offensive magazine out of sight.

Yes: He’s willing to tolerate the existence of something as long as it’s kept out of sight. This sets up his view homosexuality — he lets us happen, and we acknowledge our debt by hiding ourselves away.

He starts like this:  Read the rest of this entry »

Focus On the Family Promotes Breakaway Ex-Gay Group

Jeff Johnston, Focus on the Family’s “social policy analyst,” penned a post last Friday on FOTF’s CitizenLink endorsing the Restored Hope Network, which is made up of a collection of breakaway ministries from Exodus International following the latter’s shift in messaging and tone over the past year. Johnston doesn’t mention Exodus in his post, instead commending the new network for its “solid ministries and men and women who have years of ministry experience.” He then launched into some of a bulleted meditation — a sort of a PowerPoint theology — on what he calls “sexual brokenness”:

Sexually and relationally broken – just think about it for a minute:

• Because of Adam’s sin, our whole self is impacted by sin – including our identity, our sexuality and our ability to connect and maintain healthy relationships
• After they sinned, Adam and Eve feel ashamed, hide from God and begin blaming others; their eldest boy kills his brother; relational brokenness – inside families and between us and God
• Our culture is saturated with broken sexuality, and we’re exposed to it and impacted by it from childhood on; sexual brokenness runs deep in our world; it’s so much a part of our background that we don’t always notice
• Satan roams the earth like a lion, using sexual and relational brokenness to destroy individuals, families, churches, groups, businesses…. [Emphasis added, ellipses in the original]

I’ll let that last comment stand, along with this Facebook post from Robert Gagnon, who spoke at Restored Hope’s innauguran conference in Sacramento last weekend:

There were only 7 quiet protestors. Not much of a showing. San Francisco was having a “leather” event that no doubt was a more attractive event for those with a “gay” identity! Moral of the story: schedule the meeting during homosexual debauchery events.

Johnston and Gagnon seem to go very well together.

Just Friends

That’s how Chicago’s Francis Cardinal George sees loving and committed gay couples:

George said, “There must surely be ways in our civil society, where we can honor friendships, where we can respect other people, without destroying the nature of marriage. It is very important, for your whole lives, give witness to what marriage truly means. And while civil laws might change – if they do – then society will be the worse for it.”

“Honoring friendships” is always nice. But people generally don’t come together to form households and families over mere friendship, no matter how noble friendships may be. It is love which makes a family, as the saying goes, and it is that quality which sets committed, loving gay couples apart from people who are friends. Think of those couples who marry in states which provide it and those other couples who accumulate thousands of dollars in legal bills to try to create an imperfect and inconsistently recognized approximation of a legal partnership in those states which don’t — George doesn’t see them at all. Or more to the point, he does see them — he knows they’re out there — he just doesn’t want to address them. Dehumanizing is the word that comes to mind here.

Paul Ryan: Reinstating DADT Would Be “A Step In The Wrong Direction”

GOP Vice Presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan told a Florida TV station that while he voted against the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in 2010, he believes that DADT should not be reinstated now that so many gay soldiers have come out:

“Now that it’s done, we should not reverse it,” Ryan told WPTV NewsChannel 5 during a visit to Miami. “I think that would be a step in the wrong direction because people have already disclosed themselves.”

…”I talked to a lot of good friends of mine who are combat leaders in the theater and they just didn’t think the timing of this was right to do this when our troops were in the middle of harm’s way in combat,” Ryan said. “I think this issue is past us. It’s done. And, I think we need to move on.”

Two weeks ago, Rep Jim Jordan (R-OH), who chairs the influential 170-member Republican Study Committee, told an audience at the Values Voter Summit that he was “‘certainly supportive of going back to the previous policy.”

The Daily Agenda for Monday, September 24

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Supreme Court May Consider Hearing Prop 8, DOMA Appeals: Washington, DC. The U.S. Supreme Court had been scheduled to decide today whether they will hear the appeal of Hollingsworth v. Perry — the new name for the Perry v. Brown, which was previously Perry v. Schwarzenegger — which challenges the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8. That state ban on same-sex marriage was declared unconstitutional in Federal District Court, and the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld that ban. If the Supreme Court declines to take the case, then Prop 8 would be overturned and Californian same-sex couples would be allowed to marry again. But if the Court decides to take the case, the earlier rulings will almost certainly be stayed until the court can settle the matter once and for all.

Also scheduled for consideration is Windsor v. USA, which challenges the constitutionality of Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act. As things stand right now, Section 3 of DOMA has been declared unconstitutional, and that decision has been upheld by the First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

That said, there is some uncertainty as to whether the court will actually decided today whether to take up those cases. If they don’t decide today, the next conference to consider these challenges (and perhaps as many as four other DOMA challenges making their way to the Supreme Court) is scheduled for October 5. Some believe that the court may wait until then to consider all of the challenges related to same-sex marriage in one conference. If the Supreme Court decides to take either of the two cases under consideration today, then we will likely know about it tomorrow. But if the court decides to either reject the cases or hold them for later consideration, we won’t learn about their decision until October 1.

Supreme Court to Consider National Organization for Marriage’s Financial Disclosure Appeal: Washington, DC. The US Supreme Court has a fairly busy docket for today’s conference. In addition to the marriage cases above, another case of interest is NOM v. McKee, in which the lower courts have ruled  that NOM is required to comply with Maine law, which requires that groups which raise and spend money in state election campaigns must organize as a political action committee for that activity and disclose those who donate more than $100 to those campaigns. The Court refused to consider an appeal earlier this year, but NOM is back with a slightly different approach to whether they must comply with Main’s law. If the Court refuses again, then NOM is back where it started from. If the court decides to take the case, we may know as early as tomorrow.

Supreme Court to Consider Appeal of Arizona’s Revocation of Domestic Partnership Benefits: Washington, D.C. When Republican Gov. Jan Brewer took over from Democrat Janet Napolitano, she wasted no time whatsoever in taking steps to revoke domestic partnership benefits for state employees which had been instituted by her predecessor. Equality advocates sued, and the lower courts have determined so far that the Governor’s actions, backed by a reactionary GOP-dominated legislature, violates the equal protection of same-sex couples. Arizona is appealing, and now the U.S. Supreme Court will decide today whether to take up the case.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
“Your Elongated Protruberance”: 1826. In May of 1826, Jeffrey Withers, a twenty-two year old law student at South Carolina College, wrote to his dear friend, James Hammond, 18, a letter which is both playful and quite frank about the physical nature of their relationship (see May 15). Hammond responded on June 3, but that letter appears to have been lost. Instead, what we do have is a follow-up letter from Withers which allude to that letter, which Withers praised for having “too much honesty of purpose” and in which Hammond, apparently, weighed the pros and cons of marriage. Withers’s reply to Hammond on September 24 went like this:

Your excellent Letter of 13 June arrived … a few weeks since … Here, where anything like a systematic course of thought, or of reading, is quite out of the question — such system as leaves no vacant, idle moments of painful vacuity, which invites a whole Kennel of treacherous passions to prey upon one’s vitals … the renovation of spirit which follows the appearance of a friend’s Letter — the diagram of his soul — is like a grateful shower from the cooling fountains of Heaven to reanimate drooping Nature. Whilst your letters are Transcripts of real–existing feeling, and are on that account peculiarly welcome — they at the same time betray too much honesty of purpose not to strike an harmonious chord in my mind. I have only to regret that, honesty of intention and even assiduity in excition [?] are far from being the uniform agents of our destiny here– However it must, at best, be only an a priori argument for us to settle the condemnation of the world, before we come in actual contact with it. This task is peculiarly appropriate to the acrimony of old age — and perhaps we had as well defer it, under the hope that we may reach a point, when ’twill be all that we can do–

l fancy, Jim, that your elongated protruberance –your fleshen pole — your [two Latin words; indecipherable] — has captured complete mastery over you — and I really believe, that you are charging over the pine barrens of your locality, braying, like an ass, at every she-male you can discover. I am afraid that you are thus prostituting the “image of God” and suggest that if you thus blasphemously essay to put on the form of a Jack — in this stead of that noble image — you will share the fate of Nebuchadnezzar of old. I should lament to hear of you feeding upon the dross of the pasture and alarming the country with your vociferations. The day of miracles may not be past, and the flaming excess of your lustful appetite may drag down the vengeance of supernal power. — And you’ll “be dam-d if you don’t marry “? — and felt a disposition to set down and gravely detail me the reasons of early marriage. But two favourable ones strike me now — the first is, that Time may grasp love so furiously as totally [?] to disfigure his Phiz. The second is, that, like George McDuffie, he may have the hap-hazzard of a broken backbone befal him, which will relieve him from the performance of affectual family-duty — & throw over the brow of his wife, should he chance to get one, a most foreboding glooming — As to the first, you will find many a modest good girl subject to the same inconvenience — and as to the second, it will only superinduce such domestic whirlwinds, as will call into frequent exercise rhetorical displays of impassioned Eloquence, accompanied by appropriate and perfect specimens of those gestures which Nature and feeling suggest. To get children, it is true, fulfills a department of social & natural duty — but to let them starve, or subject them to the alarming hazard of it, violates another of a most important character. This is the dilemma to which I reduce you — choose you this day which you will do …

Hammond, the young man of “flaming excess” and “lustful appetites” would, in his later years, become one of the South’s most prominent moralists and defenders of slavery. Hammond would indeed choose to marry, and through his wife he became the owner of a 10,000 acre plantation and 220 slave. Hammond’s arguments in support of that “peculiar institution” of slavery were highly influential, and led ultimately to his state becoming the first state in the South to secede at the start of the Civil War. He was, over the course of his career, Governor, Congressman and Senator from South Carolina. Withers also reached a measure of prominence as a journalist and “nullifier,” a lawyer and as a judge of the South Carolina Court of Appeals.

[From Martin Duberman, “‘Writhing Bedfellows’: 1826.” Journal of Homosexuality 6, no. 1 (1981): 85-101. Also available online here.]

A candlelight vigil at the Backstreet Cafe following the shooting.

Mass Shooting in Gay Bar Kills One, Injures Six: 2000. Ronald Edward Gay spent his entire life hearing jokes about his surname. A former Vietnam vet, he become an alcohol and drug abuser, and had just been divorced for the sixth time. His children changed their last names, he claimed, to escape the jokes. So when he finally had had enough, he decided to turn it around and take it out not on his tormentors, but on those who he believed had ruined his name. On September 24, 2000, the fifty-three-year-old drifter walked into the Backstreet Cafe in Roanoke, Virginia, pulled a 9mm handgun from his black trench coat and opened fire. One of the bar’s patrons, Anna Sparks, described the terror. “The guy was standing there with a trench coat on, and the gun was going pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, and people were falling over everywhere, trying to get behind booths. He just stood there for a couple of seconds, then lowered the gun and walked out like nothing had happened.” When the shooting spree ended, Danny Lee Overstreet, 43, was dead in a pool of blood and six others were injured, one critically.

Danny Lee Overstreet (left), Ronald Edward Gay (right)

Gay had been at a different bar earlier that night asking where the city’s nearest gay bar was, telling patrons he wanted to shoot some gay people. One person gave him directions and then called the police, who arrived  at the Backstreet Cafe shortly after the shooting. They found Gay about two blocks away.  “He said he was shooting people to get rid of, in his term, ‘faggots,'” Lieutenant William Althoff of the Roanoke police was quoted as saying.  He told authorities that he became obsessed with fulfilling four “missions”: to stop corruption, to stop communism, the bring all Vietnam vets “out of the mountains”, and to stop the spread of AIDS by forcing all gay people to move to San Francisco. Gay pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and six malicious wounding charges and on July 23, 2001 was given to four life sentences.

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The Daily Agenda for Sunday, September 23

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: St. Cloud, MN; Sunderland, UK.

AIDS Walks This Weekend: Amherst, NS; Brampton, ON; Calgary, AB; Catham, ON; Corner Brook, NL; Dryden, ON; East Lansing, MI; Edmonton, AB; Ft. McMurray, AB;Halifax, NS; Moncton, NB; New Glasgow, NS; New Hope, CA; Niagara, ON; Oklahoma City, OK; Portland, OR; Red Deer, AB; Regina, SA; St. Catharines, ON; St. John, NB; St. Johns, NL; Thunder Bay, ON; Toronto, ON; Traverse City, MI; Truro, NS; Vancouver, BC; Windsor, ON; Winnipeg, MB.

Other Events This Weekend: Everybody’s Perfect LGBTIQ Film Festival, Geneva, Switzerland; Queer Lisboa Film Festival, Lisbon, Portugal; OctoBEARfest, Munich, Germany; Queer Fest 2012, St. Petersburg, Russia; Folsom Street Fair, San Francisco, CA.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
George C. Wolfe: 1954. The playwright and director grew up in Frankfort, Kentucky, where he first pursued his theater interests in high school. After college, he taught for several years in Los Angeles in New York, and earned an MFA in dramatic writing and musical theater at New York University. He began to gain national attention for the 1991 musical Jelly’s Last Jam, a story about jazz musician Jelly Roll Morton, which received eleven Tony nominations. In 1993, he directed Tony Kushner’s Angels in America: Millennium Approaches, which won a Tony for best play that year. He also directed the sequel Perestroika the following year.

In 1995, Wolfe created Bring In ‘da Noise, Bring In ‘da Funk at the Off-Broadway New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater, and took it to Broadway the following year. The musical tells the story, through tap dance, video montages, and commentary, of Black history from slavery to the present. The New York Times called it “beautiful and the dancing exuberant, but Funk is serious business, with vicious, funny send-ups of Uncle Tomism in Hollywood.” Bring In ‘da Noise received nine Tony nominations; the production won four Tony’s, including Wolfe’s for Best Direction of a Musical.

Wolfe continues to direct plays, including Tony Kushner’s Caroline, or Change and a 2011 Broadway revival of Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart, which won a Tony for Best Revival.

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