Box Turtle Bulletin

Michigan marriage challenge update

April DeBoer of Hazel Park, left, and her partner, Jayne Rowse, stand with their children Nolan DeBoer-Rowse, 3, Ryanne DeBoer-Rowse, 2, and Jacob DeBoer-Rowse, 2, during a news conference Friday, Sept. 7, 2012. MANDI WRIGHT/Detroit Free Press

A lesbian couple, April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse, sued the state of Michigan over its adoption laws. Their lawyer explains: (Detroit Free Press)

One of their lawyers, Dana Nessel, pointed out that the state of Michigan certified DeBoer and Rowse to become foster parents together but won’t allow them to both adopt. Michigan law only allows singles or married couples to adopt.
…
“The state gave them children who had been abandoned and surrendered at birth to raise,” Nessel said. “And they are raising them with all the love, nurturing, care and affection that any parent would give to any child. But the state then rewards these women by telling them while they are good enough to foster as a couple, they aren’t good enough to adopt as a couple. We submit that this is pure and utter insanity.”

Yep. Insanity.

But the judge in the case surprised them by noting that they were fighting the wrong battle. Their issues would be over if they married and it’s really the marriage ban that is causing them to be subjected to discrimination.

Personally, I get that. I can see how a state could argue that if a couple was unwilling to make the legal commitments binding themselves together that they were not ideal to jointly adopt children. But it can’t then turn around and refuse to let the couple make such legal commitments.

So April and Jayne have updated their petition.

DeBoer and partner Jayne Rowse decided to take the battle they’re already fighting in U.S. District Court in Detroit one step further today. They amended their complaint in front of Judge Bernard A. Friedman that asks for the right to adopt as a same-sex couple, instead challenging Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, Attorney General Bill Schuette and Oakland County Clerk Bill Bullard Jr. to declare Michigan’s ban on same-sex marriage and partnerships unconstitutional.

“This is totally not what we expected by any means,” Rowse said today, away from the podium during an announcement in the Penobscot Building. “We wanted to keep the kids’ rights at the forefront, the rights that any other child has.”

Robert Gagnon capitulates to Nardelli

I love Dr. Robert Gagnon; I truly do. He delights me regularly.

I’ve never encountered someone so convinced of his theological and intellectual superiority, yet transparent in his lack of logic or consistent thought. Watching him jump through hoops to simultaneously believe completely contradictory teachings and seeing the steps he takes to try and support his positions leaves me laughing out loud.

But he’s disappointed me in his public dispute with Jean-Fabrice Nardelli, a classical philologist at l’Université de Provence. In July, we hosted a monograph by Nardelli in which he systematically illustrated that Gagnon’s assertions in his book, The Bible and Homosexual Practice, were a bit, ahem, lacking:

The level of naivety, superficiality and incompetence in this section of his book, whether on matters technical 76 or on issues of interpretation 77, puts the other existing accounts of Mesopotamian homosexuality by fellow evangelicals (those in Wold, Out of Order. Homosexuality in the Bible and the Ancient Near East, Grand Rapids, 1998, or Davidson) on a class apart, despite their insufficiencies linguistic and text-critical and their ideological shortcomings. Even if one eschews a comparison between Gagnon’s text and the best short survey at hand 78, his pages have no claim to be called a fair review of the Egyptian, Levantine and Assyro-Babylonian traces of male-male sex and affect 79. Was it really so difficult, for a biblical scholar untrained in the relevant languages but accustomed to juggling with Semitic documents and their huge critical literature, to reap the benefits of the best scholarship in the field and then proceed without compromising the indispensable awareness that even the most reasonable conclusions grounded in solid facts and arrived at by a sturdy-looking network of conjectures might be found, in the end, to be fallacious and not square really well with the evidence 80 ? The unpretending L’homosexualité dans le Proche-Orient ancien et la Bible by T. Römer and L. Bonjour (Geneva, 2005), pp. 13-35, 80-102, shows that it was no superhuman task, simply one which demanded care, modesty, the control of the limits, philological and anthropological, between which the sense is to be fought within the primary documents, and a strong sense of self-effacement. In the place of it, we are dealing with a scholar who holds his farthing candle to the sun, but remains silent whenever a difficulty unmapped in his sources crosses his path.

As has always been his habit, Gagnon responded without hesitation and sought to intimidate his opponent. His rather bizarre choice of attack was to obsess on the numbers of pages of each (a rather revelatory peek into his thinking which certainly helps explain his seemingly-endless ranting diatribes).

Nardelli obsesses on relatively minor points of the book, such as a ridiculous three-and-a-half page critique (pp. 9-12) of a three-sentence observation that I make about the Greek word epithumia (Ἐπιθυμίᾳ), “desire,” and another three pages (pp. 22-24) on a short paragraph in my book on Jesus’ use of the term raka in Matt 5:22 (and otherwise no discussion of a 43-page chapter of Jesus).

Gagnon (who often posts multi-part rebuttals) warned the reader that this was “In process as time and interest permits” and ends his mere 7 pages with “to be continued…”.

But after Nardelli clearly, in a detailed rejoinder, illustrated the extent to which Gagnon was lacking in adequate scholarship to undertake the debate, Gagnon became silent.

As day after day slid by, week after week passed, I marveled. I’ve never seen him hesitate for a moment to whip out 20 or 30 pages in response to the slightest criticism or imagined slight. And here he was allowing Nardelli’s words hold the place of final statement. Totally out of character.

But now it has become clear. Though he hasn’t found time or interest to address the latest round, he has found time and interest to (laughable) reconcile his position that gays are invariable condemned to hell and the doctrine of eternal security (but that’s left to perhaps a separate commentary).

Gagnon has moved on. His “to be continued…” must mean “… at some date so far distant that I hope no one recalls that I’ve been corrected and refuted by one who is better skilled and more principled.”

Gagnon has laid down his arms and retreated to fight on another front. So very sad. I could have used a chuckle.

Dear narcissistic fromunda stain…

When Baltimore Raven Brendon Ayanbadejo came out in support of equality, it got Emmett Burns a little perturbed. So much so that he wrote to Ayambadejo’s employer to insist that he “inhibit such expressions”. This didn’t sit well with fellow equality supporter, Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe.

Kluwe responded. It’s required reading. Seriously, you MUST read this:

Dear Emmett C. Burns Jr.,

I find it inconceivable that you are an elected official of Maryland’s state government. Your vitriolic hatred and bigotry make me ashamed and disgusted to think that you are in any way responsible for shaping policy at any level. The views you espouse neglect to consider several fundamental key points, which I will outline in great detail (you may want to hire an intern to help you with the longer words):

1. As I suspect you have not read the Constitution, I would like to remind you that the very first, the VERY FIRST Amendment in this founding document deals with the freedom of speech, particularly the abridgment of said freedom. By using your position as an elected official (when referring to your constituents so as to implicitly threaten the Ravens organization) to state that the Ravens should “inhibit such expressions from your employees,” more specifically Brendon Ayanbadejo, not only are you clearly violating the First Amendment, you also come across as a narcissistic fromunda stain. What on earth would possess you to be so mind-boggingly stupid? It baffles me that a man such as yourself, a man who relies on that same First Amendment to pursue your own religious studies without fear of persecution from the state, could somehow justify stifling another person’s right to speech. To call that hypocritical would be to do a disservice to the word. Mindfucking obscenely hypocritical starts to approach it a little bit…

Now go to Deadspin and read the rest.

Brian Brown’s Dumbest Fundraising Claim Yet

In my email today I found an “IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM BRIAN BROWN,” president of the National Organization for Marriage. It contained this:

Obama’s official, national platform has codified homosexual marriage as its policy for all Americans!

Okay, if Will turns me down, I call dibs on Jake Gyllenhaal! After all, according to Brian Brown, Jake’s gonna have to gay-marry somebody.

What about you? Get your dibs in now, before all the good ones are taken.

Legislator Writes to Boss of Equality Advocate: Shut Him Up!

In an astonishing assault on freedom of speech, Democratic state legislator Emmett Burns wrote to a man’s employer and asked him to shut the man up and shut the man down for advocating marriage equality.

Really. Burns wrote to Steve Bisciotti, owner of the Baltimore Ravens football team:

I find it inconceivable that one of your players, Mr. Brendon Ayanbadejo would publicly endorse Same-Sex marriage, specifically as a Raven Football player. Many of my constituents and your football supporters are appalled and aghast that a member of the Ravens Football Team would step into this controversial divide and try to sway public opinion one way or the other. Many of your fans are opposed to such a view and feel it has no place in a sport that is strictly for pride, entertainment and excitement.I believe Mr. Ayanbadejo should concentrate on football and steer clear of dividing the fan base.

I am requesting that you take the necessary action, as a National Football League Owner, to inhibit such expressions from your employees and that he be ordered to cease and desist such injurious actions. I know of no other NFL player who has done what Mr. Ayanbadejo is doing.

Please give me your immediate response.

The second paragraph stuns me. Somehow, though, the last sentence’s commanding tone makes the whole thing even more chilling.  Just to recap:

This is a state legislator…writing on official Maryland House of Delegates letterhead..to a man’s boss…asking him to shut down his employee’s free speech.

It would be bad enough if Burns had applied pressure directly to Ayanbadejo. But going through his boss? Can you imagine if state legislators starting calling your employer — or worse, writing them on official letterhead — demanding that you stop exercising your First Amendment rights? That’s abuse on top of abuse.

This is at least as bad as when a Chicago alderman tried to block a Chik-fil-a store because he didn’t like the owner’s opposition to same-sex marriage. (I was away at the time, without Internet access, so let me state for the record: the alderman was an ass). To me, though, this seems worse, because contra Romney and the current Supreme Court, a corporation is not a person, and the power gap between an city alderman and multibillion-dollar corporation is not as frightening as the one between a state legislator and a private citizen.

Should Burns should resign over this? At the very least, he should sit barefoot on Ayanbadejo’s doorstep for three days, wearing a hairshirt, forgoing food and shelter, until Ayanbadejo accepts his apology. Burns is a public servant — we use that language for a reason — and his first duty to protect our rights.  He’s abused his power, demonstrated his incompetence, and violated his oath of office.

Also, like so many of our opponents, he spouts nonsense even though Google is just a keyboard away. “I know of no other NFL player who has done what Mr. Ayanbadejo is doing.” Really? Here are a few players I’d like him to meet.

• Cleveland Browns linebacker Scott Fujita

• Houston Texans linebacker Connor Barwin

• Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe

• New England Patriots safety Bret Lockett

• New York Jets cornerback Antonio Cromartie

Emmett Burns’ mix of ignorance and arrogance is all too common among our opponents. No surprise, though: each one breeds the other in a falling spiral of self-righteous egomania. I suppose I can take comfort in one thing. The National Organization for Marriage, a group that trumpets its principled support for liberty and opposition to government overreach, will be quick and fierce in its denunciation of this legislator.

Right?

The Daily Agenda for Friday, September 7

TODAY’S AGENDA:
The conventions are now officially over, and the campaigns are heating up in earnest. While nothing can diminish the importance of the national elections, there are also four state ballot campaigns which directly address gay families. Here is a rundown of those campaigns along with what you can do to help.

Maryland Question 6: If passed, Question 6 will provide marriage equality while guaranteeing that “each religious faith has exclusive control over its own theological doctrine regarding who may marry within that faith.” Marylanders for Marriage Equality is fighting for Question 6’s passage. Last week, Chip DePaula, chief of staff for former GOP Gov. Bob Ehrlich, issued a public letter during last week’s Republican National Convention about something that “transcends party lines — the issue of marriage equality and fairness for every American.” And Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendan Ayanbadejo came out in support of Question 6, a move which earned him a rebuke from Maryland House of Delegates member Emmett C. Burns Jr. Del. Burns sent a letter to Ravens owner owner Steve Bisciotti asking that he silence Avanbadejo. The two-time All-Pro linebacker shot back via Twitter: “Football is just my job it’s not who I am. I am an American before anything. And just like every American I have the right to speak!!!” He’s not the only sports figure to support gay families. Sean Avery, the left wing for the New York Rangers, announced a contest to win two tickets to the Manhattan Marylanders for Marriage Equality fundraiser with a one night hotel stay at the James Hotel.

What you can do: You can sign up to volunteer, become a Grassroots Super Supporter, or you can donate here.

Maine Marriage Initiative: The ballot details are still to be worked out, but what is certain is that a citizens initiative, “An Act to Allow Marriage Licenses for Same Sex Couples and Protect Religious Freedom” will be on the ballot in the fall. Mainers United for Marriage is the main campaign behind the initiative. So far, the most visible opposition to the ballot proposal is the ever colorful and entertaining Michael Heath, who has launched a campaign against “sodomy-based marriage,” as he likes to call it. Also opposing the measure is the Christian Civic League, which recently pushed a web-based survey with just one question: “Has your child ever been criticized at a Maine public school for expressing or defending Christian values regarding marriage and sexuality?  If so, how?” (Okay, two questions if you want to be picky about it) So you can see where that campaign is headed.

What you can do: Ever wanted to see New England’s famed fall colors? You can do that when you sign up for a volunteer vacation or donate miles so someone else can travel, our you can donate here.

Minnesota Marriage Amendment: The ballot proposal to amend the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage is known simply as “the marriage amendment.” Minnesotans United for All Families is the main group fighting against the amendment’s passage in November. This past week, they had a successful effort in reaching the approximately 1.7 million attendees of the Minnesota State Fair, where they recruited more than 4,000 volunteers over the past 12 days. Zach Wahls, one of the stars of this week’s Democratic National Convention, was also in Minnesota this week in various cities campaigning for families like his. And last week, the faculty of St. Olaf College (affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America) publicly opposed the marriage amendment, joining the faculties of University of Minnesota and William Mitchell College of Law. Also publicly opposing the amendment last week was Minnesota based home furnishings retailer Room & Board. Minnesotans United for All Families released a new video featuring Baptist pastor Doug Donley explaining why the Baptist Four Freedoms influenced him to vote no on the amendment.

What you can do: You can sign up to volunteer, host a One Day United fundraising party at your home on September 23, sign up to run the Big Gay Race on September 29, or simply donate here.

Washington Referendum 74: If Referendum 74 is approved, Washington will join six other states and the District of Columbia in providing marriage equality for same-sex couples. Washington United for Marriage has had a phenomenal fundraising month, with 5,000 new donors bringing in $1.768 million in August — with 84% of donations coming from within Washington state. Expedia, based in Bellevue, endorsed Referendum 74, saying it “it has a significant impact on our employees, customers, and partners, all with whom we interact daily.” Meanwhile, the Catholic Church has come under fire for encouraging congregations to bundle political contributions during Mass this coming Sunday.

What you can do: You can sign up for a house party (email mea@washingtonunited.org to get started), sign up for one of 50 weekly phone banks across Washington, or you can donate here.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Collingswood, NJ; Humboldt/Eureka CA; Las Vegas, NV; Limerick, Ireland; Lincoln City, OR; Mankato, MN; New Castle, DE; Reading, UK; Rehoboth Beachm DE; Savannah, GA; Torbay, UK.

Other Events This Weekend: Folsom Europe, Berlin, Germany; Womenfest, Key West, FL; North Louisiana Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Shreveport, LA; International Bears Week, Sitges, Spain.

G Frank Lydston

TODAY IN HISTORY:
There Is In Every Community of Any Size a Colony: 1889. By the late 1880s, the writings of Richard von Krafft-Ebing, the famed Austro-German psychiatrist whose groundbreaking 1886 book Psychopathia Sexualis argued that homosexuality was a biological condition rather than a moral failing, were beginning to have an impact on psychiatry across the Atlantic, particularly as translated excerpts from his book began appearing in English-language journals. One of those who tried to adopt, if rather incompletely, Krafft-Ebing’s new outlook on Contrare Sexualempfindung was a very colorful urologist, surgeon, and professor from Chicago by the name of G. Frank Lydston. In 1889, Lydston delivered a lecture at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Chicago where he seemed to recognize that Kafft-Ebing’s new perspective was a decided advantage to everyone concerned:

The subject has been until a recent date studied solely from the standpoint of the moralist, and from the indisposition of the scientific physician to study the subject, the unfortunate class of individuals who are characterized by perverted sexuality have been viewed in the light of their moral responsibility rather than as the victims of a physical and incidentally of a mental defect. It is certainly much less humiliating to us as atoms of the social fabric to be able to attribute the degradation of these poor unfortunates to a physical cause, than to it willful viciousness over which they have, or ought to have, volitional control. Even to the moralist there should be much satisfaction in the thought that a large class of sexual perverts are physically abnormal rather than morally leprous.

Lydston furthered his argument by quoting directly from Krafft-Ebing himself, who wrote, “As we study into the abnormal and diseased conditions from which this malady results, the ideas of horror and criminality connected with it disappear … [T]he investigations of science will become the means of rescuing the honor and re-establishing the social position of many an unfortunate whom unthinking prejudice and ignorance would class among depraved criminals.” Krafft-Ebing concluded that such an understanding would be “a service to justice and to society by teaching that what seem to be immoral conditions and actions are but the results of disease.”

Considering the draconian criminal penalties that were imposed on those convicted of “crimes against nature,” Krafft-Ebing’s argument was exceptionally enlightened for its day. It was, in essence, this: Don’t throw them into prison; they can’t help what they’re doing. Lydston then set about to described “them”:

There is in every community of any size a colony of male sexual perverts; they are usually known to each other, and are likely to congregate together. At times they operate in accordance with some definite and concerted plan in quest of subjects wherewith to gratify their abnormal sexual impulses. Often they are characterized by effeminacy of voice, dress, and manner. In a general way, their physique is apt to be inferior — a defective physical make-up being quite general among them, although exceptions to this rule are numerous.

Sexual perversion is more frequent in the female; women usually fall into perverted sexual habits for the purpose of pandering to the depraved tastes of their patrons rather than from instinctive impulses. Exceptions to this rule are occasionally seen. For example, I know of an instance of a woman of perfect physique, who is not a professional prostitute, but moves in good society, who has a fondness for women, being never attracted to men for the purpose of ordinary sexual indulgence, but for perverted methods.

When Krafft-Ebing wrote of Contrare Sexualempfindung (Contrary Sexual Feeling), he was describing homosexuality specifically.  But now it must be noted here that when Lydstrom wrote of “sexual perverts,” Lydston had shifted his definitions a bit. He define sexual perversion broadly as “the possession of impulses to sexual gratification in an abnormal manner, with a partial or complete apathy toward the normal method.” He then divided them into three classes: “(a) Those having a predilection (affinity) for their own sex; (b) those having a predilection for abnormal methods of gratification with the opposite sex; (c) those affected with bestiality.” And for all three classes, he departed from Krafft-Ebing, who described sexual “perversion” as the result of biology, by dividing his three classes further according to whether their “perversion” was congenital or acquired:

I. Congenital, and perhaps hereditary sexual perversion.

a. Sexual perversion without defect of structure of sexual organs.
b. Sexual perversion with defect of genital structure, e.g. hermaphroditism.
c. Sexual perversion with obvious defect of cerebral development e.g. idiocy.

II. Acquired sexual perversion.

a. Sexual perversion from pregnancy, the menopause, ovarian disease, hysteria, etc.
b. Sexual perversion from acquired cerebral disease, with or without recognized insanity.
c. Sexual perversion (?) from vice. [Note: the parenthetical question mark is in the original]
d. Sexual perversion from over stimulation of the nerves of sexual sensibility and the receptive sexual centres, incidental to sexual excesses and masturbation.

Lydston then considered the possible causes of “sexual perversion”. This is where Degeneracy Theory came into play (see Sept 3 for a brief introduction to Degeneracy Theory): “In some cases, perhaps, sexual differentiation has been imperfect, and there is a reversion of type; (to) the original bi-sexuality of the ancestors of the race, shown in the rudimentary female organs of the male.”  Because he, like nearly everyone else in the late nineteenth century, believed firmly in Degeneracy Theory, he gave a poor prognosis for the future:

It is probable that few bodily attributes are more readily transmitted to posterity than peculiarities of sexual physiology. The offspring of the abnormally carnal individual is likely to be possessed of the same inordinate sexual appetite that characterizes the parent. The child of vice has within it, in many instances,the germ of vicious impulse, and no purifying influence can save it from following its own inherent inclinations. Men and women who seek, from mere satiety, variations of the normal method of sexual gratification, stamp their nervous systems with a malign influence which in the next generation may present itself as true sexual perversion. Acquired sexual perversion in one generation may be a true constitutional and irradicable vice in the next, and this independently of gross physical aberrations.

Because Lydston believed — as Degeneracy Theory explained — that the sins of the fathers become the biological errors of the sons, he had a particular disdain for those whose “perversions” were acquired. Whatever high-minded purpose he may have had at the beginning of the lecture when he cast the discussion as one between a moralist and a “scientific physician,” this particular physician wound up delivering a fully moralistic condemnation to everyone concerned:

There exists in every great city so large a number of sexual perverts, that seemingly their depraved tastes have been commercially appreciated by the demi-monde. This has resulted in the formation of establishments whose principal business it is to cater to the perverted sexual tastes of a numerous class of patrons. Were the names and social positions of these patrons made public in the case of our own city, society would be regaled with something fully as disgusting, and coming much nearer home, than the Pall Mall Gazette exposures.

The individuals alluded to would undoubtedly resent the appellation of “sexual pervert;” but, nevertheless, in many instances they present the disease in its most inexcusable form: that from vicious impulse. Personally, I fail to see any difference, from a moral standpoint, between the individual who is gratified sexually only by oral masturbation performed by the opposite sex, and those unfortunate mortals whose passions can be gratified only by performing the active role in the same disgusting performance. One is to be pitied for his constitutional fault; the other to be despised for his deliberately acquired debasement.

[Source: G. Frank Lydston. “Clinical Lecture: Sexual perversion, satyriasis, and nymphomania.” (Part 1) Medical and Surgical Reporter 61, no. 10 (September 7, 1889): 253-258.]

Joseph McCarthy and his “pixie.”

McCarthy’s 145 “Deviates” In The State Department: 1952. Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s (R-WI) anti-Communist hearings are a dark, well-known chapter in American history. His campaign to root out suspected “subversives” from under every bed wasn’t limited to Communists; there was a very strong anti-gay subtext to his witch hunts as well. For the first time, gay men and women were actively rooted out of all levels of government employment. Gays were seen not only as morally suspect, but also a security risk and a dangerous influence in government offices. In 1952, McCarthy published a book titled McCarthyism: The Fight For America, in which he laid out his crusade to rid the country of “Communists and perverts.” As part of his book’s promotion, McCarthy answered several question from the editor of the Milwaukee Sentinel. McCarthy accused several State Department employees by name of harboring Communist sympathies and took credit for their ouster. He also took credit for the removal of 145 “deviates”:

QUESTION — How many sex deviates have been removed from the State Department?

ANSWER — Ninety-one were forced to resign from the State Department prior to 1950 and 54 since that time. The Senate Special Investigating Committee had this to say about those who were allowed to resign: “In most of those cases, these known homosexuals were allowed to resign for ‘personal reasons,’ and no information was placed in the regular personnel files of the state Department indicating the real reason for resignation nor was the Civil Service Commission informed of the true reason for the resignation … Die ot the manner in which these cases were mishandled, 23 of those 91 state Department employees found there way into other departments of government.”

QUESTION — Do you claim that the sex deviates removed from the State Department were all disloyal?

ANSWER — No, but all were considered security risks. One reason why sex deviates are considered by all intelligence agencies of the government to be security risks in that they are subject to blackmail. Is is a known fact that espionage agents often have been successful in extorting information from them by threatening to expose their abnormal habits.

The Special Senate Investigating Committee had this to say about the high percentage of sex deviates in government: “The homosexual has a tendency to gather other perverts around him. Eminent psychiatrists have informed the subcommittee that the homosexual is likely to seek his own kind because the pressures of society are such that he feels uncomfortable unless his is with his own kind. Due to this situation the homosexual tends to surround himself with other homosexuals, not only in his social but in his business life. Under these circumstances, if a homosexual attains a position in government where he can influence the hiring of personnel, it is almost inevitable that he will attempt to place other homosexuals in government jobs.”

The worst irony in all this is that throughout McCarthy’s witch hunts, a young lawyer by the name of Roy Cohn served as McCarthy’s right hand man. During one of McCarthy’s televised hearings into the supposed influence of communists in the U.S. Army, attorney Joseph Welch accused McCarthy of accepting a doctored photo as evidence. Referring to Cohn, Welch asked McCarthy whether the photo “came from a pixie.” When McCarthy asked what a pixie was, Welch replied “a close relative of a fairy.” Cohn would later become a regular fixture, albeit a publicly closeted one, in gay conservative circles. He died of AIDS in 1986.

Mayor Abe Aronovitz

Florida Gov. Appoints Special Attorney to “Eradicate” Gays from Miami: 1954. By the fall of 1954, with the public having had just about had enough with Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s constant and indiscriminate red-baiting, the Senate had begun a series of public hearings on a possible censure of the Wisconsin’s junior Republican. But the Lavender scare which had been building in Florida for the past month showed no signs of abating (see Aug 3, Aug 11, Aug 12, Aug 13 (twice that day), Aug 14, Aug 26, Aug 31, Sep 1, and Sep 2). And now Florida’s acting Governor Charley E. Johns deciding to get into the act. In a letter sent to Mayor Abe Aronovitz, Johns announced that he had appointed Miami attorney Morey Rayman “to aid you and to cooperate with you and your office in the eradication and control of sex deviates. Every law enforcement agency under my jurisdiction has been issued orders to do everything within their power to correct this serious situation which has been called to my attention.”

Florida’s acting Gov. Charley Johns

Johns became acting governor when Gov. Dan McCarty died in 1953. He would later return to the State Senate where he would head up the infamous Johns Committee which revived a statewide Red Scare and Lavender scare, with its investigations of alleged communists, homosexuals, and civil rights advocates among the students and faculty of Florida’s schools and university system. Johns would dominate the state’s anti-gay and anti-communist crusade from 1956 to 1965. By the time the committee was disbanded, it had forced more than 100 professors and deans out of the University of Florida, Florida State University and the University of South Florida.

Aronowitz was the one who made the letter public, and in doing so he criticized City Manager Arthur Evans and Police Chief Walter Headley for their failure to rid the city of homosexuals. The letter from the acting governor was just one way for him to turn up the heat on Evans and Headley, with whom Aronovitz had expressed increasing frustration for quite some time (See Aug 6 and Aug 31). “They had better start looking for other jobs if they don’t deliver the goods on this,” Aronovitz told reporters.

Headley responded that his anti-gay drive, while resulting in precious few arrests (see Sep 2), nevertheless was having its intended effect. “Now we’re getting complaints from other places that perverts are beginning to drift into them. I believe we’re making them uncomfortable,” he told The Miami News. He also revealed that six women suspected by police of being lesbians were arrested at a bar the prior night, questioned and released.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Valerie Taylor: 1913. Born Velma Nacella Young in Aurora, Illinois, she developed scoliosis as a child, which led her to believe that she was unattractive — and which instilled in her an early identification and empathy with the underdog. She began publishing a series of mass market lesbian novels in the 1950s under the pen name Valerie Taylor. Those novels became classics of the lesbian pulp fiction era. She published her first general fiction novel, Hired Girl in 1953, and used the $500 proceeds to acquire a pair of shoes, two dresses, and a divorce against her increasingly abusive husband.

Taylor then became a prolific writer in several genres — poetry as Nacella Young, popular romances as Francine Davenport, and, of course, lesbian pulp fiction as Valerie Taylor, including such classics as Whisper Their Love (1957), The Girls In 3-B (1959), , Stranger on Lesbos (1960), World Without Men (1963), Unlike Others (1963), and Ripening (1988). A member of the Chicago Chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis, she was also a frequent contributor to the organization’s national magazine, The Ladder, as Velma Tate.

Valerie Taylor’s “Whisper Their Love” (1957).

While Taylor’s books might be dismissed as trashy novels, they were taken very seriously by gay women in the 1950s and 1960s. The Ladder didn’t just include them in book reviews, but often dedicated several pages to discussing, analyzing and criticizing them both on their literary merits and, more often, on the way the novels portrayed lesbians to a wider audience. This illustrated how important the lesbian pulp fiction genre really was: for many lesbians, especially those in small towns and rural areas outside the reach of the Daughters of Bilitis or The Ladder, lesbian pulp fiction was often the only medium where lesbians could see other people like themselves, even if those people were imaginary characters in impossibly outlandish situations. These pocket drug-store paperbacks were a treasured lifeline for many women across the country.

It’s fitting then that Taylor herself became very active in gay rights. In addition to her activities with the DOB, she helped to co-found Mattachine Midwest, the Chicago Chapter of the Mattachine Society, in 1965, and she and edited its newsletter for several years. She protested at the 1968 Democratic Convention with other Mattachine members, and she worked for the Women’s International League for Peace.

Taylor met her partner, civil rights attorney Pearl Hart, when the two of them helped to co-found Mattachine Midwest. They remained together for the next ten years until Hart’s death in 1975. Sadly, as Hart lay dying in a hospital, Taylor was prohibited from visiting and saying goodbye to her because Taylor wasn’t considered immediate family. By the time a friend intervened, Hart was already in a coma.

After her partner’s death, Taylor moved to Tucson, Arizona, where she became a Quaker and a member of the Gray Panthers. She and Hart were inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame in 1992. Taylor died in 1997 at the age of 84. Her books have recently found a new audience as younger women have rediscovered vintage pulp fiction paperbacks in second-hand stores, and many of her paperback novels have become prized collectibles. In 2011, several of Taylor’s titles were released on Amazon.com as Kindle ebooks.

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?

Zach Wahls at the DNC: What It’s Like Having Lesbian Parents

Zach Wahls addressed the Democratic National Convention on the final night.

Funny, that’s not what the Republican Platform said it was like.

Click here to read the transcript.

Beyond Barney Frank

Last night, while Barney Frank was resting up in preparation for trashing Log Cabin Republicans before the DNC’s LGBT Caucus, the Los Angeles chapters of Log Cabin Republicans and Stonewall Democrats were co-hosting a fund raiser for Minnesotans United for All Families. And this, I think, illustrates a real difference between the old school power-broking party boss mentality and today’s pragmatic goal-focused community. And I, for one, am happy to be beyond Barney Frank.

Barney Frank Calls LCR “Uncle Toms”; LGBT Groups Disavow Charge

Several leaders of LGBT organizations are distancing themselves from comments by Rep. Barny Frank (D-MA) that the Log Cabin Republicans have taken “Uncle Tom” as their role model. Frank first made those comments yesterday during an interview with Sirious/XM OutQ’s Michelangelo Signorile:

Frankly I’ve been appalled to see the Log Cabin club, in the face of this worse and worse record on public policy by Republicans on our issues,” Frank said. “Mr. Cooper said, ‘Well at least they’re not saying bad things about us.’ That’s just extraordinary. Again, 30 years ago when we were emerging from the vice of prejudice, I understood that. But no, we shouldn’t be accepting a kind of second class citizenship, [and saying], ‘You can treat us badly as long you don’t yell at us.'”

“They’re accepted on [the GOP’s] terms,” he continued. “They’re willing to be accepted with no rights — no right to marry, no right to serve in the military, no right to be protected against hate crimes, no right to be protected in employment. I’ll be honest: For 20 years now I’ve heard how the Log Cabins are going to make Republicans better, but they’ve only gotten worse. I now understand why they call themselves Log Cabin: their role model is Uncle Tom.”

Buzfeed’s Chris Geidner reports that Frank repeated that comparison to the Democratic National Convention’s LGBT Caucus toda, where he reportedly received a mixed reaction from the crowd. Geidner quotes HRC’s Chad Griffin: “That’s certainly not my perspective. The Log Cabin Republicans are good people doing good work.” He added: “We need all fair-minded Americans to rally to the side of equality, and that most definitely includes Republicans. They provide a voice within the Republican Party that’s important.”

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s Rea Carey and Stonewall Democrats’ Jerame Davis also backed away from Franks comments, saying that they don’t reflect the positions of their organizations. But Davis added, “The truth is that they do play a certain role of kowtowing to the Republican Party in a way that borders on inappropriate itself.”

LCR responded via a press release:

“As far as Log Cabin Republicans are concerned, it’s a badge of honor to be attacked by a partisan hack like Barney Frank,” said Log Cabin Republicans Executive Director R. Clarke Cooper. “We understand that Barney has earned his protected place within the Democrat Party by being their attack dog on gay rights issues, demonizing Republicans and undermining efforts at bipartisanship that would actually improve LGBT Americans lives. We expect this kind of bile from Barney, especially when it plays into the Obama campaign’s efforts to divide, distract and deceive the American people.”

Cooper continues, “Frank calls us ‘Uncle Toms’ and pretends that Log Cabin hasn’t been on the front lines of the fight for equality. The truth is, by speaking conservative to conservative about gay rights, Log Cabin Republicans are doing some of the hardest work in the movement, work that liberals like Barney are unwilling to do and couldn’t do if they tried.”

Is This the Best Our Opponents Can Do?

The National Organization for Marriage is thrilled. They’ve found a Zogby poll to promote using Zogby’s own headline: “Voters disagree with Obama’s plans marriage.”

Riiiiiiight. Time to check out the poll. Zogby asked respondents: Which of the following statements comes closer to your opinion?

Statement B: The family is the basis of a strong community and culture. The ideal family is built around a stable marriage between a man and a woman.

Statement A: Many socio-economic and demographic factors have caused our society to redefine the structure and composition of family. A family can still be the stable unit of a good society if it is headed by a single adult, a same-sex relationship, or grandparents.

One problem should be obvious: These statements aren’t mutually exclusive. Respondents can believe both without any violations of logic or consistency. A good chunk of the 51.4% who chose B as “closer to your own opinion” could also be comfortable with A (40.3% chose A).

It’s like asking ice cream fans which flavor is closer to their taste: Triple Caramel Chunk or Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. Preferring one doesn’t make you opposed to the other. You won’t shock anyone by having both in your freezer. (I totally want both in my freezer.)

The poll’s other problem is more subtle — oh, hell, it’s obvious, too. Despite Zogby’s headline, the question doesn’t ask anything about Obama’s plans or what the law should say about same-sex marriage. Think about those hypothetical people who like Statement A and hate Statement B (hypothetical, because the survey never identifies them). Can you be sure these people, even these people, oppose legalizing same-sex marriage?

No. Because in the immortal words of NOM president Brian Brown (and trust me, we’ll be keeping those words alive!):

Just because you believe something is wrong, it doesn’t mean that you make it illegal.

It’s nearly enough to make you feel bad for our opponents. As their position erodes, as they see multiple states poised to vote for marriage equality, as they try desperately to prove their relevance, what are their options?

Take a poll? No, that doesn’t work anymore.

Rig the poll with false alternatives? Evidently that’s not reliable, either.

Take a poll, rigged with false alternatives, that doesn’t ask people whether same-sex marriage should be legal? Yes! This, apparently, is the best of getting a bare majority of people to say something that you can twist as opposition to legalizing same-sex marriage.

This is what our opponents are reduced to. It would piss me off if it weren’t so delightful.

The Daily Agenda for Thursday, September 6

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weeked: Collingswood, NJ; Humboldt/Eureka CA; Las Vegas, NV; Limerick, Ireland; Lincoln City, OR; Mankato, MN; New Castle, DE; Reading, UK; Rehoboth Beachm DE; Savannah, GA; Torbay, UK.

Other Events This Weekend: Folsom Europe, Berlin, Germany; Womenfest, Key West, FL; North Louisiana Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Shreveport, LA; International Bears Week, Sitges, Spain.

Schematic diagram of Louis William Max’s device for inducing a powerful electric shock. (Click to enlarge.)

TODAY IN HISTORY:
First Recorded Case Of Electric Shock Treatment for Homosexuality: 1935. The idea had been floated around for quite a while among therapists practicing a brand new, non-Freudian form of psychology known as Behavioral Therapy. The premise for this form of therapy goes back to Pavlov’s dog, which was trained to salivate whenever it heard a ringing bell. Behavioral Therapy used various systems of rewards and punishments — initially, mostly punishments — to instill desired behavior in their subjects. And therapists were always on the lookout for new, effective forms of punishment. Shocking patients with a dose of electricity was seen as one promising avenue, but improperly administered, electric current could be lethal, as prisons from Sing Sing to San Quentin demonstrated on a regular basis.

But by 1935, that problem was solved. At an earlier meeting of the New York branch of the American Psychological Association, New York University’s Louis William Max introduced a new device that he invented to safely administer a painful electric shock to his patient (see Mar 15). Later that year, Dr. Max traveled to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to present a brief talk before the American Psychological Association’s annual meeting about his attempts to cure homosexuality using his new electric shock device. On Friday, September 6th at 2:00 p.m., the APA convened a panel on Abnormal Psychology at the University of Michigan’s Chemistry Amphitheater (room 165, to be exact), where Dr. Max gave his talk. The transcript of the talk itself is not available, but this brief synopsis appeared the following month in the APA’s Psychological Bulletin:

Breaking Up a Homosexual Fixation by the Conditioned Reaction Technique: A Case Study. Louis Wm. Max, New York University.

A homosexual neurosis in a young man was found upon analysis to be partially fetishistic, the homosexual behavior usually following upon the fetishistic stimulus. An attempt was made to disconnect the emotional aura from this stimulus by means of electric shock, applied in conjunction with the presentation of the stimulus under laboratory conditions. Low shock intensities had little effect but intensities considerably higher than those usually employed.on human subjects in other studies, definitely diminished the emotional value of the stimulus for days after each experimental period. Though the subject reported some backsliding, the ” desensitizing ” effect over a three month period was cumulative. Four months after cessation of the experiment he wrote, ” That terrible neurosis has lost its battle, not completely but 95% of the way.” Advantages and limitations of this technique are discussed. [10 min.]

Behavioral techniques to try to “cure” homosexuality took many forms, from electric shock therapy on adults and adolescents, to so-called “mild swats” on four-year-old boys like Kirk Andrew Murphy who underwent behavioral therapy at the hands of George Rekers. You can learn more about the role of Behavioral Therapy in attempts to “cure” homosexuality in Blind Man’s Bluff, an epilogue to our award-winning original investigation, What Are Little Boys Made Of?, about Kirk’s treatment at UCLA under Rekers.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Sylvester: 1946. Born Sylvester James in Los Angeles, he lived his entire life on the corner of Gay and Black. Like Cher, he dropped his surname when he moved to San Francisco in 1970 and began performing with the gender-queering troupe known as the Cockettes. He also performed in drag in a musical review of Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday songs. He went on to form rock several bands before finally latching onto the disco craze in the mid-1970s as a solo artist. His second album, Step II, yielded his greatest funk/disco hits, “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” and “Dance (Disco Heat)”. In 1979, he appeared in the film The Rose, starring Bette Midler, and in 1983 his Hi-NRG dance hit “Do You Wanna Funk” appeared in the film Trading Places. During the disco era, he was called “The Queen of Disco,” but as he moved away from disco and toward a more Dance/Funk sound, his record company wanted him to butch things up a bit. Sylvester’s response was to attend meetings with the label’s execs in full-on drag. A drag photo shoot that he put together to tweak his record label bosses ended up on the cover art for his posthumous release Immortal. His last hit, 1986’s “Someone Like You,” hit number 1 on the U.S. Dance Chart, and came from his only Warner Brother’s album, Mutual Attraction, which featured cover art by Keith Haring. Sylvester is another of the many giant talents consumed by the AIDS epidemic; he died in 1988.

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?

Jeff Buchanan Out as Exodus V.P.; Randy Thomas Returns

Exodus International has just announced some staff changes:

Yesterday marked Jeff and Angela Buchanan’s last day on the Exodus International staff. Jeff served for the last 4 years and Angela the last 2 years. During their time here, Angela served as Director of Communications and Jeff served as Senior Director of Church equipping until taking on responsibilities as Executive Vice President in August 2011. Their contributions to Exodus were substantial and they will be missed. They will be relocating to Pennsylvania to join the staff of a local church.

Jeff Buchanan’s departure, frankly, doesn’t surprise me. During last June’s Exodus International Conference, the workshops that Buchanan held were considerably more dogmatic and “old Exodus” than I had expected, given the change in tone of the conference overall. Buchanan became Exodus’s vice president last year following the departure of Randy Thomas from that job. And speaking of Thomas:

I also want to officially announce that Randy Thomas is rejoining the Exodus staff full-time starting today. Randy served from June 2002 to August 2011 before taking a year off to pursue his consulting business and artwork. … Returning in the role of Executive Vice President, Randy brings a renewed excitement and fresh perspective to the Exodus team.

During Thomas’s earlier tenure as Exodus vice president, he often played the role of attack dog, apologist, and culture warrior. It may be tempting to view Thomas’s return as vice president as a sign of Exodus’s possible retrenchment, but Thomas’s personal blog over the past year has evolved in parallel with Exodus International’s changes, both in message and tone. And given the direction that Exodus appears to be headed, Thomas now looks like the better fit for the number two spot than Buchanan.

Referendum 74 draws record number of financial supporters

Supporters of Referendum 74 have now raised 7.3 million dollars to help keep Washington’s marriage law inclusive. And while this is an amazing number, I’m even more impressed by a different statistic:

WUM now has 13,866 individual contributors, believed to be the largest number of donors in any Washington state ballot campaign. According to the Public Disclosure Commission’s online records dating from 2000, only 2008’s I-1000 came close, with approximately 9,500 contributors.

And those are not out-of-state voters.

The average median gift in August was $50, with 84 percent of those donations coming from Washington state. Additionally, those 5,000-plus new contributors in August constitute a 47% increase over the 8,900 individuals who had donated to the campaign by the end of July.

Our opponents like to see these contributions in terms of their worldview: a handful of very wealthy out-of-state homosexuals and their ultra-liberal friends are coming in to try and force their views on the citizens.

But when more average hard-working Washingtonians than ever before contribute $50 because they believe in the rightness of equality, something kinda phenomenal is going on. Something very cool. Something I don’t think our opponents are prepared for.

Motorcycle Jacket

You may recall the report from a couple of years ago when Ted Cox went undercover to ex-gay group Journey Into Manhood’s weekend in the woods:

I sat on the floor between the outstretched legs of a camp guide, my head leaning back against his shoulder. The guide sat behind me, his arms wrapped around my chest. This hold was called “The Motorcycle.” Five men surrounded the two of us, their hands resting gently on my arms, legs and chest.

But what do you do if it isn’t a JIM weekend? What if you need some Motorcycle touch-therapy right now?

Well, fortunately London design student Si Chan has a solution:

From the 2012 London College of Design press show

See. He looks more manly already.

Bad, But In Some Ways Better: GLSEN School Climate Survey Shows Mixed Results

Moments ago, the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN) released its 2011 National School Climate Survey, which includes responses from 8,584 students from all fifty states and the District of Columbia. GLSEN has been conducting the survey now for over a decade, and this latest survey has found, for the first time, decreased levels of biased anti-LGBT language and decreased levels of student victimization based on sexual orientation. The survey also found increased levels of student access to LGBT-related school resources and support.

But a quick look at the survey when compared to 2009 shows that the situation is a classic glass-half-full/half-empty situation. Despite the improvements, LGBT students continue to experience hostile climates in the schools. According to the 2011 survey, 81.9% of LGBT students said they were verbally harassed, 38.3% were physically harassed and 18.3% were physically assaulted at school in the past year because of their sexual orientation. (In 2009, those same figures were 84.6%, 40.1% and 18.8% respectively.)

In addition, 63.9% of LGBT students reported being verbally harassed, 27.1% were physically harassed and 12.4% were physically assaulted at school in the past year because of their gender expression. Those figures are virtually unchanged from 2009. The 2011 survey also found that 63.5% reported feeling unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation, and 43.9% felt unsafe because of their gender expression. Those numbers are actually higher from 2009. About a third reported skipping class and a third reported skipping an entire day because of safety concerns.

The survey found that having a Gay-Straight Alliance, an LGBT-inclusive curriculum and anti-bullying policies which specifically addressed sexual orientation correlated with an improved school environment. The presence of teachers and other school personnel who were visibly supportive of LGBT students also resulted in higher grade point averages and lower absenteeism among LGBT students. Unfortunately, only slightly more than half could identify six or more supportive teachers, less than half attended schools with GSAs, and only about 7.4% attended a school with an anti-bullying policy which specifically addressed sexual orientation and/or gender expression.