Box Turtle Bulletin

You know that you’ve lost the “protect marriage” battle, when…

… you sue the State of New York because Republicans conspired to pass marriage equality. (Fox News)

The Appellate Division of state Supreme Court in Rochester ruled against gay marriage opponents who argued that Republican state senators violated New York’s open meeting rules ahead of the law’s passage last year.
…
New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms said Cuomo and another gay marriage supporter, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, met behind closed doors with the Senate’s Republican majority in violation of the open meeting law.

Oh those dastardly Republicans, all meeting up in secret to impose gay marriage on the state!! The vote should be overturned!!

The appeals court noted 5-0 that caucuses can meet in private to discuss issues, even if there is a representative from the Governor’s office present. As of yet, no news source is reporting that any justices burst out laughing or called the New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms a bunch of addled loons. Or, at least, not to their faces.

The Daily Agenda for Friday, July 6

TODAY’S AGENDA (Ours):
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Budapest, Hungary; Cologne, Germany; Haarlem, Netherlands; London, UK (World Pride); Los Angeles, CA (Black Pride); Marseille, France; Porto, Portugal; Prince George, BC; San Luis Obispo, CA; Santa Barbara, CA; Sitges, Spain; Tuscany, Italy; and Victoria, BC.

Other Celebrations This Weekend: Bear Week, Provincetown, MA.

TODAY’S AGENDA (Theirs):
Family “Research” Council’s Values Bus Tour: Harrisonburg and Woodstock, VA. The Family “Research” Council, an SPLC-certified hate group, continues its Values Bus Tour with the Heritage Foundation today. The tour is part voter registration drive and part propaganda tour where they will disseminate “materials on defending life, marriage and religious liberty.” Today, the bus tour stops at Harrisonburg, VA for a monthly GOP luncheon from noon to 1:00 p.m. at The Wood Grill (1711 Reservoir St), followed by a “Your Money, Your Values, Your Vote Press Conference” beginning at 2:00 p.m. at the First Presbyterian Church on the Courthouse Square. The bus with then travel a few miles up the road to Woodstock for a “Your Money, Your Values, Your Vote” rally at the Woodstock Courthouse from 4:15 p.m. to 5:15 p.m.

Jérôme Duquesnoy (left), Piete, 1654 (right).

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Jérôme Duquesnoy: 1602. The Flemish artist was, in his day, regarded as one of the finest sculptors of the seventeenth century. In 1644, Duquesnoy was commissioned to create statues for the nave of the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula in Brussels, and the following year he was appointed “architecte, statuaire et sculpteur de la Cour” to Archduke Leopold William, Regent of the Netherlands. it was during the time where he produced some of his most famous works, many of which depicted strong, muscled male figures in the Hellenic tradition. In 1651, he became Court Architect and Sculptor, and in 1654 he went to Ghent to fulfill several commissions when he was accused of indecencies with his assistants. The Privy Council of Ghent convicted Duquesnoy of sodomy and sentenced him to death. He was bound to a stake in the Grain Market in the center of the city, strangled, and his body reduced to ashes. His reputation was destroyed and his memory repressed. It has only been recently that critical attention has returned to his work.

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NARTH and Liberty Counsel Pledge To Fight California Ex-Gay Therapy Ban In Court

With the California Assembly poised to consider S.B. 1172, which would bar licensed therapists in California from offering therapies identified as Sexual Orientation Change Efforts (SOCE) to minors, the National Association of Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) and Liberty Counsel pledged in an email blast to NARTH supporters to seek to have the law blocked in court if it becomes law:

NARTH to officially work with Liberty Council to pursue an injunction and all other necessary court action against SB 1172
While we are doing everything possible to defeat SB 1172 in the California Assembly NARTH is also working with Liberty Council to stop this destructive legislation if it is passed and signed into law by the Governor. As we have said from the beginning, NARTH will continue to oppose these efforts to limit client rights by taking whatever action is legally open to us as an organization. 

The proposed legislation has been scaled back since it was first introduced in the Senate in April. The provisions requiring that adult clients seeking SOCE sign a mandated informed consent statement has been dropped, along with provisions allowing SOCE clients to sue their therapists if they feel they were harmed by such therapies. The Senate approved S.B. 1172 on a 23-13 vote in May. Because the proposed law would only apply to licensed therapists, religious ex-gay ministries are exempt. In  a statement on SOCE issued in June, Exodus International declined to oppose the bill.

NOM’s big dump update

Few things are as exciting as clicking over to the Dump Starbucks and Dump General Mills pages to see just how many new signatures the National Organization for Marriage has racked up. Since our last report,

Dump General Mills now has 18,157 pledges to “look for substitutes” to General Mills brands. That’s up a whopping 154 people from just Tuesday. If this were a petition to get Sheriff Andy to let Opie join the baseball team, that would be astounding.

Dump Starbucks has 45,446 signatories, up 104 signatures since the 2nd. As this is an older boycott, the numbers are starting to level out and probably won’t get above 50,000 before the effort is removed from the web and everyone pretends it didn’t happen.

In comparison, 62,630 people signed a petition to get a Virginia athletic club to allow same-sex couples to register for family access to a swimming pool, and 269,884 people signed a petition to ask Citibank and Barclays to publicly condemn Uganda’s “Kill the Gays” bill. I don’t believe that either of these efforts got press attention or frantic emails sent out to ‘concerned citizens’.

I don’t just comment on NOM’s abysmal PR failures to mock them. I do so because it is important that media and legislators begin to understand that behind their hype and pretense is no substance.

If our community wanted to head up a campaign to boycott Starbucks “because they serve overpriced crappy coffee”, it would take little effort to find tons of people who don’t like Starbucks. But NOM’s moral franticness and hectic histrionic ‘protection of a sacred rite’ can barely scrape together half a hundred thousand. People just don’t support them. They just don’t care.

We may continue for a few more years to lose votes and polls. But the fire is gone, the passion is gone, and only a tiny fragment of the population is sufficiently opposed to marriage equality to type in their name in an online list.

Welcome Out, Frank Ocean

Frank Ocean, the R&B singer whose critically-acclaimed album self-released nostalgia, ULTRA was named as among the best of 2011, announced on his Tumblr page Tuesday that his first love, at the age of nineteen, was with a man:

In the last year or 3 I’ve screamed at my creator, screamed at clouds in the sky, for some explanation. Mercy maybe. For peace of mind to rain like manna somehow. 4 summers ago, I met somebody. I Was 19 years old. He was too. We spent that summer, and the summer after, together, everyday almost. And on the days we were together, time would glide. Most of the day I’d see him, and his smile. I’d hear his conversation and h is silence..until it was time to sleep. Sleep I would often share with him. By the time I realized I was in love, it was malignant. It was hopeless. There was not escaping, no negotiating with the feeling. No choice. It was my first love. It changed my life.

Ocean is part of the hip-hop collective Odd Future, and he was featured on Jay-Z and Kanye West’s album “Watch the Throne.” He finished in second place in the BBC’s Sound of 2012 poll. Tyler the Creator, another member of Odd Future, took to Twitter to congratulate his fellow artist. This is significant since Tyler the Creator has his own problems with homophobia, with his album Goblet repeating the word “faggot” or other anti-gay variants 213 times. Ocean’s first studio album, Channel Orange is due to be released on July 17.

The Daily Agenda for Thursday, July 5

TODAY’S AGENDA (Ours):
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Budapest, Hungary; Cologne, Germany; Haarlem, Netherlands; London, UK (World Pride); Los Angeles, CA (Black Pride); Marseille, France; Porto, Portugal; Prince George, BC; San Luis Obispo, CA; Santa Barbara, CA; Sitges, Spain; Tuscany, Italy; and Victoria, BC.

Other Celebrations This Weekend: Bear Week, Provincetown, MA.

TODAY’S AGENDA (Theirs):
Family “Research” Council’s Values Bus Tour: Pearisburg, VA. The Family “Research” Council, an SPLC-certified hate group, continues its Values Bus Tour with the Heritage Foundation today. The tour is part voter registration drive and part propaganda tour where they will disseminate “materials on defending life, marriage and religious liberty.” Today, the bus tour stops at Giles High School in Pearisburg, Virginia, where the stop will feature Pastor Shahn Wilburn of Riverview Baptist Church talking about ” the importance of protecting religious freedom and how we can Save the American Dream!” Complete with exclamation point! The event takes place this evening from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.

Tomorrow, the bus will head to Harrisonburg, VA for a monthly GOP luncheon, and continue on to Woodstock for a rally Friday evening.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
PFC Barry Winchell Murdered: 1999. He had enlisted in the Army in 1997 and was transferred to Ft. Campbell, Kentucky in 1999 where he was assigned to the 2/502nd Infantry of the 101st Airborne Division. He learned to fire a .50-caliber machine gun so well that he became the best marksman in his company. He hoped one day to become a helicopter pilot, but that dream was cut short, brutally, on July 5, 1999 when he was bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat as he was sleeping in his cot in the barracks. Pvt Calvin Glover, 18, was arrested and charged with Winchell’s murder after admitting to the beating. While in custody, he made several disparaging remarks about blacks and gays to another prisoner.

In fact, there is little reason to believe that PFC Winchell. In the ensuing investigation, Sgt Eric Dubielak, Winchell’s commanding officer, testified that he knew that Winchell had been experiencing daily harassment from fellow soldiers over rumors of his perceived homosexuality, rumors that had been spread by Winchell’s roommate, Spc. Justin Fisher, when Winchell began dating an MtF transgender woman from Nashville. But Dubielak never intervened, nor did any of the other superior officers who admitted that they were aware of the abuse. “Nothing was done, sir,” said Sgt. Michael Kleifgen, who told of one fruitless effort to complain to the post’s inspector general when a master sergeant referred to Winchell as “that faggot.” But when asked why he himself didn’t order his platoon members to stop harassing Winchell, Kleifgen responded, “Everybody was having fun.” As for Winchell himself, he didn’t lodge a formal complaint, and for good reason. Doing so would have likely put him afoul of the “Don’t Tell” part of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” given his superior officers’ demonstrated inability to distinguish between sexual orientation and gender identity.

Glover was eventually court-martialed and given a lifetime sentence. He is still behind bars. Fisher, who had goaded Glover into attacking Winchell and participated in an attempted cover-up, was sentenced to 12½ years in prison and was released in 2006. But Ft. Campbell’s commanding officer at the time of the murder, Major General Robert T. Clark, refused to take responsibility for the anti-gay/trans  climate under his command. Furthermore, the Defense Department under President George W. Bush exonerated Clark of any wrongdoing, and he was promoted to Lieutenant General in 2003. The year 2003 also saw the release of the Peabody Award-winning film film for Showtime, Soldier’s Girl, which portrayed the romance between Winchell and Calpernia Addams which led up to Winchell’s murder.

Jean Cocteau. Photo by Man Ray, 1922.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Jean Cocteau: 1889. Most artists work in just one or two mediums; Cocteau excelled in nearly everything he touched. The French poet, novelist, author of plays, ballets and operas, clothing designer, interior designer, graphic designer, painter, illustrator, filmmaker and actor excelled in just about everything he did. The title of his 1929 novel Les Enfants Terrible, about two siblings who create a game out of hurting each other’s feelings, has become a shorthand expression to describe those who go out of their way to shock others. His 1940 play, Le Bel Indifférent, created for his life-long friend Edith Piaf, enjoyed enormous acclaim. His films, which included Blood of a Poet (1930), Les Parents Terribles (1948), Beauty and the Beast (1946), and Orpheus (1949), are credited for introducing the avant-garde into French cinema.

His circle of friends and collaborators included Marcel Proust, André Gide, Guillaume Apollinaire, Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, Sergei Diaghilev and Rayond Radigue. His personal life was similarly varied, which included an affair with Princess Natalie Paley (which ended when Paley aborted her pregnancy with Cocteau’s child) and long term relationships with actors Jean Marais and Ã‰douard Dermit, the latter of whom Cocteau formally adopted. He died on October 11, 1963, of heart failure, just an hour after learning of Piaf’s death.

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?

Accidental posting

Some of you may have seen a commentary that was posted by error. In wordpress, if you use you phone to write you have to specifically set the commentary to be draft. Normally draft is the default.

I’ll have the completed commentary up soon. I apologize to any who were confused

Happy Independence Day

The Daily Agenda for Independence Day

Jasper Johns. White Flag, 1955.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Perhaps the most famous words written in America, the Declaration of Independence has inspired fights for liberty since its signing in 1776. It’s instructive that a decade later, delegates from those thirteen original colonies would gather again for the purposing of forming “a more perfect union.” Not a perfect union, but something at bit closer to that goal. We’ve been striving for that more perfect union since then. Today, as we continue to press for our own unalienable rights, it is good to recall that we are in good company:

We gathered and held our breath as the attendants rolled back the shroud. Where one might expect a pair of legs were wooden sticks. Nicked and numbered, the sticks were not attached to a corpse but a neat pile of well-aged picket signs, hand-lettered, “First Class Citizenship for Homosexuals.” Frank Kameny stood silent, at near attention. And this man was rarely silent. The pickets, carried in 1965, were delivered at that moment in 2006 from his attic to the nation’s — the vault of the National Museum of American History of the Smithsonian Institution.

The pickets were placed on the platform. The Smithsonian curator laid them alongside the writing table where Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence; the inkwell used by Lincoln when signing the Emancipation Proclamation; and the pin worn by Alice Paul who went to jail picketing the White House for women’s suffrage. “Frank, this is where the pickets fit into American history,” the Smithsonian curator said.

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Budapest, Hungary; Cologne, Germany; Haarlem, Netherlands; London, UK (World Pride); Los Angeles, CA (Black Pride); Marseille, France; Porto, Portugal; Prince George, BC; San Luis Obispo, CA; Santa Barbara, CA; Sitges, Spain; Tuscany, Italy; and Victoria, BC.

Other Celebrations This Weekend: Bear Week, Provincetown, MA.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
“Annual Reminder” Pickets at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall: 1965-1969. The Fourth of July commemorates the day in which a group of second class citizens decided that it was finally time to declare not only their independence, but also their dignity for having been created equal and endowed with the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Of course, not all Americans gained their freedom on that date in 1776. Nearly two centuries later, that struggle to form a more perfect until was still, for many, just beginning. In 1965, gay people were prohibited from holding jobs with the federal government by an Executive Order, homosexuality was illegal in every state in the country except Illinois, and gay people were regarded as mentally ill by the American Psychiatric Association.

To protest those conditions, LGBT activists under the collective name of the East Coast Homophile Organizations (ECHO) met at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall on July 4, 1965 for a demonstration to remind their fellow Americans that LGBT people did not enjoy some of the most fundamental of civil rights. Thirty-nine activists, including Frank Kameny, Barbara Gittings, and Kay Tobin, picketed in front of Philadelphia’s potent symbol of freedom, carrying signs reading “15 million homosexual Americans as for equality, opportunity, dignity,” and “homosexuals should be judged as individuals.

Barbara Gittings picketing at Independence Hall on July 4, 1966.

Dubbed the “Annual Reminder,” the picketers returned to Independence hall every year from 1965 to 1969, using the occasion of the American Independence Day to remind Americans that freedom was still an elusive dream for many of their fellow citizens. But with 1969’s Stonewall rebellion, the gay community gained an independence day all of their own. The “Annual Reminder” for 1969, occurring just a few days after that declaration of freedom on Christopher Street in New York, would be the last. In 1970, organizers decided to end the July 4 pickets in favor of the Christopher Street Liberation Day celebration on June 28 to commemorate the first anniversary of the riot. We’ve been celebrating Pride as a commemoration of our declaration of independence ever since. But the Annual Reminder hasn’t been forgotten. In 2005, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission erected what is reported to be the first historical marker to recognize and celebrate LGBT history to commemorate those early protests in front of Independence Hall.

Happy Independence Day.

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).

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Exciting dump update

The National Organization for Marriage’s big dump just keeps growing. Today the number of people who have pledged to look for substitutes for General Mills brands has shot up to 18,003. That’s an increase of 239 people in just one day!

If it keeps up at this rate, by September the NOM dump will be at nearly one hundredth of one percent of the population. And that, my friends, will make General Mills sit up and take notice.

And let’s not forget that this exciting development represents at least 18,000 people nation wide who care enough about this issue to type their name. And that sort of activism can translate to literally dozens of protesters. Truly this grass roots endeavor eclipses even 2010’s Tour of Mostly Empty City Plazas.

The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, July 3

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Civil Service Commission Begins Hiring Gay People: 1975. In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower responded to both the “Red Scare” and the “Lavender Scare” stoked by Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist and anti-gay hearings by signing an executive order mandating the firing of all federal employees who were found guilty of “sexual perversion” — government-speak for homosexuality. Untold thousands lost their jobs in the ensuing decades, including one astronomer by the name of Frank Kameny, who was fired in 1957 (see Dec 20). He protested his firing, and argued his case in federal court all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court refused to hear the case in 1961, making his firing permanent. Kameny went on to become a leading gay-rights activist, and while his efforts extended to opposition to all aspects of discrimination and oppression, the federal employment ban never strayed far from his top concerns. Kameny supported others who had been fired in their efforts to get their jobs back and organized several protests and meetings at the commission’s Washington, D.C. headquarters throughout the next two decades (see, for example, Sept 28).

While Kameny’s case was the first legal challenge, it wasn’t the last. Several others followed suit, but most federal judges sided with the government’s position upholding the Civil Service Commission’s rules. But in 1973, after a federal judge in California ordered the commission to cease labeling gay people as unfit for federal employment, the commission decided to review its policies. By 1975, the commission finally amended its regulations and ended its ban on employing gays in the federal government. The decision however was not accompanied by a formal announcement. Instead, supervisors were quietly instructed that no one was to be barred for homosexuality. But news of the change did slowly leak out. According to Joyce Murdoch and Deb Price in their book Courting Justice: Gay Men And Lesbians V. The Supreme Court, Frank Kameny learned of the change via a phone call on a Thursday before the Fourth of July weekend. Federal personnel officials “surrendered to me on July 3rd, 1975,” he recalled. “They called me up to tell me they were changing their policies to suit me. And that was the end of it.”

NY Times: “Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals”: 1981. Barely a month had passed since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that five gay men had died of a rare form of pneumonia in Los Angeles, when there was another health alert from the CDC (PDF: 184KB/2 pages) about another 41 gay men in Los Angeles and New York who had been diagnosed with a previously rare form of cancer. Rumors had been swirling in New York of a “gay cancer” long before the news hit the pages of the New York Times, but seeing it in print lent a greater sense of panic in the gay community. Before 1981, the cancer, known as Kaposi’s Sarcoma (KS), was extremely rare, affecting mainly older men of Mediterranean decent, as well as Africans in the equatorial belt. Today, we now know that that part of Africa is the geographic origin of the AIDS virus, but in 1981 doctors had yet to connect any of those dots. In fact, the New York Times article, which is believed to be the first major news report of what would become known as AIDS, didn’t connect the new cancer cases with the reported pneumonia cases from the month earlier. (The CDC however, did notice that many of the gay men with KS also suffered from Pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP). They also updated their count of PCP patients from five a month earlier to fifteen.) But there was already one detail reported that would clue scientists to a common thread: nine of the victims had been found to have had severe defects in their immune systems.

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?

Return From Exodus

I returned last night from Minneapolis/St. Paul just in time to avoid the predicted 100 degree temperatures for today. Yes, I came home to Tucson where it regularly tops 100 degrees on a cool day during the summer, but we have that proverbial dry heat which makes 105 in the shade a pleasant day. The Twin Cities’ 40% humidity is not exactly Gulf Coast-caliber, but it was enough to wipe out this poor soul who has lost the ability to cope with anything north of 15%.

I came back from the Exodus conference with new friends, new insights, and new experiences. Just ask former vice president Randy Thomas about green smoothies sometime. Made from spinach.

Lots of spinach.

I want to thank Exodus president Alan Chambers for encouraging me to attend the conference, and for everyone who offered a warm welcome and honored me with the privilege of getting to know them better. I also want to thank the person who, without knowing anything about me, asked if he could pray over me in the auditorium on Friday (or maybe it was Saturday? The days tend to run together). I didn’t catch his name, but I thought it was a very generous gesture and I really appreciate it.

I have a ton of material to go through. Putting it all together in a cogent series of posts will take a while. Please bear with me as I ask for your patience. I expect that the first post will probably show up about a week from now. I hope the wait will be worth it.

But I will go head and share one anecdote. For background, I grew up Catholic and I was a rather devout one. Evangelical culture, for the most part, was something I saw on television. I wouldn’t say I experienced culture shock at Exodus — I mean, they’re Christians, not aliens. But I was caught off guard once or twice during the worship portions of the program, with the hands raised and the bodies swaying — these weren’t the kinds of things one would ordinarily expect to see at St. Mary of the Annunciation. And so on the very first night of the conference, when the president of Northwestern College gave his welcoming remarks and offered a prayer, he didn’t even get through the first sentence of his prayer when a hand shot up in front of me. My first thought: “Dude! This is not the time to be asking questions!”

“The Fact Is, I’m Gay”

That’s what CNN’s Anderson Cooper wrote in a lengthy email to Andrew Sullivan this morning. It’s a good email and I encourage you to read it.

He explains why he hadn’t talked about his private life before. A good part of his career involves going to other parts of the world where being gay could place not just himself but his crew in danger. That is a legitimate concern, as reinforced by the recent news that a gay AP Intern in Mexico City was found dead at the bottom of an elevator shaft. Also, regular discussions of a journalist’s private life could serve as a distraction depending on the topics he or she covers.

That’s why each journalist, needs to assess his situation individually. And many do keep their private lives intensely private. Quick, without googling, how many marriages has Sam Donaldson had? How about Ted Koppel? What do you know of Edward R. Murrow’s private life?  I’ve long felt that it was okay to give journalists a lot more slack in deciding how to handle their private lives, in contrast to other kinds of celebrities who exploit their private lives for the sake of publicity.

As for Cooper’s private life, he hasn’t exactly shielded his from public view. And that makes it hard to say that he was every really closeted. And so I don’t think anyone is surprised by today’s announcement. But I think many of us are appreciative for many of the same reasons Cooper gives for deciding to come forward. Usually whenver someone famous comes out, we like to title our posts with some variant of “Welcome Out.” But in Cooper’s case, I think I’ll just go with his acknowledgement of fact, a matter of fact that I think we all knew without him saying it. But the fact is, it’s nice to hear him say it.

NOM’s takes ‘dump’ nationwide

The National Organization for Marriage has exciting news about their very successful “dump” campaigns. Although it may have about 20,000 stores, Starbucks will soon be feeling the bite of NOM’s reach and influence. In addition to the 45,342 people who have pledged not to buy Starbucks are the grandchildren and bingo partners of these dedicated souls who will not receive Starbucks giftcards this Christmas. And with press coverage in many newspapers and Sunday inserts, their dump efforts have gotten tremendous visibility.

In a move that is certain to severely cut into the profits of Starbucks, NOM has announced an alternative to the ubiquitous coffee house: Jitters and Bliss coffee. Now when you feel an urge for a caramel macchiato, instead of dropping in to a Starbuck you can instead go online and order a tin of coffee (comparably priced to Starbucks), wait for it to be delivered (shipping free with $50 purchase), brew it up, and enjoy a delicious cup of coffee free from the guilt of supporting the homosexual agenda. And best of all, that cup of coffee will taste twice as blissful after a week or two of no-caffeine jitters.

More recently, NOM is now charging at the front of a vast cavalcade of boycotters who have vowed to go without General Mills products. That’s right, no Haagen-Dazs, Pillsbury, or Green Giant for them. (Star Tribune)

Minnesota for Marriage leaders are heading into the summer months with a dogged focus on keeping supporters energized and pushing back hard if other Minnesota businesses surface to oppose the amendment.

When General Mills stepped into the fray, Minnesota for Marriage immediately issued news releases that said “the Green Giant, Lucky Charms, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Kix and Trix have all declared war on Marriage” and that the company was promoting “genderless marriage.”

Angela Beeney of Plymouth and 4-year-old Ivy Brandon of Hastings, in foreground, dropped off General Mills products in Golden Valley to protest the company's opposition to the marriage amendment. - Star Tribune

Not limiting itself to Minnesota, NOM now has 17,764 signatures on the pledge (up from 14,714 on the 28th) and the Fortune 500 company is no doubt seriously regretting its decision to pander to same-sex marriage activists and support that radical social agenda. These true marriage defenders have sworn to ‘look for alternatives’ to the General Mills products, whenever convenient and economically feasible (families are hurting in this Obamaconomy). And although more than 80,000 have signed a petition thanking General Mills for their position, it is strongly suspected that some of those signers are not traditional families anyway, and are not really the food company’s target market.

And the campaign is growing daily. With more and more businesses pledging their endorsement of immorality, NOM has an ever increasing opportunity to stand for righteousness. In fact, just today NOM has been apprised of an opportunity that cannot be missed. Finally, NOM has irrefutable evidence that Microsoft’s profits fund the radical redefinition of marriage. (Seattle Times)

Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer and co-founder Bill Gates have each donated $100,000 to the campaign supporting the state’s new gay marriage law, which faces a referendum vote in November.

Zach Silk, campaign manager for Washington United for Marriage, said Monday that the checks were cut Friday and are being reported to the state Public Disclosure Commission on Monday afternoon.

“It’s going to make a tremendous difference,” Silk said. “It’s very important for us to have that broad support from business leaders and companies themselves.”

We are confident that NOM will soon announce a full-on boycott of all of Microsoft’s products. But they will not be reactionary – recognizing that Apple gave money to oppose Proposition 8, NOM will boldly stand against these both of these two empires of evil and cease using any products or software from either of these companies.

Perhaps as early as today. Or tomorrow. Or maybe next week (strategery takes time), next month, or the second Tuesday in August of 2028. But definitely sometime very very soon they will stand up and show Microsoft and Apple just what happens when you dare to stand against those who fight for marriage, family, and blind obedience to Catholic teaching.

The Daily Agenda for Monday, July 2

TODAY IN HISTORY:
State Department Fires 381 Homosexuals: 1953. In the early 1950s, the entire country was in the grips of the Red Scare as Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy was conducting his witch hunts. One of his main platforms would be the Senate’s Subcommittee on the Investigation of Loyalty of State Department Employees. While McCarthy’s main targets were imaginary Communists in the State Department, gay employees were also seen as “subversives” in need of rooting out. Among the more high-profile targets was Samuel Reber, a twenty-seven year career diplomat who announced his retirement in May of 1953 after McCarthy charged that he was a “security risk” — which was a barely-concealed code for homosexual. By then, President Dwight D. Eisenhower had already responded to McCarthy’s witch hunt by signing an executive order mandated the firing of all federal employees who were found guilty of “sexual perversion.” He also announced a re-organization of the State Department. Rep. Charles B Brownson, an Indiana Republican with his own lesser-known witch hunt underway in the House Government Operations Committee, asked the State Department for a progress report in rooting out homosexuals. On July 2, 1953, the State Department’s chief security officer R.W. Scott McLeod revealed that 351 homosexuals and 150 other “security risks” had been fired between 1950 and 1953.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Richard Bruce Nugent: 1906. When the landmark Harlem Renaissance literary magazine Fire!! published his short story “Smoke, Lilies and Jade” in 1926, Richard Bruce Nugent became the first African-American writer willing to declare his homosexuality in print — and he would remain so for the next thirty years. A year earlier, he had been attending the “Saturday Evening” salons of poet Georgia Douglas Johnson in his native Washington, D.C., where he was introduced to the leading African-American thinkers of the day, including W.E.B. Du Bois, Alain Locke, Jean Toomer, and Waldo Frank. He also met poet Langston Hughes (Feb 1), and the two of them became fast friends and moved moved to New York. Nugent, Hughes, Cal Van Vechten (June 17) and several others became integral players in Harlem’s intellectual and artistic life, with Nugent becoming the most notorious. Van Vechten once wrote to Hughes that he saw Nugent at a society dinner in evening clothes “”with his usual open chest and uncovered ankles. I suppose soon he will be going without trousers.”

Nugent wasn’t just a writer, but also a dancer, painter and illustrator. The apartment complex in Harlem that he shared with other artists became known as “Niggeratti Manor,” where Nugent had painted the walls with mural, some depicting homoerotic scenes. Other illustrations appeared in Fire!! as well as two other African-American publications Opportunity and Palms, and other New York art magazines. Meanwhile, he continued to write short stories and even took his turn on the stage, appearing on Broadway and in an early production of the play Porgy (later adapted by George Gershwin for Porgy and Bess) In 1937, he published what is often considered his finest work, “Pope Pius the Only.”

In 1952, he married Grace Marr, with whom he shared accommodations, and with her three brothers. The marriage was her idea; she thought she could “change” him. It’s unclear why he went along with it. He warned her that it was a bad idea, but marry her he did. The relationship was never consummated. Meanwhile, Nugent remained an active booster of Harlem’s literary and arts scene throughout the rest of his life. He was also a harsh critic of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 1968 exhibition on the Harlem Renaissance which, astonishingly, was put together without the involvement of Harlem artists. In 1983 he was interviewed for the film Before Stonewall. He died in 1987. In 2002 Duke University Press published Gay Rebel of the Harlem Renaissance: Selections from the Work of Richard Bruce Nugent, a collection of Nugent’s most important writings, paintings, and drawings, many of them made available for the first time.

Dee Palmer: 1937. Jethro Tull fans would know her as composer and keyboardist David Palmer. She had provided orchestral arrangements for several significant Jethro Tull albums, including Aqualung and Thick as a Brick before joining the band as a full time musician in 1976. At the time, she presented herself as an eccentric Englishman, complete with a Sherlock Holmes pipe and a beard. She remained with the band until it broke up in 1980 over Ian Andersion’s decision to release a solo album under the Jethro Tull name.

She was also married. He had told Maggie about her transgender feelings on their second date, and Maggie was accepting. “All of my time with Maggie was blissfully happy,” she later recalled. But after her wife died in 1998, Dee was left alone to confront her sense that something was wrong. “Once she died I sat in the kitchen looking down the garden for a year, then gradually from the outermost part of my body and soul where I had consigned what I was to learn was gender dysphoria started to reassert itself as something that I had to deal with again.”

She finally decided it was time to act on the feelings that she had been having since the age of three. She changed her name to Dee in 2000 and underwent gender reassignment in 2004. The whole process for her was very difficult. “It isn’t for wimps by the way … And it isn’t for people who want to wear a frock and prance around masquerading as a female. It’s nothing to do with that, it’s a light year away from that.” Now that she has transitioned, she feels liberated, and lives with a sense that there was nothing left to hold her back. “it is like jumping from a parachute. At first it’s very easy, but then suddenly the ground is coming up at you and you can’t stop until you’ve reached the end; it’s very much that kind of experience – your writing and performance will take on new dimensions.”

Johnny Weir: 1984. The famous American figure skater is a three-time U.S. National Champion (2004–2006) and a the 2008 Worlds Championship bronze medalist, although for a number of reasons, his Olympic appearances in 2006 and 2010 were disappointing. When he appeared at the 2010 U.S. Championships wearing fox fur as part of his costume, he began to receive death threats from animal rights activists. He defended his decision to wear fur as “a personal choice,” but decided to remove the fur from his costume. By the time the 2010 Winter Olympics came around in Vancouver, he had to change his housing arrangement due to security concerns.

Weir was always a bit different — including the fact that he spins clockwise instead of counter-clockwise like most other figure skaters. He was long suspected of being gay — as are probably most male figure skaters. The fact that he designed some of his own skating costumes in a very androgynous style didn’t do much to quell the rumors. But for most of his career, he preferred to leave the questions unanswered. “It’s not part of my sport and it’s private,” he’d say. But when he published his memoir Welcome to My World in 2011, he finally came out as gay. He said his decision to come out was prompted by a string of suicides in 2010. “With people killing themselves and being scared into the closet, I hope that even just one person can gain strength from my story.”

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And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?