Box Turtle Bulletin

The Daily Agenda for Saturday, September 22

TODAY’S AGENDA (Ours):
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Austin, TX; Burlington, VT; Derbyshire, UK; Enid, OK; Holyoke, MA; Nelson Mandela Bay, South Africa; St. Cloud, MN; Spartanburg, SC; Sunderland, UK.

AIDS Walks This Weekend: Amherst, NS; Bay City, MI; Brampton, ON; Calgary, AB; Catham, ON; Corner Brook, NL; Dryden, ON; East Lansing, MI; Edmonton, AB; Flint, MI; Ft. McMurray, AB; Fredericton, NB; Grande Prairie, AB; Halifax, NS; Happy Valley/Goose Bay, NL; Kamloops, BC; Kingston, ON; Moncton, NB; Namaimo, BC; New Glasgow, NS; New Hope, CA; Oshawa, ON; Niagara, ON; Oklahoma City, OK; Portland, OR; Prince George, BC; Red Deer, AB; Regina, SA; St. Catharines, ON; St. John, NB; St. Johns, NL; San Antonio, TX; Seattle, WA; Smithers, BC; Sydney, NSW; 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; Gay Day at LA County Fair, Los Angeles,CA; OctoBEARfest, Munich, Germany; Queer Fest 2012, St. Petersburg, Russia; Folsom Street Fair, San Francisco, CA; Out In the Park Six Flags, Springfield, MA.

TODAY’S AGENDA (Theirs):
Restored Hope Network Conference: Fair Oaks, CA. Exodus International, the main network of Evangelical-aligned ex-gay ministries, has been undergoing tremendous changes over the past year. Those changes began last January when Exodus president Alan Chambers acknowledged that, “the majority of people that I have met, and I would say the majority meaning 99.9% of them, have not experienced a change in their orientation.” That acknowledgment along had a host of ex-gay leaders howling. Their howls rose to shrieks when Chambers suggested that he might run into a few gay Christians in heaven. And so for the past several months, there has been a steady exodus from Exodus of some of the more hard-line members of the Exodus network, and many of them have formed a rival group they’re calling the Restored Hope Network. Sadly for them, all of the good easy-to-remember domain names based on “restored hope” have all been taken, so all this new baby network has is a Facebook page. Fortunately, you don’t have to “like” them to find out that they are in quite a rush to sign up every ministry they can dig out of the woodpile to become part of their network. They plan on showing off their network at their first conference this weekend in the Sacramento area, at Sunrise Community Church in Fair Oaks. It began last night, but the main portion takes place through the day today from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m..

Exodus International’s Love Won Out Conference: Harrisburg, PA. While Restored Hope is holding their little coming-out party — so to speak — Exodus International is holding its one-day Love Won Out conference in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. This conference is more of a traveling roadshow, a kind of an ex-gay 101 introductory session into what Exodus has to offer rather than a conference geared toward people who are already in the ex-gay movement. If past is any indication, most of those attending the conference are likely to be parents and family members of gay people, rather than gay people themselves. Exodus has been retooling its message since last fall, and the agenda for this conference seems to reflect that retooling. It also seems to have been scaled back in scope compared to previous Love Won Out conferences. In the past, Exodus typically puts on about a half a dozen conferences this year, but if I’m not mistaken, this is the only Love Won Out to be scheduled for this year after an Albuquerque event was cancelled last spring. Love Won Out will take place today at Westshore Church in Mechanicsville, Pennsylvania, just outside of Harrisburg.

Evergreen International Regional Conference: Salt Lake City, UT. Not to be outdone by all of this ex-gay activity, Evergreen International, the Mormon ex-gay organization, is also holding a conference today. Evergreen appears to be either scaling back its activities or making itself much less visible — Transparency has never been its strong suit, so it’s hard to tell the difference. This time last year, they held an annual conference at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building Salt Lake City with a featured talk by LDS elder Jay Jensen, of the First Quorum of the Seventy. But this year, things appear to be much lower key. Evergreen appears to have abandoned its old website and started afresh at thessavoice.com (The SSA Voice, with “SSA” a pseudo-clinical sounding acronym for “same-sex attraction.) And instead of holding an annual conference, this year Evergreen is holding four regional conferences, with the Salt Lake Area conference taking place today followed by a devotional tomorrow. Today’s conference consists of just three all-day workshops: “Becoming a whole man,” “The gift of growth” and “The dance of marriage.” Make of that what you will.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Senator Lashes Out at “Wreckers and Destroyers”: 1954. In the past decade, we’ve seen each successive election year bring with it worse examples of character assassination, blatant bold-faced lies, and other examples of negative campaign tactics than ever before. Each time, it just seems to get worse, and we often wish we could turn back the clock to a more innocent and civil time when Americans could always find a way to get along regardless of their differences. You know, like in the 1950s.

Yeah, like in the 1950s, when Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) was labeling his political enemies radical communists and “sexual perverts.” And when Sen. Everett M. Dirksen (R-IL), who was then serving as the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee for the upcoming 1954 mid-term elections, declared during a meeting of 1,100 Republican women that “never were the destroyers and traitors in government so busy” as during the 20 years of Democratic rule from 1933 to 1953. He told the women that since then, Republicans like himself and McCarthy (who was Dirksen’s political ally during the previous four years) were left to root out “the wreckers and destroyers, the security risks and homosexuals, the blabbermouths and drunks, the traitors and saboteurs.” It’s 2012, and another election is upon us. And sadly, some things never change.

It is important to note though that ten years later, Sen. Dirksen, who by then was Senate Minority Leader, played a crucial role in delivering enough Republican votes to break  an 83-day filibuster by southern Democrats and pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The press hailed Dirksen’s selfless bipartisanship for making possible one of the Johnson Administration’s signature pieces of legislation. Some things never change, but other things do.

Oliver Sipple pushes Sara Jane Moore as she fired as shot at President Ford. (Click to enlarge.)

Gay Man Saves President Ford’s Life: 1975. President Gerald Ford was in San Francisco to deliver a luncheon speech to a foreign affairs group at the St. Francis Hotel. Outside, Oliver Sipple, an ex-Marine Vietnam veteran, was in a crowd of about 3,000 people waiting for Ford to exit the building. Standing next to Sipple was Sara Jane Moore, although they didn’t know each other. Moore, ironically, was also working as an FBI informant, where she provided information on illegal firearms purchases. Earlier that day, she called federal authorities threatening to “test” Ford’s security, but she was ignored. The day before, San Francisco police picked her up on a misdemeanor charge of carrying a concealed weapon, but they released her after federal authorities stepped in and said they would handle the matter. The Secret Service interviewed her that night, but let her go.

So there she was, and as Ford left the hotel, Moore pulled a .38 Smith & Wesson revolver from her purse, pointed it at the President, and fired a shot. As she fired, Sipple reached out and grabbed her arm. Her shot missed Ford by just five feet. It was the second assassination attempt in a month — nearly thee weeks earlier, a follower of mass murderer Charles Manson had tried to take a shot at him in Sacramento. That time, the gun didn’t fire. This time it did, and Sipple was a hero. “All I did was react,” he said. “I’m glad I was there. If it’s true I saved the President’s life, then I’m damn happy about it. But I honestly feel that if I hadn’t reached out for that arm, somebody else would have.”

Sipple had been a fixture in San Francisco’s gay community for several years. He was friends with Harvey Milk, and worked on Milk’s first unsuccessful attempt at winning a seat on the city’s Board of Supervisors. He was out to his friends, but closeted to his family in Detroit. Milk and other gay writers in San Francisco saw Sipple’s heroism as a perfect moment to gain some positive visibility for the gay community, but Sipple asked the press to keep his sexuality off the record. Nevertheless, The San Francisco Chronicle’s Herb Caen broke the story and it was soon picked up by wire services. Sipple’s Baptist mother publicly disowned him, and he soon found himself besieged by reporters. Sipple sued The Chronicle, Caen, and several other newspapers for invasion of privacy, but lost. The courts ruled that he had become a public figure on the day of the assassination attempt, and that his sexual orientation was part of the story.

Sipple, who was on psychological disability because of wounds suffered in Vietnam, declined in the years following the assassination attempt. He drank heavily, became obese, and expressed regret for grabbing Moore’s gun. He died, alone, of pneumonia in his Tenderloin District apartment in 1989.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Hans Scholl: 1918. Like all German children, he joined the Hitler Youth in 1933, where he quickly became a squad leader in charge of 150 boys. He also formed a special elite squad to train other future leaders in the movement. Reflecting, perhaps, his own growing apprehensions about the Nazi movement, his training squad became quite unorthodox. Based on a soon-to-be outlawed Deutsche Jungenschaft, Scholl’s squad took a decidedly irreverent stance. A favorite joke within the group was to ask, “What is an Aryan?” The answer was, “Blond like Hitler, tall like Goebbels, and slim like Goering.” After the Nazis launched a crackdown on dissent, Scholl’s squad was disbanded and several members were arrested. It was during those interrogations that authorities learned that Scholl was gay. He was brought up on charges of violating paragraph 175, Germany’s longstanding law prohibiting homosexuality between men. This time, Scholl was lucky: the judged dismissed Scholl’s relationship with another squad member as “a youthful failing” and acquitted him of all charges.

Scholl and his younger sister, Sophie, both became committed anti-Nazis. As war broke out, Hans was studying medicine in Munich, and Sophie joined him there to study biology and philosophy in 1941. Her boyfriend, Fritz Hartnagel, was an officer in the Wehrmacht fighting on the eastern front. Through extensive letter exchanges between Fritz and Sophie, historians have been able to piece together Sophie’s growing pacifism and Fritz’s alarm over the participation of German soldiers in mass killings of Jews and other atrocities. Meanwhile, Hans and two other students began a pacifist resistance movement called the White Rose, where they co-authored six anti-Nazi leaflets. When Sophie learned of her brother’s activities, she joined the group, which would grow to about a dozen members. As a woman, she was much less likely to be stopped by police while carrying stacks of leaflets to be distributed in several cities and through the mails.

Left to right: White Rose members Hans Scholl, Sophie Scholl and Christoph Probst.

In the summer of 1942, Hans and some of the other members of the White Rose was deployed to the Eastern Front to act as medics during the university’s summer break. When they returned, the group resumed its leafleting campaign, producing between 6,000 and 9,000 copies of their fifth leaflet, written by Hans and titled “Appeal to All Germans!”, using a hand-cranked duplicating machine. The leaflet warned that Hitler was leading Germany to ruin and urged the people to join the struggle for “freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and protection of the individual citizen from the arbitrary action of criminal dictator-states.” The sixth leaflet was written by Christoph Probst after the German defeat at Stalingrad, and announced that the day of reckoning was about to come for “the most contemptible tyrant our people has ever endured.” It was while the group was dumping thousands of those leaflets around the University of Munich that a custodian spotted Hans and Sophie. They were arrested and interrogated, along with several other members of the group. On February 22, 1943, Hans, Sophie and Probst were found guilty of treason and sentenced to death.

The sentence was carried out that very same day by guillotine at Stadelheim Prison. Sophie was first to be executed. Before the blade fell, she shouted, “The sun is still shining!” Hans’s last words were “Es lebe die Freiheit!” — Long live freedom! Over the next few weeks, other White Rose members were rounded up and were either executed or sent to prison camps. But the last word would be left for the White Rose itself. Copies of that last leaflet were smuggled out of Germany and handed to the Allies, who then air-dropped millions of copies all over Germany, ensuring that the White Rose would remain an unforgettable part of German history.

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 “sin question” problem

A parable

The ophthalmologist’s assistant brought in his next patent, a lovely young woman wearing a t-shirt reading “curves are beautiful”. And it was an appropriate phrase; she had curves a plenty and they were indeed beautiful. She was perhaps 20 pounds over “ideal”, but every ounce was exactly where it should be and her glowing taut skin and firm musculature (along with her bottle of carrot juice) illustrated that this was a woman who took care of herself.

“So Doctor”, she said, “is it bad for my health to be overweight?”

Taken aback, the doctor groped for a response. He thought about his lunch with it’s processed flour bread and sodium-intense ham and gave what he thought was a safe answer. “Well, there are many things that aren’t ideal, but the important thing is that you strive to live a healthy life. After all, none of us are perfect.”

“No, Doctor, I want to know if my being twenty pounds overweight is bad for my health.”

Again he tried for diplomacy. “Every body is different. If you’re asking if I think you’re fat, the answer is no. You look very good at the weight you are at and as long as you are taking care of yourself I wouldn’t worry.”

“But is it bad for my health to be overweight?”

A little frantic now he replied, “I really don’t know how your body processes food or the amount of stress that would result from trying to lose a few pounds. I can’t tell you that losing twenty pounds would improve your health or life expectancy. That’s not my specialty. I’m an eye doctor.”

“But doctor, you’re a physician. You have a degree and medical books. What do the books say? Is it bad for my health to be overweight.”

Finally the doctor sighed, “Yes, the medical books say that being overweight should be avoided. So while I think you shouldn’t worry about it, I guess my answer has to technically be yes, being overweight is not ideal for your health.”

The woman shot back in her chair with a look of shock on her face as though he’s slapped her. “You’re calling me UNHEALTHY!!!”

I think some times our community does this with people of faith.

We run into someone who has no problem with gay people, who supports civil rights for couples, and who strives to be supportive, and we say, “So pastor, is homosexuality a sin?”

A sin? Well, that’s difficult to answer.

Sin is a very vague term that covers everything from mass murder to being less than cheerful as you give to a homeless person. It means, basically, any imperfection. “Missing the mark”. A held grudge. The thrill of rushing to the phone to tell the latest about your friend.

In Christian theology, as expressed by the words attributed to Christ, failing to love the people you come into contact with as much as you love yourself is sin. And it’s constant. And we all do it everyday.

But there’s another aspect to consider. There are a number of things in Scripture that were forbidden a few thousand years ago. For many of them it’s obvious why they are there: murder, theft, lying – these all treat our neighbor with contempt. Others may not have made a lot of sense at the time, but scientific discovery has, in retrospect, suggested had a practical purpose: dietary laws, crop rotation, and perhaps even circumcision. And then there were those which seem to have been a matter of cultural identity and religious adherence: rules about pagan gods and practices.

Some of those prohibitions fit easily into modern ethics. Others were specifically exempted and ended by the Christian fathers. And a good many things that may have worked in ancient cultures, like matters of gender, outgrew their relevance and no longer fit with the themes of Christian faith.

And then there are a lot of gray area sins, the “sin for me, but maybe not for thee” type. There are a lot of Christians who see alcohol as harmful to the body and an inhibitor of responsible behavior. They see damaged lives and broken dreams and say, “that stuff is evil and drinking it is sin”. But they aren’t going to call you a sinner if you have a beer.

So “is homosexuality a sin?” is a tougher question than might appear on the face of it and does not lend itself to “yes” or “no” answers. Or, if one is thoughtful and consistent about one’s faith, it ought not.

And “sin” is not the only troublesome word there. “Homosexuality” means, of course, the quality of finding one’s innate attracts on a sexual and emotional level to be towards persons of the same sex. But in these questions, there is always the component of sexual behavior. Few are ever asking “pastor is it sin to be attracted but never act on it?” And even issues about identity or “pride” come in.

A few decades ago when “gay people” were those weird men in San Francisco that you saw on the news parading down the street in a jock strap once a year, it wasn’t difficult for most evangelical Christians to tick the “lays with a man like a woman” box and say with confidence that, “yep, homosexuality is sin”. And by “sin” they meant, this is a biggie, it’ll send you to hell with the murderers and pedophiles.

But with increased visibility, “homosexuality” is also now Susan and Janet who show up for service every Sunday with their two kids and who can be counted on to always be there for the weekly food bank. “Homosexuality” is the church organist who is single and probably not “laying with” anybody, but enjoys his Saturday nights performing as Glamour de’Velvet. And what about young Joey who you are fairly sure really is “laying with a man like a woman” with his best friend; but you’ve known this kid since the day he was born and you know that he is a good kid.

“Is homosexuality a sin?”

For an increasing number of pastors, they don’t know how to answer that. They aren’t theologian dicing the ancient texts for context and cultural comparison, they just want to preach the good news of forgiveness and help people live better lives. But they are the ones who gets the question and an answer is expected.

For example, Joel Osteen went on CNN this week to promote his new book. Osteen is one who doesn’t give much time to preaching sin; he’s more interested in “lifting people up” and encouraging them to live happier lives. Personally, I’m not big on the “think positive thoughts” type of preachers, but he has the largest congregation in the nation so evidently a lot of people are.

Now there is nothing in Osteen’s book about homosexuality. There’s nothing in his sermons about homosexuality. But listen to this exchange:

This was a no-win situation for Osteen. And, of course, he didn’t win. People don’t want uncertainty, they want answers. And, most often, they want the answers to be what they already believe. They want you to take sides – their side, specifically.

Conservatives called him out for failing to rail against abomination. Albert Mohler had this to say:

Viewers of CNN saw a display of confusion, evasion, and equivocation coming from one presented as a Christian pastor. What they were really seeing is the total theological bankruptcy of the word of faith movement and the gospel of positive thinking. Osteen cannot, or at least will not, speak even the simplest word of biblical conviction. He states his intention to stay in his “lane” of glib affirmation.

And Think Progress saw this:

Osteen’s admission that his own sexual orientation is not a choice while still deriding homosexuality as a sin that his 43,000 weekly congregants can choose to rectify is hardly surprising. He has repeated the claim — that gays can change their orientation — before several times.

Televangelist icons have a long history of offensive and homophobic remarks that undermine their message of inclusion and acceptance within the christian faith.

It’s funny, in a way.

I get why religious conservatives want to know everyone’s position. It’s to know whether he’s a man of God or a heretic to denounce. If you care deeply about doctrine, you keep track of who endorses or disavows your particular collection.

But sometimes its the people in our community who don’t adhere to Christian faith or believe that there is such a thing as a “sin” that some deity will punish you for who are the most insistent on getting the question answered. And I have to think, why do you care?

Like the curvaceous lady in the doctor’s office; why was it so important that her eye doctor weigh in? Was it an angry bitter disillusioned (but wafer-thin) mother who spent her childhood telling her “You’re fat! No one will want you and you’ll never get anywhere being so fat!”? Is that the voice that she’s trying to silence?

In the real world, I know a lot of us heard the voice of Christian certainty tell us over and over, “You’re a sinner! No one will want you and you’ll never get anywhere being a faggot, being a dyke, being some gender freak! God has no use for sinners like you!” And (though fewer in number) those shrill accusatory voices are still out there yelling their abuse in harmony with the voices in our memories.

Okay. So Joel Osteen thinks that “homosexuality is sin”. He doesn’t understand it, doesn’t know what to do with it, and so he doesn’t preach it, it’s not his “lane”. I doubt he even knows what he means by that, whether he means orientation or behavior or identity. Clearly he didn’t go on the program with the goal of condemning anyone.

But yet we demand, “Joel, is homosexuality a sin? What does the book say?”

So he flails about trying to give an answer that makes sense, when this is clearly an area that he just isn’t comfortable and no answer is going to work.

I wonder why we do that? I really don’t know.

The real “religious freedom” argument

Anti-gays love to scream about “religious freedom” when they really are working for the opposite. But here is a portion of a letter to the editor of Detroit Lakes Online by Rev. Mark Kuether, pastor of the Congregational United Church of Christ:

I have come to this view through my faith, along with thousands of other Minnesotans who are voting NO because of their faith. I am opposed to this amendment because if passed it would mix religion and politics in our constitution. This amendment would tell clergy who they can and cannot marry in their congregations. Some churches and religious organizations want to recognize the relationships of committed gay and lesbian couples. Some don’t. It should be their choice. However, this amendment does the opposite. It tells religious leaders they are not allowed to marry same-sex couples. Many faiths want to decide for themselves. This amendment represents a one-size fits all government mandate on our state’s churches. The best thing is to allow religious leaders and churches to decide for themselves.

Australian legislature votes down equality

Australia’s House of Representatives (98 – 42) and Senate (41 – 26) have voted against allowing same-sex couples to marry, despite popular support for the change. Part of the vote disparity comes as a consequence of the political structure.

Here’s a brief explanation:

In the United States, there are (almost always) only two parties. Whichever party wins the most seats controls the legislative body. But other than voting on administrative leadership and structural control, a legislator is always free to vote their own way.

Party affiliations, rhetoric, and platforms are important indicators of likely votes, but ultimately the electorate selects individuals based on their qualifications and character. Candidates may agree with many, or even most of the positions of others in their party, but as there really are only two viable choices for affiliation at this time, there is little expectation that there will be total agreement with whichever party they are in.

But in nations with multiple parties, especially when one party does not dominate, quite often no single party has a majority and parties negotiate for power. But in order for negotiations to be meaningful and for coalitions to remain intact, the parties need to be able to make deals, as parties. The leader has to be able to promise the votes from his block on matters of importance to another party in order to ensure that his party can get the promise of another party’s votes on their priorities. Elections in multi-party nations also are to a larger extent votes for a party rather than a person and legislators are expected to vote “the party line”.

To a lesser extent, block voting is practiced in the States as well. Parties will caucus and negotiate and there are party whips whose job it is to keep votes more or less in line with party principles and positions. Stray too far and your funding and support in your next election will dry up. But in the US, “bipartisan support” is considered a positive for a bill and were a party leader to announce that all members must vote in a particular way on a bill, there would be public outcry.

Of course, in multi-party nations there are issues that are not party priorities or that do not break along party lines. In those instances, a “conscience vote” is allowed, at the discretion of the party leader. If there is no risk of a coalition dissolving or if there is no presumption that the voters assumed the party had a position, then a legislator may be allowed to vote as they wish without repercussions from the party.

Australia is a bit complicated. It is in some ways nearly a two-party nation, but it functions as a multi-party state. The two power houses are Labor, a centre-left party, and The Coalition, a collection of centre-right parties that – while distinct parties in their own right – broker power as a unit and can be held to a party line by the Coalition leader. Currently these two political entities are nearly evenly balanced in both houses of parliament, giving the much smaller Greens party the power to determine who leads the Senate and a handful of independents who make that determination for the House of Representatives. Labor holds control of both houses and Julia Gillard, Labor leader in the House, is Prime Minister.

(The closest US comparison is the 2006 elections which resulted in 49 Republican and 49 Democratic Senators. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who identifies as “democratic socialist” (akin to European centre-left party ideology), is not officially affiliated with a party. And Joe Lieberman, who is registered as a Democrat and was the party’s 2000 Vice Presidential nominee, lost the Democratic Party nomination but was elected to continued representing his state by the 25-member Connecticut for Lieberman Party. Both caucused with and gave Senate control to the Democratic Party for the 110th Congress.)

My apologies to Australian readers if I bungled that too badly and feel free to correct any glaring errors. And now back to the marriage vote.

Where things get tricky is when a vote is a party line vote for some parties and a conscience vote for others. This was the case with Australia’s vote on marriage.

The Coalition legislators were held to a party line vote, but Prime Minister Gillard, being personally opposed to marriage equality, allowed a conscience vote in the House. This split the Labor vote and, when Labor opponents were added to united Coalition voting block, this gave the bill a lopsided loss. A similar scenario played out in the Senate.

Although there are three more marriage bills in the House and one more in the Senate, it is assumed that their fate is the same. However, as a significant portion of this year’s Labor opposition is based in election strategy (which is not the same as representing the electorate’s majority view) there is some hope that marriage will pass in 2013. I have no idea if that is political reality or wishful declaration.

And, finally, as politics is a wacky thing, here’s a little tidbit. The Coalition leader in the Senate House has a lesbian sister and expressed himself to be conflicted between promises made to his constituents and his personal feelings (he went with the promises). The Senate Labor leader, however, came up with a candidate for all-time-stupidest-political-comment-ever:

Senate President John Hogg told the chamber he had a deep-seated belief that marriage was between a man and woman.

“To decry my views is to seek to discriminate against me,” he said.

Meanwhile, the marriage battle has moved to the states.

The Daily Agenda for Friday, September 21

TODAY’S AGENDA (Ours):
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Austin, TX; Burlington, VT; Derbyshire, UK; Enid, OK; Holyoke, MA; Nelson Mandela Bay, South Africa; St. Cloud, MN; Spartanburg, SC; Sunderland, UK.

AIDS Walks This Weekend: Amherst, NS; Bay City, MI; Brampton, ON; Calgary, AB; Catham, ON; Corner Brook, NL; Dryden, ON; East Lansing, MI; Edmonton, AB; Flint, MI; Ft. McMurray, AB; Fredericton, NB; Grande Prairie, AB; Halifax, NS; Happy Valley/Goose Bay, NL; Kamloops, BC; Kingston, ON; Moncton, NB; Moricetown, BC (Today); Namaimo, BC; New Glasgow, NS; New Hope, CA; Oshawa, ON; Niagara, ON; Oklahoma City, OK; Portland, OR; Prince George, BC; Red Deer, AB; Regina, SA; St. Catharines, ON; St. John, NB; St. Johns, NL; San Antonio, TX; Seattle, WA; Smithers, BC; Sydney, NSW; 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; Gay Day at LA County Fair, Los Angeles,CA; OctoBEARfest, Munich, Germany; Queer Fest 2012, St. Petersburg, Russia; Folsom Street Fair, San Francisco, CA; Out In the Park Six Flags, Springfield, MA.

TODAY’S AGENDA (Theirs):
Eagle Forum Council: St. Louis, MO. Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum will gather for their 41st annual Eagle Council beginning this afternoon at the St. Louis Hilton Frontenac and will continue through Sunday. Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) who is currently running for the U.S. Senate, will be there. I can only assume he’s there to thrill the crowd with a discussion of what “legitimate rape” is all about. Also speaking at the event is Pam Tebow, wife mother of a mediocre NFL quarterback; Ted Cruz, a former Texas Solicitor General who is also running for the U.S. Senate; Elane Donnelly, who is still trying to figure out how to stay relevant now that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is over and done with; and Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kelfis.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
San Francisco Police Raid the Alamo Club: 1956. The raid on the Alamo Club (also popularly known as Kelly’s) could have been just another raid by San Francisco’s police on just another gay or lesbian club. As raids go, it wasn’t particularly remarkable. Thirty-six women were arrested during the Friday night raid, hauled to the city jail, and booked on charges of frequenting a house of ill repute, which was a rather typical charge that was levied against gay bar patrons in the 1950s and 1960s. They were held over the weekend until the following Monday, when they were finally brought before a judge. All but four pleaded guilty; that, too, was typical. While the charge was frequenting a house of ill-repute, many of those arrested that night undoubtedly believed they were actually guilty of the anti-prostitution law simply because being a lesbian itself also held quite a lot of “ill-repute” in society. Pleading guilty also had its practical merits: it meant no trial and no jail sentence. Just pay a fine and you’re on your way.

If anything was different about this raid, it was made different because the Daughers of Bilitis had decided to begin publishing a newsletter in October. The Ladder’s second issue in November included a very brief account of the raid at Kelly’s — about as brief as what I just described — while lamenting that only four of those arrested chose to plead not guilty. “We feel that this was not due to actual guilt on the part of those so pleading but to an apalling (sic) lack of knowledge of the rights of a citizen in such a case.” The Ladder reported that the raid was the topic for the DoB’s October 23 discussion meeting where a local attorney, Benjamin Davis, volunteered to speak on “The Lesbian and the law,” with special emphasis on citizen’s rights in case of arrest. And in a separate article in that same newsletter, The Ladder urged “positive and constructive action” in response to the raid:

Certainly there is a marked reaction of fear and retrenchment among the Lesbian population of San Francisco after the recent raid… A paralyzing fear has been heaped puon an ever-present dread of detection. The persecuted are seeking cover once again. The innocent are convinced of their guilt. The tolerant became intolerant of their fellows. Growth is stultified by a sludge of misunderstanding.

Where will it lead? To a miserable half-existence of apprehension, self-pity, cynicism, hopelessness and paralysis? In some cases, perhaps.

BUT THIS NEED NOT BE! NOT IF REACTION IS REPLACED BY ACTION — POSITIVE AND CONSTRUCTIVE ACTION!

In the days before Miranda v Arizona, the 1966 Supreme Court case which required that arresting officers brief those under arrest their rights (“You have the right to remain silent…), police often took advantage of suspects’ ignorance of the law. The following month, The Ladder reported on the attorney’s talk with an article boldly titled “Citizen’s Rights,” reporting that Davis emphasized the points that a decade later would become part of the mandatory statement every arresting officer must make when placing a suspect under arrest.

“DON’T PLEAD GUILTY” was the recurrent theme that was sounded by San Francisco attorney, Ben Davis at the first public discussion meeting held by this organization in October. Mr. Davis stresses three primary rules to remember if ever arrested: Don’t plead guilty; call your attorney; don’t volunteer information — in fact, don’t talk to anyone about anything.

And to drive the point home, The Ladder reprinted a list of specific rights that are guaranteed to everyone under arrest. Because most people in the 1950s were probably unaware of their rights, The Mattachine Review had published an identical list eight months earlier for its mostly male gay readers who were targets for police entrapment. The list, formulated by “the National Association for Sex Research, Inc., Hollywood, Calif.”, included these thirteen points:

CITIZEN’S RIGHTS IN CASE OF ARREST

1. An officer cannot arrest you without a warrant unless you have committed a crime in his presence or he has reasonable grounds to believe that you have committed a felony. (Calif. PC 836)

2. If he has a warrant, ask to see it and read it carefully. If you are arrested without a warrant, ask what the charge is.

3. You are not required to answer any questions. You may, but do not have to give your name and address. If you are accused of a crime of which you are innocent, deny the charge. Go along, but under protest. Do not resist physically.

4. Do not sign anything. Take the badge numbers of the arresting officers.

5. If you are taken to jail, ask when you are booked what the charges are and whether they are misdemeanor or felony charges.

6. Insist on using the telephone to contact your lawyer or family.

7. You have the right to be released on bail for most offenses. Have your attorney make the arrangements or ask for a bail bondsman.

8. After an arrest without a warrant, a person must without unnecessary delay, be taken before the most accessible magistrate in the area where the arrest is made. The magistrate must hear the complaint and set bail. (Calif. PC 849)

9. Report any instances of police brutality which you observe to your attorney.

10. If you do not have an attorney by the time you are brought before a judge to plead, ask for additional time to obtain an attorney; or if this is not possible, plead not guilty and demand a jury trial.

11. You are entitled to a written statement of the charges against you before you are required to enter a plea.

12. You are not required to testify againat yourself in any trial or hearing. (5th Amendment, U.S. Constitution)

13. If you are questioned by any law enforcement officer including the FBI, remember that you are not required to answer any questions concerning yourself or others. (5th Amendment, U.S. Constitution)

[Sources: Unsigned articles, The Ladder 1, no. 2 (November 1956): 5, 8.

Unsigned. “Citizen’s Rights.” The Ladder 1, no. 3 (December 1956): 2-3.

Unsigned. “A Citizen’s Rights In Case of Arrest.” Mattachine Review 2, no 2 (April 1956): 51.]

Amanda Bearse Comes Out Of the Closet: 1993. The Married… With Children star made headlines across the country when she became the first prime time actress to come out of the closet. Rumors about her sexuality had been floating around in the tabloids since 1991, but she wasn’t ready to deal with it. “The day I was outed was the anniversary of my brother’s death. I had woken up that morning thinking about my brother, and in the grand scheme of things, being outed didn’t matter.”

She came out under her own steam two years later in an interview with The Advocate. “I would love this interview to be the impetus for someone else to come forward,” she told reporter Steve Greenberg. “There are numerous celebrities, gay and straight, who contribute to our community. That buys us a lot of political power. I have friends who are more active who have… respected my pace. I guess with this interview I’ve stepped on the gas.”

Older, and presumably with more insurance.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Fannie Flagg: 1944. Born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, Patricia Neal quickly discovered when she began her acting career that she would’t be able to use her perfectly good birth name — the other already famous Patricia Neal had won an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1963. So at her grandfather’s and best friend’s suggestions, she became Fannie Flagg. She broke into doing local commercials and then became the host for a local morning television program.

Acting quickly gave way to comedy and writing, and in 1964 she joined Alan Funt’s Candid Camera as a staff writer. Her southern charm and sharp wit soon landed her spots on Password and the Match Game. She performed on Broadway and in a few mobies, but perhaps her most interesting acting gig was as the beard for then-closeted Bewitched star Dick Sargent (see Apr 19); they were supposedly engaged to be married and were even introduced on the game show Tattletales by host Bert Convey as “Dick Sargent and his lady, Fannie Flagg.” Fannie herself was outed by her longtime lover, Rita Mae Brown, after the couple split in the late 1970s.

When the 1980s rolled around, Flagg turned more seriously to writing, which she describes as her first love. But that meant that she had to confront a huge hurdle — her severe dyslexia. She gave up her public appearances to focus on writing, and she very nearly became financially destitute in the process. The result was worth it though; her best-known novel, 1987’s Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe: A Novel, became a critically acclaimed movie in 1991. Flagg drew an important lesson from that experience because, despite the severe hardships, “I found out I was happier than I’d ever been because my priorities were straight and I was doing something I loved.” She currently divides her time between homes in Los Angeles and Birmingham.

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Prayers for Dr. Warren Throckmorton

Dr. Warren Throckmorton’s website is posting the following:

On Sunday Warren had a heart attack. Mild as it was, it led to tests which led to a heart cath which led us to a triple by pass surgery on Tuesday. He came through surgery wonderfully, had a great morning today. He walked some and ate some and then got very tired and then the pain from the chest tubes started. He really is doing great and can’t wait to get those tubes out! We ask for your prayers during this time of recovery and learning! Warren is very determined to follow orders so he can get back to all the things he loves doing! Thanks so much for all the prayers and those to come. We have an awesome God and we are so thankful for his love for us!

Dr. Throckmorton is an advocate for honesty and decency within the evangelical community. When Box Turtle Bulletin began exposing Uganda’s proposed Kill the Gays bill, he was one of the strongest voices raising awareness within the Christian community about that issue. He is currently spearheading an effort to denounce the inherently dishonest assertions of revisionist historian (and anti-gay activist) David Barton. He doesn’t agree with everything we believe here, but he’s a good man who has risked his reputation and welcome among his peers to stand up for us.

If you are a praying person, please remember to include prayers for Warren’s speedy and full recovery. If not, please send him your hopeful thoughts, good vibes, or general best wishes.

The Daily Agenda for Thursday, September 20

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Austin, TX; Burlington, VT; Derbyshire, UK; Enid, OK; Holyoke, MA; Nelson Mandela Bay, South Africa; St. Cloud, MN; Spartanburg, SC; Sunderland, UK.

AIDS Walks This Weekend: Amherst, NS; Bay City, MI; Brampton, ON; Calgary, AB; Catham, ON; Corner Brook, NL; Dryden, ON; East Lansing, MI; Edmonton, AB; Flint, MI; Ft. McMurray, AB; Fredericton, NB; Grande Prairie, AB; Halifax, NS; Happy Valley/Goose Bay, NL; Kamloops, BC; Kingston, ON; Moncton, NB; Moricetown, BC (Tomorrow); Namaimo, BC; New Glasgow, NS; New Hope, CA; Oshawa, ON; Niagara, ON; Oklahoma City, OK; Portland, OR; Prince George, BC; Red Deer, AB; Regina, SA; St. Catharines, ON; St. John, NB; St. Johns, NL; San Antonio, TX; Seattle, WA; Smithers, BC; Sydney, NSW; Thunder Bay, ON; Toronto, ON; Traverse City, MI; Truro, NS; Vancouver, BC; Victoria, BC (Today); Windsor, ON; Winnipeg, MB.

Other Events This Weekend: Everybody’s Perfect LGBTIQ Film Festival, Geneva, Switzerland; Queer Lisboa Film Festival, Lisbon, Portugal; Gay Day at LA County Fair, Los Angeles,CA; OctoBEARfest, Munich, Germany; Queer Fest 2012, St. Petersburg, Russia; Folsom Street Fair, San Francisco, CA; Out In the Park Six Flags, Springfield, MA.

Triangulator In Chief

TODAY IN HISTORY:
President Clinton Announces Signing of DOMA Into Law: 1996. President Clinton announced his signing of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, which outlaws federal recognition of same-sex marriage, and allows states to ignore the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the U.S Constitution when they want to refuse to recognized valid marriages from other states. Clinton said that he signed DOMA to head off a federal constitutional amendment, but LGBT advocates grumbled that the act was less a defense of marriage and more a defense of his 1996 reelection campaign. Those suspicions were confirmed when the Clinton campaign released a radio ad bragging about his signing of DOMA and ran it on Christian radio stations across the country. In response to loud protests from LGBT advocates, the Clinton campaign pulled that ad two days later.

Serving, defending.

DADT Repeal Goes Into Effect: 2011. It was an joyous celebration for the nation’s LGBT military service personnel when at the stroke of midnight, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was finally tossed into the dustbin of history where it rightfully belongs. One servicemember stationed in Germany famously came out to his father  — and to his unit — via YouTube. Another Navy officer married his partner at precisely one minute after midnight, and the co-founder of OutServe, “J.D. Smith” came out and revealed that he was actually Air Force First Lieutenant Josh Seefried. Naturally, not everyone welcomed the breath of fresh air. The Family “Research” Council predicted that the demise of the ban on gays serving openly would lead to a rash of “new victims of sexual harassment or assault, the soldiers exposed to HIV-tainted blood, the thousands of servicemembers who choose not to reenlist rather than forfeit their freedom of speech and religion, and the untold number of citizens who choose never to join the military.” We’re still waiting for word on any of that happening.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Harold “Hal” Call: 1917. Born and raised in Missouri, Call knew that he was gay from the age of twelve. But when he was inducted into the Army during World War II, he knew that sex would be out of the question. “If people were caught engaging in homosexual acts, some of them were shipped back to the states with less-than-honorable discharges. I thought it was a waste.” He went through Officer Candidate School and was promoted to Lieutenant before being shipped to the Pacific Theater. As an officer, if he had encountered people who were gay, he would have had to ship them back home. But his approach was of a don’t-ask-don’t-tell variety. “Who was harmed? Nobody,” he recalled later. “That’s the way the armed forces should look at it. The armed forces could not operate without homosexuals. Never could. Never has. Never will.” He was wounded and received the Purple Heart, and left the Army as a captain in 1945.

He returned to Missouri and worked at several newspapers including the Kansas City Star. In August of 1952, he went to Chicago, where he and three friends were arrested for “lewd conduct.” After paying an $800 bribe, the charges were dismissed, but he was fired from the Star when his supervisor found out. So he and his boyfriend at the time packed up the car and moved to San Francisco, where Call quickly became involved with the Mattachine Society. He began attending meetings in February, and quickly rocketed up to the top leadership.

It turns out that 1953 was a pivotal year for the group, which had been founded as something of a secret society. Unfortunately, that secrecy inhibited the Mattachine’s growth. Part of the secrecy was an outgrowth of some of the Society’s original founders, some of whom (Harry Hay, in particular), had been members of the Communist Party. That secrecy — and those early connections — opened a wedge between the founders and many of the newcomers like Call, with many of the newcomers fearing where the founders might take the organization. As Call later recalled:

“Public protests were not part of our program. Not at all. we wanted to see changes come about by holding conferences and discussions and becoming subjects for research and telling our story. We wanted to assist people in the academic and behavioral-science world in getting the truth out to people who had an influence on law and law enforcement, the courts, justice, and so on.”

Everything came to a head in the summer of 1953. Many in the old guard, including Hay, realized that their time had come to an end and that it was in the Mattachine’s best interest to leave the underground and come up for air. The old guard resigned, and Call became president of the Society. It may seem ironic, then, that the “conservative takeover” of the society would lead to its leader being among the most publicly visible homosexuals in the country. In 1954, Call created and edited the Mattachine Review, and he founded Pan-Graphic Press, a publishing and book service company that became the Mattachine Review’s printer. Chronically underfunded, the Society nevertheless had a number of public relations successes, largely due to Call’s persistence. In 1961, Call appeared on a documentary program produced by San Francisco’s Public Television station KQED called “The Rejected” (see Sep 11), And in 1964 when Life magazine wanted to do a photographic spread on the gay community in the San Francisco area (see Jun 26), Call made the arrangements with local bar owners for the photo shoots.

Hall Call, in the upstairs office of the Circle J Cinema. (1999)

Mattachine business wasn’t Call’s only interest. In the 1960s, Call’s Pan-Graphic Press printed a bar directory that had been compiled by a local bar owner by the name of Bob Damron, and anyone who knows anything about Damron’s Address Book knows the rest of that story. Call also became involved in local porn production (both in print and in 16mm film) and became the owner of a few private sex clubs in the Bay area.

Those interests soon surpassed his work in the Mattachine Society. It had already ceased to exist as a national organization in 1961, although several independent groups in several cities continued to use the Mattachine name well up into the 1970s. One of those surviving Societies was Call’s outfit, which continued in name only into the 1990s, when Call described it as “in limbo. It has a board of directors, and I’m the head queen, but we don’t have the strength of a powder puff.” Call’s energies, by then, was devoted to running the Circle J Cinema in San Francisco’s tenderloin district, a theater which was exactly what you would imagine a theater with that name to be.

Over his lifetime, Call amassed over 5,000 gay men’s sex videos and films, and he was an outspoken advocate for sexual freedom. He died in San Francisco in 2000. His papers are part of the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives in Los Angeles.

[Source: Eric Marcus. Making History: The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Equal Rights. An Oral History. (New York: HarperCollins, 1992): 59-69.]

Rocking the Paradise

Chuck Panozzo: 1948. Do you remember the band Styx? I’m not sure how much play they get on classic rock radio these days, but they were huge from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s. They were my favorite band in high school; I thought 1977’s The Grand Illusion was, you know, so deep. Anyway, basist Chuck Panozzo co-founded the band with his fraternal twin brother, John Panozzo. In 2001, Chuck came out as gay and as a person living with HIV, and since then he has been involved with AIDS awareness campaigns. His autobiography, The Grand Illusion: Love, Lies, and My Life with Styx, chronicles the rise of Styx and the his own struggles to come to terms with himself.

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The Daily Agenda for Wednesday, September 19

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Southern Comfort Conference: Atlanta, GA. Southern Comfort Conference, which takes place every year in Atlanta, is the world’s largest transgender social, educational, and entertainment conference. Southern Comfort began on Wednesday and continues through the weekend. For the past 22 years, it has provided the transgender community with a place to meet and discuss issues directly relevant to the community, and to just have some fun and catch up on friendships along the way. The five-day conference begins today at the Crowne Plaza Hotel | Atlanta Perimeter at Ravinia.

National Black Justice Coaliiton’s OUT On the Hill Black LGBT Leadership Summit: Washington, D.C. The National Black Justice Coalition convenes its third annual OUT On the HIll summit today. The focus this year is to make an expanded effort in recruiting emerging Black LGBT leaders to “educate our Congressional leaders, the Obama Administration and federal agencies on public policy concerns of Black LGBT people and our families.” This year’s conference includes participation in the Black LGBT Leaders Day at the White House this afternoon and an opportunity to participate in the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Annual Legislative Conference (CBCF-ALC) on Saturday. OUT on the Hill is being held at the Washington Marriott Wardman Park and continues through Saturday.

Gay and Lesbian Medical Association Conference: San Francisco, CA. Clinicians, researchers, public health professionals and policymakers will convene today in San Francisco for the thirtieth annual GLMA Conference. Topics presented at the conference include clinical health and primary care issues, education and training, health policy and public health programs, emerging LGBT health issues, health disparities, model programs and other original research. The conference kicks off today with a Welcome reception, with a full schedule beginning tomorrow and lasting through Sunday.

Africa Sexual Health and Rights Conference: Windhoek, Namibia. The 5th Africa Conference on Sexual Health and Rights will meet to evaluate status of sexual health and rights, with particular focus on women, girls, adolescents and youth, and will include discussions on the problems faced by Africa’s LGBT communities. The conference is being hosted by the Namibia Planned Parenthood Association (NAPPA), an affiliate member of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) under the auspices of the African Federation for Sexual Health and Rights. The three day conference will continue through Saturday.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Austin, TX; Burlington, VT; Derbyshire, UK; Enid, OK; Holyoke, MA; Nelson Mandela Bay, South Africa; St. Cloud, MN; Spartanburg, SC; Sunderland, UK.

AIDS Walks This Weekend: Amherst, NS; Bay City, MI; Brampton, ON; Calgary, AB; Catham, ON; Corner Brook, NL; Dryden, ON; East Lansing, MI; Edmonton, AB; Flint, MI; Ft. McMurray, AB; Fredericton, NB; Grande Prairie, AB; Halifax, NS; Happy Valley/Goose Bay, NL; Kamloops, BC; Kingston, ON; Moncton, NB; Moricetown, BC (Friday); Namaimo, BC; New Glasgow, NS; New Hope, CA; Oshawa, ON; Niagara, ON; Oklahoma City, OK; Portland, OR; Prince George, BC; Red Deer, AB; Regina, SA; St. Catharines, ON; St. John, NB; St. Johns, NL; San Antonio, TX; Seattle, WA; Smithers, BC; Sydney, NSW; Thunder Bay, ON; Toronto, ON; Traverse City, MI; Truro, NS; Vancouver, BC; Victoria, BC (Tomorrow); Whitehorse, YT (Today); Windsor, ON; Winnipeg, MB.

Other Events This Weekend: Everybody’s Perfect LGBTIQ Film Festival, Geneva, Switzerland; Queer Lisboa Film Festival, Lisbon, Portugal; Gay Day at LA County Fair, Los Angeles,CA; OctoBEARfest, Munich, Germany; Queer Fest 2012, St. Petersburg, Russia; Folsom Street Fair, San Francisco, CA; Out In the Park Six Flags, Springfield, MA.

Mayor Abe Aronovitz

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Miami Mayor Dismisses Constitutional Concerns Over Anti-Gay Drive: 1954. Miami’s ongoing hysteria over discovering the presence of gay people in their midsts (see Aug 3, Aug 11, Aug 12, Aug 13 (twice that day), Aug 14, Aug 26, Aug 31, Sep 1 Sep 2, Sep 7 and Sep 15) received further attention on the editorial page of The Miami News when staff writer Jane Woods highlighted the many battles between the combative mayor Abe Aronovitz and others on the City Commission and the local community:

Homosexuals brought the next trouble. In the pre-Kefauver days, says the Mayor, there were numerous bars in downtown Miami with gambling rooms upstairs or in the back. After open gambling was closed down, some of these bar operators turned these upstairs rooms into parlors, where homosexuals congregated, met each other, made love.

After Miami had a series of shocking crimes this summer, it was brought to the Mayor’s attention that many homosexuals took an intense pleasure in starting innocent young people off into an abnormal life. Many teen-age boys, to make money, had learned to feign abnormality to milk older homosexual men for all the money they could. Bar operators calculatingly making money from this traffic in human misery in the heart of downtown appalled him (Aronovitz), he says.

“The only effective step I knew to take was to bring the most intense public pressure to bear on Chief Headley (see Aug 26, Aug 31 and Sep 1.) I have affection, and respect for Walter Headley and his ability. But I hoped that the men in the district, under him, directly able to do something about these bars, might be spurred into action if they felt the chief’s job as at stake. I knew they could, if they would, use technicalities of the law to force these places out of existence.

“What response do I get from my fellow commissioners? Mr. Hearn tells me that I am doing millions of dollars worth of harm by bad publicity, making it appear we are a houseful of perverts in Miami. Chief Quigg suggests that the intense police drive I advocate might violate constitutional rights of some men.”

Totally straight.

An Ex-Gay Leader Walked Into A Bar: 2000. In 1998, the supposedly “ex-gay” John Paulk and his “ex-lesbian” wife Anne were the centerpieces of a massive publicity push by Focus On the Family to promote the pray-away-the-gay therapy offered by Exodus International. Paulk was the manager of Focus’ Homosexuality and Gender division, and he had also served as Board Chairman for Exodus since 1995. As part of their publicity campaign, the Paulks appeared on 60 Minutes and Oprah, as well as in full-page newspaper ads and on a 1998 cover of Newsweek. Their 1999 book, Love Won Out, became the title for a series of promotional ex-gay conferences put on jointly by Focus and Exodus.

On September 19, 2000, John Paulk traveled to Washington, D.C. on Focus business when he walked into a dark and seedy gay bar known as Mr. P’s in the heart of D.C.’s Dupont Circle gayborhood. A few of the patrons there, employees at the Human Rights Campaign, recognized him immediately and watched as Paulk ordered a drink and struck up conversations with other bar patrons. One of the HRC staffers called Wayne Besen, who was also working at the HRC at the time and who had already written about the ex-gay movement. When Besen arrived twenty minutes later, he found Paulk on a barstool chatting with patrons. Besen confronted Paulk and tried to photograph him, but the bar’s bouncer, citing house rules prohibiting photography, stepped in and asked Besen to leave. Besen waited outside the bar and when Paulk finally came out the front door, Besen snapped another photo as Paulk was leaving.

Fleeing Mr. P’s.

Besen immediately called several reporters. The first to express an interest was Southern Voice’s Joel Lawson, who broke the story two days later. In Paulk’s first public statement, he claimed that he only went to Mr. P’s to use the restroom, despite the presence of brightly lit coffee shops and hotels with public restrooms on the very same block. Besen countered, “I didn’t know that using the bathroom involved 40 minutes of socializing in a bar and offering drinks to strangers.” Paulk was called back to Focus headquarters in Colorado Springs where he was placed on probation and removed as Board Chair at Exodus International (although he remained a member of the board on probationary status). But he somehow managed to weather the controversy. Paulk remained in his position at Focus, and he continued to be the principle organizer and featured speaker at Love Won Out conferences for another three years. In 2003, he finally decided to step down from Focus. Today, Anne Paulk continues to write and advocate for ex-gay ministries, but John has disengaged completely from the movement. He is instead a catering chef in Portland, Oregon.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Brian Epstein: 1934. He was already well on the way to becoming a successful businessman while managing the record departments at his father’s chain of radio and hi-fi stores in Liverpool, when he began to hear the buzz surrounding a local band. He decided to attend a lunchtime concert at the Cavern Club and was taken in by what he heard. “I was immediately struck by their music, their beat, and their sense of humor on stage — and, even afterwards, when I met them, I was struck again by their personal charm. And it was there that, really, it all started.” The band called themselves the Beatles. Epstein signed on as their manager, and within five months he had paid Decca records out of his own pocket to record a studio demo. He shopped it around, but none of the major labels were interested until George Martin at EMI’s tiny Parlophone label heard them. He liked what he heard and signed the band. The rest, as they say, is history.

Epstein’s sexuality wasn’t generally known until several years after his death in 1967. The band, of course, figured it out right away, probably owing to Epstein’s interest in the band’s appearance on stage. Epstein is credited for creating the early Beatles’ look — the collarless suites and ties, the mod haircuts, the synchronized bow at the end of their performances. John Lennon was known to make a few sarcastic comments about Epstein’s sexuality, but the band mostly accepted him as one of their own. Rumors later swirled that Lennon and Epstein had an affair while vacationing in Barcelona in 1963, but Lennon denied it in a Playboy interview in 1980. “It was never consummated, but we had a pretty intense relationship,” he said. Lennon and his first wife, Cynthia, (Eptstein had been John’s best man when they married in 1962) have always maintained that the relationship was platonic.

When Epstein died in 1967 from an overdose of the barbiturate Carbitral, the band began its downward spiral. Much of that downfall was attributed to tensions between McCartney and Lennon, who argued over who should take over the band’s management. They were never able to come to an agreement on that point, and the relationship between the two men continued to deteriorate.

Eighteen years after the Beatles broke up, they were among the earliest entrants into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Paul McCartney credits Epstein for making the Beatles one of the most successful bands in the world. “If anyone was the Fifth Beatle, it was Brian,” he told a BBC documentary in 1997. But to this day, Epstein is still not included in the Hall’s Non-Performer’s Section.

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Anti-gay memo follows Chino Valley schools superintendent

Clayton County Schools Superintendent Edmond Heatley was moving up in his career. He had served three years as the Superintendent in the county just south of Atlanta and before that he was Superintendent in Chino Valley, CA. But the next step carried much more prestige: Berkeley.

And it certainly must have been a joyous day at the end of August when he turned in his resignation, effective at the end of this month. And why shouldn’t he feel elated, he was the sole finalist. The only remaining hurdle was official approval by the board.

But, well, there was one tiny little thing.

Ya see, back on September 4, 2008, he wrote a memo. It was to inform the school board about an upcoming vote by which the board would “take action and give direction to the Superintendent regarding Resolution 2008/2009-06 in support of Proposition 8”. And the direction he was seeking was pretty obvious from the “Background” he provided:

If Proposition 8 is not successful, then school districts throughout California will inevitably be required to adjust their policies and curriculum to align with the Court’s recent redefinition of marriage.

The resolution also recognizes that the ideal learning environment for children is within a nurturing home governed jointly by a mother and a father as primary educators of their children.

And, to no one’s surprise, the Chino Valley School Board did indeed endorse Proposition 8. Which, I’m sure, pleased Superintendent Heatley quite a bit.

But did I mention that the place he was the finalist at was Berkeley? Yeah, that Berkeley. Alameda County, where Berkeley is located, overwhelmingly voted no. They don’t like Prop 8 so much there and when locals found out about Heatley’s support, things got very loud and heated. (Berkeleyside)

Sarah Cline, the director of the jazz program at Berkeley High, told the board that she was against the nomination of Heatley because she didn’t believe he reflected the values of Berkeley — openness, inclusion, and tolerance. “If you hire Edmond Heatley, it will send a message to my eight-year-old daughter and five-year-old son … that their family is not as good as other families,” she said.

Teachers wrote, parents went to school board meetings, and his employment was put on hold.

There were a number of other concerns, including his approach to budgets and his education, that were raised. But it was his activism on Proposition 8 that put a stop to the employment. And today the Berkeley school board announced that Heatley “withdrew his name” from the selection process. (Atlanta Journal Constitution)

Heatley’s decision was announced in a Tuesday news release by The Berkeley Unified School District. The decision ends weeks of speculation and controversy surrounding Heatley’s next career move. The former Marine had beat out 50 other candidates to become the sole finalist for the Berkeley job.

But community uproar in Berkeley over a resolution opposing same-sex marriage that passed when Heatley was superintendent of the Chino Valley, Calif. school district may have led to his decision to back out.

Which kinda sucks for Heatley. Clayton County already hired an interim replacement so he’s out of a job.

I guess if you live where people think just like you, it may seem wise to participate in a political move to “protect traditional marriage”. But if you want to ever live outside your bubble, the people whose lives you have harmed may not recall you fondly.

And as time goes on, those who chose to love their gay neighbor like – well, not like they love themselves really, more like how they’d love a mangy three-legged dog with fleas – are going to find that decision has consequences far more negative than positive.

Kenya Is Not Uganda

Of course Kenyans and Ugandans know that, as do most everybody else in the world. The headline is for the benefit of Americans, who on average possess an abysmal geographic literacy. But when you think of it, there’s not a lot of reasons why Kenya and Uganda should be all that different from each other. They lie right next to each other, they are both members of the East African Community, they are both former British colonies, they share a similar religious makeup, and they both have histories of dictatorships and human rights abuses since independence, which occurred for each country within five years of each other. And both countries criminalize homosexual behavior: Uganda with prison terms of from 20 years to life, Kenya with a prison term of fourteen years.

I know that when I started writing about Uganda in 2009, I don’t think I could have picked it out on an unmarked map of Africa, and I don’t think I would have been able to find Kenya either. But if you had told me these similarities, and pointed them out on the map where I could see them side by side, I would have then assumed that there were other similarities as well. Like, in their attitudes towards LGBT people.  And I would have been wrong:

DADT Is Still An Issue for GOP Base

ThinkProgress caught up with Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) at last week’s Values Voter Summit and asked wither he would support re-instating “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the ban on gay military personnel serving openly which was rescinded one year ago this Thursday. Jordan answered, “We’ll look at guidance from our military, but I’m certainly supportive of going back to the previous policy.” ThinkProgress explains why we should pay attention:

Though first elected in 2006, Jordan is no back-bencher. He chairs the conservative Republican Study Committee, a group of more than 160 Republican congressmen dedicated to pushing conservative causes that wields major influence within the GOP caucus.

Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA), who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, said earlier that DADT’s revival was “not something that I would personally bring up.” Gov. Mitt Romney, too, has said that he would not pursue its implementation if he wins the presidential race. That’s not exactly a principled stand against DADT’s revival, but it does recognize that DADT is not a burning issue, even among a very substantial number fellow Republicans. But not being a burning issue is not opposition; it’s just a complacent acceptance of the status quo. And that complacency ignores the fact that there are still a lot of Republicans for whom it is a burning issue, and they have been ascendant in the GOP for the past four years.

And so, I would have to say that those statements from McKeon and Romney answer the wrong question. The real question is this: If DADT’s revival were to gain traction, would you oppose it or support it? Because personally, I cannot even begin to imagine that a President Romney would suddenly grow a principled backbone and veto such legislation if it were to reach his desk.

The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, September 18

TODAY’S AGENDA:
SLDN, OutServe Mark Anniversary of End of DADT: New York, NY. Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), OutServe, and the Interbank Roundtable Committee (IRC) will present “Celebrating Our Heroes: A Tribute to America’s Service Members & Veterans,” today aboard the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York City. The event, which will mark this Thursday’s one year anniversary of the end of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” will honor former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, who played a significant role in leading the repeal efforts. Barbara Walters, co-host of ABC’s The View, will emcee the event featuring remarks by Admiral Mullen and three Broadway ensemble performances. “Celebrating Our Heroes” is the first in a series of events across the country hosted by SLDN and OutServe to celebrate DADT’s demise. The public event will begin at 6:30 p.m.

Lawrence v. Texas Discussion: Ypsilanti, MI. Dale Carpenter, author of Flagrant Conduct: The Story of Lawrence v. Texas, a behind-the-scenes retelling of the critical events that led up to the nationwide abolition of sodomy laws in 2003, will discuss the pivotal human rights case that halted decades of legal discrimination against gay Americans. Carpenter’s lecture, in honor of Constitution Day commemorating the signing of the U.S. Constitution on Sept. 17, 1787, will offer insights into the decision’s history and its ramifications. The presentation, “The Story of Lawrence v. Texas: How a Bedroom Arrest Decriminalized Gay Americans,” will take place this afternoon at 3:30 p.m., in Eastern Michigan University’s Student Center auditorium.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Donald Webster Cory/Edward Sagarin: 1913. Writing under the pseudonym Donald Webster Cory, Sagarin in 1951 published his groundbreaking book, The Homosexual In America: A Subjective Approach, which would become one of the most influential books in the early history of the gay rights movement. In that seminal book, he wrote of the struggles that gay people faced and argued forcefully for the elimination of anti-sodomy laws which were then on the books in every state of the nation. The book was the first major publication to provide an exhaustive overview of gay life which was largely underground and out of sight of ordinary Americans. He discussed gay bars, drag queens, relationships, marriages as convenience and as cover, and even provided a lexicon of gay slang.

But what really pushed the boundaries of publishing was his unequivocal call for the full integration of gay people in public life. He argued that this integration would be mutually beneficial specifically because of the harassment gay people experienced from society. “I am convinced,” he wrote, “and will presently attempt to demonstrate, that there is a permanent place in the scheme of things for the homosexual — a place that transcends the reaction to hostility and that will continue to contribute to social betterment after social acceptance.” He was also an early proponent of what we today would call multiculturalism, saying that the diversity of minorities — ethnic, religious, racial and sexual minorities — strengthens and enriches a democratic society. “[H]omosexuality — fortunately but unwittingly — must inevitably place a progressive role in the scheme of things,” he argued. “It will broaden the base for freedom of thought and communication, will be a banner-bearer in the struggle for liberalization of our sexual conventions, and will be a pillar of strength in the defense of our threatened democracy.”

An early advertisement for Donald Webster Cory’s “The Homosexual In America.” (Click to enlarge.)

Sagarin would continue writing as Donald Webster Cory for the pioneering homophile magazine ONE, and he established the Cory Book Service, a sort of a book-of-the-month club specializing in what was them very difficult to find gay-themed books.

Having firmly established himself as a forceful proponent of what would later be called gay liberation, it is startling to see how conservative Sagarin would end up becoming as time went on. Early hints of that conservatism can be found in The Homosexual In America, where he accepted without question the consensus in the psychological world that homosexuality came about as a result of a disturbed home life. But as the decade wore on and a few psychologists began to question the assumption that gay people were emotionally disturbed, Sagarin rejected those arguments. He wasn’t alone in the gay community for doing this; ONE, as radical and strident as it was, nevertheless often published a number of articles which accepted the prevailing assumptions. (ONE also published articles challenging that view.) But by 1963, when he co-authored The Homosexual and His Society with John LeRoy, that assumption was beginning to look dated. He still argued forcefully for the full acceptance of gay people in society — including among psychologist, saying that the first duty of psychologists was not to “cure” gay people but to “eliminate the personal distress and anxieties that arise as a result of social hostility.” But he also argued against those in the homophile movement who rejected the idea that gay people were emotionally disturbed, and went so far as to argue that there was no such thing as a “well-adjusted homosexual.”

A turning point for Sagarin would come in 1965 when, as Donald Cory Webster,  he ran for president of the Mattachine Society of New York. In March of that year, the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., under the leadership of Frank Kameny, adopted the formal position that “homosexuality is not a sickness, disturbance or other pathology in any sense but is merely a preference, orientation or propensity on a par with, and not different in kind from, heterosexuality.” Sagarin’s opponent, Dick Leitsch, wanted the New York chapter to adopt a similar resolution, noting that the illness question was “the greatest obstacle in the path of the homosexual community’s fight for full citizenship in our Republic.” The vote for the chapter’s leadership position became a referendum on whether gay people were ill or not. Sagarin lost.

From that point on, Sagarin retreated from the homophile movement and he left his Donald Webster Cory pseudonym behind. As Edward Sagarin, he graduated from New York University’s sociology program in 1966; his dissertation was titled “Structure and Ideology in an Association of Deviants” — that association being the Mattachine Society. In 1969, Sagarin wrote Odd Man In: Societies of Deviants in America. While American readers had no clue about the connection between Sagarin and Cory, many in the homophile movement knew exactly who he was. But because of an unwritten “code of honor” that came about during the Lavender Scare of the 1950s, outing him was out of the question, although a book reviewer for the Daughters of Bilitis’ The Ladder clearly chaffed at the restriction. “Could it be that he is one of the homosexuals who has surrendered … to the ‘sick sick sick school?”, the reviewer hinted. “Right, but I assure you that if you knew who this man really is, then you’d wonder, really wonder, for he is as responsible for the founding of the homophile movement as any other single man.”

That “code of honor” finally broke down in 1974 when Sagarin attended the American Sociological Society convention. He spoke on a panel titled, “Theoretical Perspectives on Homosexuality” where he criticized the direction of the gay rights movement. In response, Laud Humphreys, who founded the Sociologists’ Gay Caucus later that same year, outed Sagarin during a Q&A session by calling him “Mr. Cory” several times as feigned “slips” of the tongue. Sagarin reportedly left the panel quietly in tears, and from that point on he withdrew from discussing homosexuality altogether. He died of a heart attack on June 10, 1986.

Many have described Sagarin as a modern-day Jekyle and Hyde figure. As Donald Webster Cory, he remains a pioneer in the early gay rights movement. The year in which The Homosexual In America appeared, American was in the grip of both the Wisconsin Sen. Joe McCarthy’s Red Scare and the Lavender Scare, and Cory’s treatise rang out as both a radical declaration for equality and a prescient observation of gay society. The Homosexual In America remains today one of the most important books in the gay rights canon. But as Edward Sagarin, he would become an intractable foe of the very movement he helped to inspire.

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?

Romney appealing to base voters

According to BuzzFeed, Mitt Romney’s campaign has adopted a new strategy: cease appealing to undecided voters about economic issues, focus on firing up “the base”, and pray that President Obama’s supporters don’t show up at the polls.

Three Romney advisers told BuzzFeed the campaign’s top priority now is to rally conservative Republicans, in hopes that they’ll show up on Election Day, and drag their less politically-engaged friends with them. The earliest, ambiguous signal of this turn toward the party’s right was the selection of Rep. Paul Ryan as Romney’s running mate, a top Romney aide said.

“This is going to be a base election, and we need them to come out to vote,” the aide said, explaining the pick.

And as the issues “the base” cares about, social issues, can be best sold in hyperbolic claims about “them” (liberals, homosexualists, Muslim, anyone that “the base” may not have much familiarity with), it’s going to get ugly. Mitt will be out there promising to protect religious freedom, the sanctity of marriage, and the life of the unborn.

Of course it ain’t gunna happen; he doesn’t have the political capital. But much of the base is too stupid to realize that they’ve heard this over and over since Reagan without accomplishing any of their goals, so they’ll be there to support the guy who’s talking the talk. If they can get over the fact that he’s a “cult member” and not a real Christian. And they forget everything he’s been saying since he started his political career.

But as a political move, this may be his only hope. He’s behind in electoral vote counting and there are really only a couple of choices: state his case, hope for a miracle, and lose with whatever is left of his personal integrity; or adopt the absurd, hope for a stroke of really good luck, and hope no one notices that he hasn’t any integrity at all.

I don’t think anyone’s surprised at his choice.

Name me that child

In the global quest for equality, we regularly hear this (Sydney Morning Herald):

Senator Pratt’s West Australian Labor colleague Mark Bishop said very few of his constituents had raised the issue with him. He said he supported gay couples being allowed to form civil unions but did not support same sex marriage because he believed it impinged on the rights of children.

Nationals Senator Ron Boswell, also speaking against the bill, said all children had a right to both a mother and a father.

“Two mothers or two fathers cannot raise a child properly,” Senator Boswell said.

Though this time presented in Australia, it is the prime objection across the planet. But despite its ubiquity, it suffers from a fatal flaw: they never ever clarify the identity of the recipient of their sympathy and benefactor of their protection.

“Think of the children” is a poor excuse for denying rights in general. But usually there is at least a child to think of.

Even the miscegenists who trotted out their dubious concern about “society being cruel to the poor little mulatto children”, had going for them that some children would be born directly as a result of legalizing mixed-race marriage. And, considering the social climate in which they plead their case, it was true that more mixed-race children would be born from allowing mixed race marriage than without (though their fears about the poor children didn’t really pan out).

But for all those who missed school on sex-ed day, children are not the natural bi-product of a same-sex marriage. There is no “honey guess what” conversation. The stork doesn’t have Mr. and Mr. Jones in its address book.

So I’m confused. In these “think of the children” objections, exactly what children am I supposed to be thinking of? What child, exactly, is being deprived of a mother and a father?

Same-sex couples get children in one of three ways; either they are raising a child when its parents (presumably an opposite sex couple) are not able to, they are jointly raising a child that one parent conceived in an opposite-sex relationship, or they are raising a child that they planned and took extraordinary measures to conceive.

Now on the face of it, there is no causal relationship between same-sex marriage and the first two scenarios. But that is not what anti-gays mean when they bring up this objection. Though they never articulate this, what they really mean is that the increase in acceptance for gay people (of which marriage is only the latest issue) will result in more children being raised by same-sex couples.

And that is true.

In countries in which gay people are executed or imprisoned, very few same-sex couple raise children. In countries in which there is some miserly measure of tolerance, confirmed bachelors or spinster librarians might set up house together “to share expenses”, but they seldom jointly parent children.

Social disapproval and reprisals against gay people would result in fewer children “being deprived of either a mother and a father” (as would banning divorce, revoking all spousal rights, and putting an end to military service or any other occupation that could result in death of a parent, and a number of other things that are not proposed). But that argument presumes that these are the two choices: either marriage equality or fierce reprisals against gay people.

But that is not the situation. No nations are trying to decide whether tis best to allow same-sex couples to marry or to throw them in jail. No legislators are pondering, “Hmmmm. I just can’t decide. Is it treacly songs and bridesmaids in peach taffeta for you, or off to the executioner’s block?”

But, to be fair, it could be that for each incremental degree to which gay people are afforded human dignity, there is an incremental increase in same-sex couples raising children. That’s probably the case. But with each scenario of added dignity, the children impacted are unique and that need to be evaluated in that context.

So, Senator Boswell, you need to be clear. What child are you talking about?

In the first of the above methods through which same-sex couples become parents, the children already have been deprived of a mother or a father. They have been deprived of both. So the choice is not between their parents and a gay couple, and very seldom is it between a straight couple and a gay couple. Considering the minuscule number of people lining up to raise other people’s children and the degree to which gay couples readily welcome children with limitations or difficulties, for this kid it is generally either gay parents or no parents at all.

So if it is this child of whom you speak, please explain how your assertion that that child’s “right to both a mother and a father” is to claimed. Unless you are proposing that the government foist this child upon some hapless heterosexual couple that doesn’t want it, it’s difficult to see how your principle comes into play. (And if that is your proposal, please do let the people know).

I don’t believe that children have a significant advantage in being raised by opposite sex parents. But that issue is irrelevant to the marriage question. If there is some assumption that for each child that would otherwise be raised by a same-sex couple, a happy healthy heterosexual family is waiting (an assumption that seems not to be shared by child welfare professionals, incidentally), then adoption law is the place where you resolve that matter.

If that is your belief, then you can see if you can get public support (and pass constitutional muster in your nation) and ban same-sex couples from adopting. But that has no bearing on whether or not they be allowed to marry.

And if you are going to allow them to adopt, surely for those children who have already been “deprived of a father or a mother” by being placed in a same-sex family it is not preferable or advantageous for those “deficient parent” to be disallowed such tools as could make better of a bad thing.

But perhaps you are speaking of the second method by which a child is raised by a same-sex couple. Perhaps it is either by divorce or separation that one partner acquired a child which they brought into the relationship.

But generally the child’s non-custodial parent is still in the picture (though they might have abdicated their role in the child’s life, or perhaps the died, or maybe they were captured and hauled away by space aliens). And I’m not sure what the solution might be nor how marriage law would complicate matters.

At the present, in most countries in which there is not strong bias against gay people, the courts will assign custody to the parent that is in the best interest of the child. And, I suppose, the laws could be changed such that the best interest of the child is disregarded and sexual orientation be the singular criterion (as some would like), but that would result in the child being raised by a less competent parent and still would not fulfill that child’s “right to both a mother and a father”.

I suppose that in a mixed-orientation divorce, it could be argued that the heterosexual parent has more potential to meet that child’s claim on a mother and a father, provided that step-parents count. But that is not at all related to the matter of whether the homosexual parent should be allowed to subsequently marry a person of the same sex.

If one prioritizes a child’s “right to both a mother and a father” over the best interest of the child, either allowing or preventing same-sex marriage will have no impact. That is a matter for family law courts, not a matter of allowing or disallowing same-sex marriage.

So, Senator Boswell, you must be speaking of the third entry method for children in a same-sex headed family.

You must be talking about those children who are brought into an existing same-sex families. Your concern must be about parents who went through a great deal of planning and considerable expense to bring this child into being.

Now we have nothing to suggest that these parents are any more or less likely to bring children into the world if they can marry. We do know that they take considerable steps to protect their children and to make sure that they have are not legally disadvantaged, to the extent possible. We know that such a decision is seldom hasty and never the result of a momentary passionate night of optimism.

But you may be correct: it is possible that marriage protections would encourage more same-sex couples to have children. The increased stability that comes from marriage’s legal rights and social support might be the determining factor in the decision of whether this couple will kids.

But it’s time to be specific, Senator. If the child about which you are concerned, the one who is being deprived of their right to a father and a mother, is the one brought into the world after careful planning and significant effort, say so. In fact, Senator, let’s not be vague and generic. Give me the name of a child that is in the scenario you are trying to prevent, one that is deprived of a mother and a father, and lets go talk to that child.

Because I want to be right there in the room with you when you look that kid in the face and tell her that she – and the society as a whole – would be better off if she had never been born.

Uganda Court Grants Bail for Producer of Pro-Gay Play

David Cecil (AP)

David Cecil, a British theater producer jailed last week by Ugandan authorities for staging a pro-gay play, has been granted bail and released. He was freed on bail of 500,000 shillings (US$200) and was ordered to surrender his passport.

Cecil was arrested and charged last Thursday with “disobeying lawful orders” which carries a two-year sentence. He was remanded to Uganda’s notorious Luzira maximum security prison pending today’s hearing. The charges stem from his staging of the play “The River and the Mountain” at two small venues in the Kampala suburbs after the Uganda Media Council banned its performance at the National Theater.

The Uganda Media Council reportedly determined that the play, which depicts a gay business man who experiences harassment by the friends, family and government and is murdered by his employees, was “obnoxious.” According to Daily Monitor, Uganda’s largest independent newspaper:

At issue is whether a letter sent by the Uganda Media Council, which regulates media and public performances throughout Uganda, constitutes a lawful ban on the play’s performance elsewhere.

Cecil will return to court on October 18.