Box Turtle Bulletin

The Daily Agenda for Sunday, July 1

TODAY’S AGENDA (Ours):
Final Performance of “A Missionary Position”: Los Angeles, CA. Charles McNulty at The Los Angeles Times reviewed Ugandan-American playwright and actor Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine’s A Missionary Position,which premiered Thursday at the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater in the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex. A Missionary Position tells the story of Uganda’s LGBT community as seen through the eyes of a Ugandan government official, a transgender sex worker, a gay priest and a lesbian activist, and portrays their resistance to state-sponsored homophobia and repression. McNulty wrote:

The words of the characters, which include a transgendered sex worker, a gay priest and an accidental lesbian freedom fighter, are largely based on interviews. These monologues are carefully wrought, though they aren’t half as riveting as the onstage costume changes Mwine goes through to transform from one character to the next. The most startling metamorphosis occurs between the brigadier and Serena, the “trans-woman” whose world opens when she discovers a welcoming if dangerous subculture eager to put a price on her flesh. Mwine peels off hyper-masculine black fatigues to reveal a sexy red dress — a contrast that is as psychologically charged as it is theatrically resonant.

As a performer, Mwine possesses an entrancing graciousness. He offers himself as a conduit to other voices. This devotion to the real lives he is in composite form portraying may impede to an extent the dramatic interest of “A Missionary Position.” Reality is the ultimate arbiter of his narrative, not imagination — an inherent challenge for all works of creative nonfiction.

Tonight is the final performance, beginning at 7:00 p.m. Tickets are $20-$25 for general admission, with discounts available for students and groups. You can find more information here.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Barcelona, Spain; Cincinnati, OH; Delémont, Switzerland; Dublin, Ireland; Helsinki, Finland; Istanbul, Turkey; London, UK (World Pride); Madrid, Spain; Toronto, ON; and Winnipeg, MB.

Other Events This Weekend: Canadian Rockies International Rodeo, Strathmore, AB; Creativity and Crisis: Unfolding The AIDS Memorial Quilt, Washington, D.C. Eurogames 2012, Budapest, Hungary.

TODAY’S AGENDA (Theirs):
Family “Research” Council’s Values Bus Tour: Liberty Twp, OH. 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 tour leaves Columbus for two stops in Liberty Township, in the norther Cincinnati suburbs. First, the box will stop at Princeton Pike Church of God (6101 Princeton Glendale Rd) from 9:00 a.m. to noon. The bus will remain at the church for a Light Up Liberty festival from 6:00 to 10:00 p.m.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Farley Granger: 1925: One of the best-looking men in Hollywood, he didn’t have the kind of prolific a film career one might expect despite his work being well-regarded. He is best known for his role in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope and Strangers on a Train and for Luchino Visconti’s Senso. In Rope, Granger played a murderer and (implied) lover of an accomplice in a story inspired by the Loeb and Leopold murder. In real life, Granger also enjoyed the attentions of men — as well as women. According to his 2007 autobiography Include Me Out, he had affairs with Patricial Neal, Arthur Laurents, Shelly Winters, Leonard Bernstein, and Ava Gardner. Granger insisted he was never closeted, but he also resisted labeling himself:

Men or women?

“That really depends on the person,” he said impishly. But his follow-up comment left little doubt: “I’ve lived the greater part of my life with a man” — he has been with (Robert) Calhoun in New York since the 1960s — “so obviously that’s the most satisfying to me.”

Granger died of natural causes in New York City at the age of 85 in 2011.

Fred Schneider: 1951. The B-52s front man is probably America’s best known practitioner of sprechgesang. (The Free Dictionary: “a type of vocalization between singing and recitation … originated by Arnold Schoenberg, who used it in Pierrot Lunaire (1912)”) The group’s guy-and-gals call-and-response between Schneider and Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson have become a trademark ever since “Rock Lobster” hit the charts in 1978. That sound defined the B-52s as the quintessential party band, inviting everyone to pile into the Chrysler as big as a whale. Schneider was coy about his sexuality throughout the 1980s and most of the 1990s, but his reluctance appeared to be more a matter of annoyance than fear. “I’m on the same side the fence as k.d., Elton and Frederick the Great. I just don’t like to share my personal life with the public.” Of course, there wasn’t much sharing needed. His own mother’s reaction when he came out to her probably sums it up for everyone else. “Oh I know, Freddie,” she said, and continued vacuuming without missing a beat.

Roddy Bottum: 1963. The keyboardist for Faith No More since 1982, Bottum came out as gay in 1993 the year after his father died. It’s easy to imagine that his revelation would have come as quite a shock to the hyper-hetero world of heavy metal, but Bottum described it as “a positive and uplifting experience. I guess I expected some of the fans to burn crosses or throw panties at me, but nothing like that ever happened.” One of his hits with Faith No More was “Be Aggressive,” from their 1992 album Angel Dust. The homoerotic song was about oral sex. “It was a pretty fun thing to write, knowing that (lead singer Mike Patton) was going to have to put himself on the line and go up onstage and sing these vocals.” Bottum’s openness about his sexuality didn’t exactly open the floodgates for other heavy metal rockers to come out. “You’d think there’d be a lot more homosexuality in metal with all the dressing up,” he told The Advocate in 1999. By then he had left Faith No More — and metal — to form the indie boy/girl group Imperial Teen. Since 2005, Bottum has written scores for more than a dozen movies and television shows.

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?

Prominent Latino civil rights groups endorse marriage equality

The League of United Latino American Citizens, LULAC, the oldest organization in the United States dedicated to the addressing the political needs of The Latino community, voted today to support marriage equality.

“Today the LULAC National Membership reaffirmed its commitment to equality for all by voting in favor of marriage equality,” said Jesse Garcia, LULAC member and co-founder of the organization’s first LGBT Council. “LULAC stands with great Latino leaders like Dolores Huerta, San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis who believe discrimination of same-sex couples should not be tolerated. This is a historic day for LGBT Latinos everywhere, plus this vote is another bond that reaffirms the partnership between the LGBT and Hispanic communities.”

They join the National Council of La Raza who unanimously voted earlier this month to endorse equality. NCLR President Janet Murguía told The Blade,

“NCLR has taken a strong stand on marriage equality and our Board of Directors wanted to affirm and support that decision, which I very much appreciate,” she told the Blade. ” That unanimous vote recognizes that marriage equality and LGBT issues are, and need to be, part of NCLR’s core civil rights agenda.”

The Daily Agenda for Saturday, June 30

TODAY’S AGENDA (Ours):
“A Missionary Position”: Los Angeles, CA. Ugandan-American playwright and actor Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine’s A Missionary Position,which premiered Thursday at the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater in the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex, continues its run tonight.  A Missionary Position tells the story of Uganda’s LGBT community as seen through the eyes of a Ugandan government official, a transgender sex worker, a gay priest and a lesbian activist, and portrays their resistance to state-sponsored homophobia and repression. The curtain rises this evening at 8:30 p.m, with an additional performances tomorrow evening. Tickets are $20-$25 for general admission, with discounts available for students and groups. You can find more information here.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Albuquerque, NM; Arraial, Portugal; Bangor, ME; Barcelona, Spain; Cagliari Italy; Cincinnati, OH; Delémont, Switzerland; Dublin, Ireland; Edinburgh; UK; Helsinki, Finland; Istanbul, Turkey; Lexington, KY; London, UK (World Pride); Madrid, Spain; Naples, Italy; Omaha, NE; Oslo, Norway; Paris, France; St. Petersburg, FL; Salem, MA; Sofia, Bulgaria; Swansea, UK; Toronto, ON; and Winnipeg, MB.

Other Events This Weekend: Canadian Rockies International Rodeo, Strathmore, AB; Creativity and Crisis: Unfolding The AIDS Memorial Quilt, Washington, D.C. Eurogames 2012, Budapest, Hungary.

TODAY’S AGENDA (Theirs):
Family “Research” Council’s Values Bus Tour: Columbus OH. 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 tour is spending its second day in Columbus, Ohio as part of the “We the People” Tea Party convention, taking place at the Ohio Expo Center on the Ohio State Fairgrounds.

Exodus Freedom Conference: St. Paul, MN. Today is the final day of Exodus International’s annual Freedom Conference on the campus of Northwestern College in St. Paul, Minnesota. I’ve been attending this conference, talking to a lot of people and attending workshops and general sessions. I can say that everyone I’ve met has been very friendly and, yes, tolerant. I’m checking in regularly on my Twitter feed, although I haven’t been very active on it myself. If you’re in the neighborhood, whether at the conference or elsewhere, give me a shout @jfburroway.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Urban Renaissance Blighted by “Parading Homosexuals”: 1969. We like to think that gentrification of older urban neighborhoods is something new. For most cities, it is, and for many cities it has been gay people leading the way in rehabbing run-down homes and bringing entire blocks back to life. But New York’s neighborhoods have been in a constant state of reinvention ever since the Indians moved out and the Dutch moved in. In the 1960s, Manhattan’s West Side was in a serious state of decline. In 1969, New York magazine published an article touting the Upper West Side’s “renaissance,” brought on by a new band of urban settlers moving into the very rough neighborhood who were attracted by cheap rents and readily available housing:

“I was ready for war,” one recent brownstone buyer said. “You know, German shepherd, barbed wire, burglar alarms, punji sticks, the works. But we were delighted to find that with a little caution it could be a relaxed place to live.” … Business, of course, has joined and helped to stimulate the movement to the West Side. Flower vendors who set up their cardboard cartons at the top of the neighborhood’s subway stairs claim business is booming. “Only a year ago,” Monroe, a West 86th Street vendor, said between sales, “flowers couldn’t live on the West Side.”

High end stores, restaurants, theaters were returning to the Upper West Side amidst a $700 million building boom. But the transition from a down-in-the-heels neighborhood to a sought-after address was far from complete:

The same kind of young, successful and relatively affluent middle-class families that moved to the suburbs 20 years ago and to the East Side 10 years ago are moving to the West Side today, and while the neighborhood still has an ample supply of teenage muggers, parading homosexuals and old men who wear overcoats in July, the over-all mood of the area seems to have changed.

This article was published just two days after the Stonewall Rebellion, which took place just four short miles to the south in Greenwich Village. Those riots were barely mention in New York’s respectable press, and “parading homosexuals” were still seen as a sign of decay. But just a decade later a new generation of “parading homosexuals” would become highly sought-after pioneers in reviving dying neighborhoods, where today their efforts are often praised by city leaders as evidence of renewed economic and creative vigor.

[Thanks to BTB reader Rob for providing a copy of the New York magazine article.]

Bowers v. Hardwick: 1986. It all started in August, 1982, when Michael Hardwick threw a beer bottle into a trash can outside of an Atlanta gay bar. A police officer cited him for public drinking. When Hardwick failed to arrive for his court date, a warrant was issued for his arrest. Several weeks later — after Hardwick realized his error and paid the ticket — a police officer went to Hardwick’s apparent to serve the arrest warrant. The police officer entered the apartment (accounts differ on how he got in), and discovered Hardwick and a male companion engaged in oral sex, which Georgia defined as “sodomy” under the law. Both men were arrested, but the local district attorney decided not to press charges. Hardwick then sued Georgia attorney general Michael Bowers in federal court seeking to overturn the state’s sodomy law. The ACLU agreed to take the case on Hardwick’s behalf.

A federal judge in Atlanta dismissed the case, siding with the Attorney General. Hardwick appealed to the Eleventh Court of Appeals, which reversed the lower court’s ruling. Bowers then appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled on this date — during pride week — in 1986 that Hardwick’s right to privacy did not extend to private, consensual sexual conduct — at least as far as gay sex was concerned. Justice Byron White, writing for the majority, barely concealed his contempt for gay people. He wrote, “to claim that a right to engage in such conduct is ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition’ or ‘implicit in the concept of ordered liberty’ is, at best, facetious.” Chief Justice Warren Berger, in a concurring opinion, piled on: “To hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to cast aside millennia of moral teaching.”

Justice Lewis Powell was considered the deciding vote. It has been reported that he originally voted to strike down the law but changed his mind after a few days. In 1990, after Powell had retired three ears earlier, he told a group law students that he considered his opinion in Bowers was mistake. “I do think it was inconsistent in a general way with Roe. When I had the opportunity to reread the opinions a few months later I thought the dissent had the better of the arguments.” His mistake would remain the law of the land for another seventeen years, until Bowers itself was held to be “not correct” in Lawrence v. Texas.

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?

Fred calls it quits

Fred Karger has finally concluded that he is not going to win the Presidency this year. Okay, he knew it on the day he filed, but that was never his goal anyway. Fred just wanted a chance to challenge thinking about who can or cannot be gay and who can or cannot be a Republican.

Fred never reached his stated goal of debating the other Republican candidates in a televised debate. But that was because the Party and the media cheated. (And really, isn’t it disgusting that the mainstream media so dismissed him simply because he is gay while they got all in an excited gigglefest about other zero-chance candidates. No mainstream news channel called out the organizers when they refused Fred even though he met their stated standards.)

But Fred did do an amazing job of reaching people with his message. His novelty caught the attention of newspapers across the nation and many a teenager for the first time realized that a gay person could run for President. And he also provided that element which called out people on their BS. From the minor local Party people who had to ask themselves whether they really did have an objection to gay people running for office and, if so, what it was exactly to the raging homophobes who exposed themselves as such and now will soon experience the outcome of public hatred.

But Fred’s campaign – more of a gay PR campaign than a political one – is over.

LAGUNA BEACH, CA – “After 2 ½ years of campaigning as a candidate for President of the United States I am officially ending my historic campaign today June 29, 2012. It’s been one hell of a ride, and I want to thank the thousands of people across this country who volunteered, contributed, opened their homes, came to our events and cheered me on. Special thanks to the thousands more who shared their stories with me in person, via email, facebook, twitter, etc. Every one of you kept me going.

It’s been the experience of a lifetime. I’ve made many new friends and undoubtedly picked up a few more detractors. I hope and trust that my discussion of the key issues helped to open dialog on fixing the economy, balancing the federal budget, creating jobs, education reform, the environment, immigration reform, ending the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and fighting for full equality for all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans. We must move forward on these issues and many more.

A big thank you goes out to our incredible campaign team, most of whom have been around for nearly the entire 2 ½ years. Your dedication, spirit and great ideas made all the difference.

I plan to rest up for awhile and then I will be back at it to help in the fight for LGBT equality. We will let you know as soon as our exact course is determined.

Here at BTB we have a soft spot for Fred. Maybe it’s because when I met him, his first words were, “I was on the Turtle Box today looking up something on Uganda.” Maybe it’s because when you are on the ballot, the media can’t refuse to run advertisements like this one.

Or maybe it’s because he really is a charming dorky gay nerd who reached the highest levels of political involvement (he was a Presidential advisor) and was willing to spend a big chunk of his own money to try and help out kids out there in the red states who desperately need to know that they can grow up to be anything they want to be, including charming dorky gay nerd Presidents.

What Questions Do You Have About Exodus?

As you may have noticed, my blogging activities this week have been very light. That’s because I’ve been spending my time among new friends at Exodus International’s annual Freedom Conference in St. Paul, Minnesota. So far, nobody has locked me into a broom closet or thrown holy water on me so, you know, so far so good.

At BTB, we’ve been tracking signs of some pretty interesting changes at Exodus over the past several months, and so I decided to attend this year’s confernece  to see for myself what those changes might look like on the ground. What I can say right now is that indeed there are significant, encouraging shifts in Exodus’s focus toward a much more realistic message. The word “change” isn’t banished entirely, but the expectation that changing one’s sexual orientation can change — and that emphasis is important — is now discouraged. That’s not to say that Exodus is suddenly becoming a pro-gay organization. They’re not — far from it. But they are becoming much more transparent about what being gay means while dealing with it in their understanding of Biblical principles. I will go into that much more deeply next week when I have a chance to go through all of my notes and get everything put together.

So now that I’m here, I’m interested in learning what you think I should cover. What burning questions do you have about Exodus, about this particular conference, or about the kinds of people who come here? What do you think really happens when people from around the country get together to talk about themselves and their struggles? What stereotypes do you have that I can confirm or refute? What questions do you think I should be asking? Feel free to drop me a line, either in comments or via Twitter at @jfburroway.

The Daily Agenda for Friday, June 29

TODAY’S AGENDA (Ours):
“A Missionary Position”: Los Angeles, CA. Ugandan-American playwright and actor Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine’s A Missionary Position,which premiered last night at the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater in the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex, continues its run tonight.  According to the press release: “A Missionary Position …incorporates raw video footage and still photography—gathered over recent months on the front lines of the African nation’s LGBT movement—and layers this documentary material with his portrayal of riveting figures drawn from in-person interviews. A Missionary Position reveals Uganda’s LGBT community as seen through the eyes of a Ugandan government official, a transgender sex worker, a gay priest and a lesbian activist, and creates a complex investigation of the burgeoning resistance to state-supported oppression.”

The curtain raises this evening at 8:30 p.m. this evening, with an additional performances Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are $20-$25 for general admission, with discounts available for students and groups. You can find more information here.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Albuquerque, NM; Arraial, Portugal; Bangor, ME; Barcelona, Spain; Cagliari Italy; Cincinnati, OH; Delémont, Switzerland; Dublin, Ireland; Edinburgh; UK; Helsinki, Finland; Istanbul, Turkey; Lexington, KY; London, UK (World Pride); Madrid, Spain; Naples, Italy; Omaha, NE; Oslo, Norway; Paris, France; St. Petersburg, FL; Salem, MA; Sofia, Bulgaria; Swansea, UK; Toronto, ON; and Winnipeg, MB.

Other Events This Weekend: Canadian Rockies International Rodeo, Strathmore, AB; Creativity and Crisis: Unfolding The AIDS Memorial Quilt, Washington, D.C. Eurogames 2012, Budapest, Hungary.

TODAY’S AGENDA (Theirs):
Family “Research” Council’s Values Bus Tour: Columbus OH. 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 tour is swinging through the swing state of Ohio, with a stop today and tomorrow in Columbus for the “We the People” Tea Party convention at the Ohio Expo Center on the Ohio State Fairgrounds. The Values Bus will be there all day today and tomorrow.

Exodus Freedom Conference: St. Paul, MN. Today is the second full day of Exodus International’s annual Freedom Conference on the campus of Northwestern College in St. Paul, Minnesota. Unlike other Exodus events which are mostly geared toward recruitment into their “lifestyle,” this one is the real deal for “strugglers” themselves. (They hate the word “ex-gay”. I’ve only heard the word twice; both times it was used disparagingly.) I’ve been attending this conference, and I can tell you that the experience from the inside is somewhat different from what you typically see on the outside — and it’s probably almost the opposite of what you would expect it to be. I’ll have much more on that later, probably next week when I have more time to sit down and write about what I’ve seen and the people I’ve talked to. Meanwhile, if by chance you here also, give me a shout via Twitter (@jfburroway, where I’m following the hashtag #Exodus2012) and say hi. The conference continues through Saturday.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Henry Gerber: 1892. Pro-gay activism in the U.S goes back a very long way, far longer than most realize. Henry Gerber, a Bavarian immigrant to Chicago, served in the U.S. Army’s occupation of Germany following World War I, where he came in contact with the growing German gay rights movement. He read up on German homophile magazines and came in contact with Magnus Hirschfeld’s Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, the first organization in the world working to advance gay rights. When Gerber returned to the U.S. he founded the Society for Human Rights (SHR) in 1924. With an African-American clergyman named John T. Graves as president, SHR is believed to be America’s first gay rights organization. Gerber also founded Friendship and Freedom, the first known American gay publication.

SHR didn’t last very long. The wife of the group’s vice president denounced Gerber and his associates to police, calling them “degenerates.” In July, 1925, police arrested Gerber, Graves and two others as newspaper headlines screamed “Strange Sex Cult Exposed.” Gerber was tried three times, but the charges were eventually dismissed. He was nevertheless ruined, jobless and drained of his life savings. He continued writing about gay rights, sometimes under his own name and sometimes under a pseudonym. He died on New Year’s Eve in 1972 at the age of 80, having lived long enough to see gay rights advocacy take on a new vibrancy in the 1950s and 1960s, culminating in an explosion of advocacy and pride after the Stonewall Rebellion of 1969.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

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

The Daily Agenda for Thursday, June 28

TODAY’S AGENDA (Ours):
“A Missionary Position”: Los Angeles, CA. Ugandan-American playwright and actor Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine’s A Missionary Position,which premiered last night at the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater in the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex, continues its run tonight.  According to the press release: “A Missionary Position …incorporates raw video footage and still photography—gathered over recent months on the front lines of the African nation’s LGBT movement—and layers this documentary material with his portrayal of riveting figures drawn from in-person interviews. A Missionary Position reveals Uganda’s LGBT community as seen through the eyes of a Ugandan government official, a transgender sex worker, a gay priest and a lesbian activist, and creates a complex investigation of the burgeoning resistance to state-supported oppression.”

The curtain raises this evening at 8:30 p.m. this evening, with additional performances on Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are $20-$25 for general admission, with discounts available for students and groups. You can find more information here.

Press Conference To Counter Exodus International: St. Paul, MN. Truth Wins Out will hold a press conference to counter the Exodus International’s annual “Freedom Conference,” which is taking place this week in St. Paul, Minnesota [see “Today’s Agenda (Theirs)” below]. TWO’s John Becker will be joined by Jeffry G. Ford, a psychologist and former leader of a Minnesota ex-gay group, and by Monica Meyer of OutFront Minnesota. The press conference takes place today at noon CDT at St. Paul Reformation Lutheran Church, 100 Oxford St. N. in St Paul.

Police Chief, State Officials Join Panel Discussion on Rainbow Lounge Raid: Dallas, TX. On June 28, 2009 — the thirtieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising — Fort Worth police conducted a raid on the Rainbow Lounge with agents from the Texas Alcohol Beverage Commission. Several customers were detained and one customer, Chad Gibson, received a severe brain injury after agents slammed him against the club’s concrete floor of the bar. Tonight, there will be a screening of Robert Carmina’s documentary, Raid of the Rainbow Lounge, at Dallas’s Magnolia Theater. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion featuring Fort Worth police Chief Jeffrey Halstead, Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission Capt. Charlie Cloud, TABC agent and LGBT liaison Leigh Ann Wiggins, Queer LiberAction founder Blake Wilkinson, Fairness Fort Worth spokesman Jon Nelson and Camina himself. Tickets are $12 and doors open at 7 p.m. The screening begins at 7:30.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Albuquerque, NM; Arraial, Portugal; Bangor, ME; Barcelona, Spain; Cagliari Italy; Cincinnati, OH; Delémont, Switzerland; Dublin, Ireland; Edinburgh; UK; Helsinki, Finland; Istanbul, Turkey; Lexington, KY; London, UK (World Pride); Madrid, Spain; Naples, Italy; Omaha, NE; Oslo, Norway; Paris, France; St. Petersburg, FL; Salem, MA; Sofia, Bulgaria; Swansea, UK; Toronto, ON; and Winnipeg, MB.

Other Events This Weekend: Canadian Rockies International Rodeo, Strathmore, AB; Creativity and Crisis: Unfolding The AIDS Memorial Quilt, Washington, D.C. Eurogames 2012, Budapest, Hungary.

TODAY’S AGENDA (Theirs):
Exodus Freedom Conference: St. Paul, MN. Today is the first full day of Exodus International’s annual Freedom Conference on the campus of Northwestern College in St. Paul, Minnesota. This is an annual gathering of real, honest-to-goodness ex-gays — or “strugglers” was they call themselves. You can think of this as Burning Man for guys who no longer want to burn for men. Except there’s women here too, so… okay, I don’t have anything pithy for them. Sorry. It’s late and I’m tired after a long day of traveling. Traveling, because I came here for the conference, meeting new people, making friends, and soaking up the vibes. It’s how I’m spending my summer vacation. If by chance you here also, give me a shout via Twitter (@jfburroway) and say hi. The conference continues through Saturday.

Stonewall, 1969

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Stonewall: 1969. What can I possibly tell you about Stonewall that you don’t already know? It has become our Gettysburg, the iconic battle that represents a significant turning point. As the Civil War has been divided to two eras before Gettysburg and after, so, too, has our history been identified as pre-Stonewall and post-Stonewall. As with the civil war, there were gay rights confrontations before Stonewall, and there have been police raids after, but Stonewall remains the fulcrum on which the weight of gay history shifts from unmitigated fear and oppression to a confident and unrelenting push for dignity and full citizenship.

Stonewall, 2011

Americans made little note of small village of Gettysburg before 1863, and today the minutia of that great battle is mostly left to Civil War buffs. For the rest of us, Gettysburg is our collective shorthand for the ideal of human sacrifice and valor, and of freedom. And so it is also with Stonewall. It used to be a little-known place, and then it was an event. But more so today Stonewall is an idea, one that was partially fulfilled in New York with the enactment of marriage equality last year. But that is only one part of the idea. The higher idea of dignity and the full rights and privileges of citizenship remains elusive for too many people. The promise of Stonewall has not been fulfilled for them — or even for us who live and work where discrimination in its many forms remains perfectly legal. But because of Stonewall and what it has come to mean, we know that there is no turning back. There is only movement forward. Stonewall demands nothing less.

First Gay Pride March to Commemorate Stonewall: 1970. The actual Stonewall uprising received scant attention in the media when it actually happened. There were very few reporters there and only a bare handful of photos taken of the uprising as it occurred. By in the space of a year, Stonewall had already become a singly word that meant more than just a run down bar in the Village. One of the more interesting articles to appear in the mainstream media was a brief description of the parade up Christopher Street on June 28, 1970 that appeared in July 11 edition of The New Yorker:

A number of policemen were standout around, looking benevolent and keeping an eye on things. Many of the marchers were carrying banners that identified them as members of homosexual organizations, like the Gay Liberation Front, the Mattachine Society, and the Gay Acivists Alliance. The symbol of the G.A.A. is a lambda, which physicists use as a symbol for wavelength, and many of the kids were wearing purple T-shirts with yellow lambdas on them.

Most of the marchers chatted in anticipatory tones, and a few reporters were among them looking for interviews. One approached two boys standing together and asked them the question that reporters always ask: “How do you feel?”

One of the boys said, “I feel proud.”

At the head of the parade, one boy stood carrying the American flag. Near him stood a man talking to another man. “Homosexuals are very silly,” said the first man. “They congregate in certain areas and then spend all other time walking up and down the street ignoring each other.”

That first march wasn’t called “Gay Pride.” It was called the Christopher Street Day. But in that participant’s response, you can already see the sense that most people had that “pride” would be the operative word for the day. The author (whose name is not given) reported that marchers carried signs reading “Homosexual is not a four letter word,” “Latent Homosexuals Unite!” and “Hi Mom!” Anti-gay protesters were there as well, one with a sign reading simply “Sodom + Gomorra.” All in all, the parade was not just a success, but cathartic for some:

An eighteen-year-old boy from Long Island who was marching in the middle of the parade with his arms around two friends said, “I’ve been up since six-thirty, I was so excited I couldn’t sleep. I wasn’t going to come, but then I figured I’m gay and I might as well support my people. So here I is!” Sometimes the marchers addressed the onlookers. “Join us!” they called, and “Come on in, the water’s fine!” They got a few grins for this, and once or twice somebody did step out from the crowd to join the parade. These people were roundly cheered by the marchers. Just south of Central Park, a well-dressed middle-aged woman on the sidewalk flashed a V-sign. A marcher, a young man with a mustache, shouted to a cop, also a young man with a mustache, “It isn’t so bad, is it?” The cop shouted back, “No!”

As the parade entered the Park, a young marcher said, “Would you believe it! It looks like an invading army. It’s a gay Woodstock. And after all those years I spent in psychotherapy!”

A friend of his laughed and said, “What will your shrink do without you? He’s dependent on your for the payments on his car.”

The Village Voice has another first-person account of the 1970 celebration.

[Thanks to BTB reader Rob for providing a copy of the New Yorker article.]

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
John Inman: 1935.The quintessential British poofter known for his role as Mr. Humphries in Are You Being Served? He was also a pantomime dame, a distinctly British form of drag performance (Dame Edna is actually Australian, but think of her and you get the idea.) “I’m a tits and feathers man,” he once said in explaining his love for show business. His character’s high camp and trademark high-pitched “I’m free!” in Are You Being Served? became a catchphrase in Britain.

Not everyone was amused. He was picketed by the Campaign for Homosexual Equality because they charged that his character posed a bad image for gay men.  Inman said, “they thought I was over exaggerating the gay character. But I don’t think I do. In fact there are people far more camp than Mr. Humphries walking around this country. Anyway, I know for a fact that an enormous number of viewers like Mr. Humphries and don’t really care whether he’s camp or not. So far from doing harm to the homosexual image, I feel I might be doing some good.” In December 2005 he and his partner of 35 years, Ron Lynch, took part in a civil partnership ceremony at London’s Westminster Register Office. Inman died in 2007.

Jim Kolbe: 1942. He is the former Republican Congressman for Arizona’s 8th congressional district — the district more recently held by Rep. Gabrielle Giffords before she resigned after being seriously injured in a 2011 shooting. Kolbe was outed in 1996 after voting for the Defense of Marriage Act. He was reelected to his seat in 1998, and in 2000, he became the first openly gay person to address the Republican National Convention, although his speech did not address gay rights. He also continued to defend his vote for DOMA. “My vote on the Defense of Marriage Act was cast because of my view that states should be allowed to make that decision, about whether or not they would recognize gay marriages,” he said. “Certainly, I belive that states should have the right, as Vermont did, to provide for protections for such unions.” He voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment in 2004 and 2006.

By the time he was wrapping up his congressional service in 2006, Kolbe was a supporter of same-sex marriage, telling local audiences in Tucson that “in a few years,” same-sex marriage would be normal and uncontroversial. In 2008, his good friend Tim Bee, who was the state Senate Majority Leader, announced that he would run against Giffords for Congress, Kolbe agreed to serve in Bee’s election campaign. Kolbe withdrew his support however when Bee cast his tie-breaking vote to place the proposed state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage on the ballot.

David Kopay: 1942. A former American football running back in the National Football League before retiring in 1972, Davud Kopay became one of the first professional male athletes to come out as gay in 1975. His 1977 biography, David Kopay Story, dished about the sexual adventures of his fellow heterosexual football teammates and revealed their widespread homophobia. In 1986, Kopay revealed his brief affair with Jerry Smith, who played for the Washington Redskins from 1965–1977 and who died of AIDS in 1986 without ever having publicly come out of the closet. He is a board member of the Gay and Lesbian Athletics Foundation, and he has been active in the  Federation of Gay Games. Since Kopay came out, only two other former NFL Players have come out as gay: Roy Simmons (1992), and Esera Tuaolo (2002). But to this day there have been no active NFL players who have come out while still playing.

In 2007, Kopay announced he would leave an endowment of $1 million to the his alma mater University of Washington’s Q Center, a resource and support center for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students and faculty. He has said that it is one of the most important efforts he will ever undertake.

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?

New independent expenditure committee formed in Colorado to target anti-civil union legislators

One Colorado, along with two of their biggest donors have launched an independent expenditure committee called Fight Back Colorado designed to target and defeat state legislators who killed the civil union bill twice this year, first in our regular legislative session and a second time in a special session called by the governor. Nic Garcia at OutFront Colorado has an excellent post-session story that summarized exactly what happened and why the LGBT community is so angry at the Republican House leadership.

In an email blast sent to One Colorado supporters this morning, Executive Director Brad Clark wrote:

This independent expenditure committee is designed to hold anti-equality legislators accountable for their actions. This will be a deliberate and strategic campaign, targeting resources to defeat state legislators who killed civil unions in Colorado. Once we replace enough anti-equality representatives with pro-equality representatives, we will close up shop.

Presumably this group will target anti-civil union Representatives in the House which Republicans currently control by one vote.  If Democrats were to take control of the House in November, Rep Mark Ferrandino, the House sponsor of the civil union bill, would be made Speaker Of The House.

OutFront’s Garcia published an article this morning that has many other interesting observations:

…supporters of the Colorado Civil Union Act have taken the first steps to replicate a successful strategy executed during the 2010 New York state Senate elections that paved the way to marriage equality legislation becoming law in the Empire State.

The committee, Fight Back Colorado, has taken the New York organization’s moniker, website and talking points.

And it shouldn’t come as a surprise. The single largest donor to Fight Back New York is Colorado activist and philanthropist Tim Gill.

It should also be noted that according to the Fight Back Colorado’s website and filings with the CO Secretary of State’s office the group is registered to Roger Sherman, who is listed as one of One Colorado’s most elite donors.

Garcia continues:

Fight Back Colorado has not publicly announced which lawmakers they plan to attack.

“We’re not going to have the resources to unseat everyone,” Sherman said. “So we’re going to do our research. We’re going to do polling and identify the most vulnerable seats.”

The group’s website is http://www.fightback-co.com/.  This group is independent of One Colorado so if you want to get emails, support or donate, you need to visit their site directly and sign up. The group is on Twitter as @FightBack_CO.

The Daily Agenda for Wednesday, June 27

TODAY’S AGENDA (Ours):
Smithsonian Folklife Festival Features AIDS Quilt: Washington, D.C. Every year during the Independence Day week of festivities in the nation’s capital, the Smithsonian Institution sets up a Folklife Festival on the National Mall. One of this year’s main programs is Creativity and Crisis: Unfolding the AIDS Memorial Quilt. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, which has grown to more than 48,000 panels and has become the largest piece of folk art in the world. According to the Smithsonian:

Creativity and Crisis: Unfolding The AIDS Memorial Quilt is the first Festival program to focus exclusively on community craft and performance that were directly developed in response to crisis and grief. With The AIDS Memorial Quilt as the anchor and through craft demonstrations, dance and musical performances, interactive discussions, and other activities, this program commemorates the innovative and resourceful ways through which communities have endeavored to educate people and to cope with one of the most complex pandemics in modern history.

The 2012 Smithsonian Folklife Festival will be open from Wednesday, June 27, through Sunday, July 1 and again from Wednesday, July 4, through Sunday, July 8. The Festival will be closed on Monday, July 2 and Tuesday, July 3. It is open to the public from 11:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Up to 8,000 panels of the quilt itself will be laid out every morning from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon, and will be taken up every evening from 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.,. Evening events on the Festival grounds will begin at 6:00 p.m. and may continue until as late as 9:00 p.m.

All 48,000 panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt will be shown in various displays around Washington, D.C. over the next month. For more information, check out Quilt2012.org.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Albuquerque, NM; Arraial, Portugal; Bangor, ME; Barcelona, Spain; Cagliari Italy; Cincinnati, OH; Delémont, Switzerland; Dublin, Ireland; Edinburgh; UK; Helsinki, Finland; Istanbul, Turkey; Lexington, KY; London, UK (World Pride); Madrid, Spain; Naples, Italy; Omaha, NE; Oslo, Norway; Paris, France; St. Petersburg, FL; Salem, MA; Sofia, Bulgaria; Swansea, UK; Toronto, ON; and Winnipeg, MB.

Other Events This Weekend: Canadian Rockies International Rodeo, Strathmore, AB; Creativity and Crisis: Unfolding The AIDS Memorial Quilt, Washington, D.C. Eurogames 2012, Budapest, Hungary.

TODAY’S AGENDA (Theirs):
Exodus Freedom Conference: St. Paul, MN. Exodus International kicks off it annual Exodus Freedom Conference today on the campus of Northwestern College in St. Paul, Minnesota. The annual conference is, as they say in Minnesota, the real deal — a four-day gathering of ex-gay people (“strugglers” in the parlance of the in-crowd) who will attend worship services, fellowship, workshops and plenary sessions in a kind of a summer camp for those who are trying to avoid the “camp,” so to speak. This year’s theme is “made for more,” and yours truly is boarding a flight bright and early this morning to attend the conference and see for myself what more there is to see. We’ve been documenting several changes to Exodus’s public face oner the past year; this will be my chance to see how things look up close. If you are attending the conference, give me a shout via Twitter (@jfburroway) and say hi. If you’re not attending the conference, give me a shout anyway. The conferences begins tonight and continues through Saturday.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
The McCarren-Walter Immigration and Naturalization Act: 1952. It was sixty years ago today when Congress passed a major overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws, removing the previous quotas which excluded immigrants based on the country of origin, and instead barring those who were deemed unlawful, immoral, diseased in any way, politically radical, and accepting those who were willing to conform to prevailing American political thought. Crafted at the height of the McCarthy Red Scare, it was the political aspects which drove Congress to pass the act. For the next four decades, the U.S. government used the act to prevent hundreds of people each year from visiting the U.S solely because of their political beliefs and associations.

Political beliefs however weren’t the only litmus test the government used. One provision prohibited entry to “aliens afflicted with psychopathic personality, epilepsy, or a mental defect.” Since the American Psychiatric Association listed homosexuality as a mental defect, the Immigration and Naturalization Service took that to mean that gays and lesbians were to be barred from entry into the United States. Even after the APA removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders, the INS continued to bar openly gay people from immigrating. As the years wore on, the ban was enforced haphazardly, but gay immigrants remained subject to deportation at the whim of an immigration judge. It wouldn’t be until the 1990 Immigration Act that homosexuality would be formally removed as grounds for exclusion. But by then, HIV had become the new basis for barring not just immigrants, but HIV-positive business people, HIV/AIDS advocates and even tourists from entering the U.S. for even a single day. That ban remained in place until 2010.

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?

Texas Republicans No Longer Want to Imprison Gays! (Not officially, at least)

This is…progress, I suppose.

In 2008 and 2010, the Texas State Republican Platform contained the following language:

Texas Sodomy Statutes – We oppose the legalization of sodomy. We demand that Congress exercise its authority granted by the U.S. Constitution to withhold jurisdiction from the federal courts from cases involving sodomy…

Marriage Licenses – We support legislation that would make it a felony to issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple and for any civil official to perform a marriage ceremony for such.

Neither of those are in the 2012 platform. That’s kind of a big deal. Throwing gays in prison is apparently no longer a political winner even in the conservative heartland of the conservative heartland.

Here’s another improvement. The 2010 platform offered a vile equation of gays with child molesters:

We also believe that no homosexual or any individual convicted of child abuse or molestation should have the right to custody or adoption of a minor child, and that visitation with minor children by such persons should be prohibited but if ordered by the court limited to supervised periods.

That’s gone from 2012, with the language changed to:

We believe that no individual convicted of child abuse or molestation should have the right to custody or adoption of a minor child. An abused child should be given the option of declining visitation with his/her abuser. If court ordered, visitation with minor children by such persons should be supervised.

Also, they’ve backed away from total opposition to gay adoption and now are merely opposing “mandates that deny mothers a choice in selecting a traditional home for their children.”

That’s good news for kids with same-sex parents, so let me shout, Hoo-r…

Hold on.

Hoo-r…

Let me try one more time.

Hoo-r…oh, screw it.

It’s hard to cheer this, even though it’s a subtle but clear signal we’re winning the culture war, even on the most hostile of fronts. Because the new platform still says this:

We affirm that the practice of homosexuality tears at the fabric of society and contributes to the breakdown of the family unit. Homosexual behavior is contrary to the fundamental, unchanging truths that have been ordained by God, recognized by our country’s founders, and shared by the majority of Texans. Homosexuality must not be presented as an acceptable “alternative” lifestyle, in public policy, nor should “family” be redefined to include homosexual “couples.” We believe there should be no granting of special legal entitlements or creation of special status for homosexual behavior, regardless of state of origin.

Got to love the scare quotes around “couples.” I knew they thought we couldn’t “marry” but apparently we can’t even “couple.”

Still, this horrible anti-gay platform is better than than evil version it only recently replaced. Yes, evil — that anti-parent, anti-child policy of treating gay moms and dads as if they were convicted child molesters was evil. But it casts a new light on Dan Savage’s recent “house faggots” comment. I can’t support Dan on that comment. I wish he wouldn’t call anyone a faggot. I wished nobody called anyone a faggot. However, I also wish the outraged conservatives piling on Dan’s choice of word were just as outraged by the evil that our country’s biggest state Republican party has only just now stopped promoting. I wish they recognized that Dan’s comment, however intemperate and unfair, was not unprovoked.

But I’m detouring from my original point, my happier point. We’re winning. Even in the most hostile political circles, where winning is mostly an improved version of losing — we’re still winning. This is progress, and it’s only my privileged, urban, Southern-California perspective that makes it hard for me to celebrate it. But we’re winning.

And by the way, there must have been some intense debates going on in Republican Texas over these changes. If anyone has video, transcripts, or links, please post them in the comments.

Ignore All Popups, Please

Sitemeter, the web service which provides traffic statistics to BTB and many other web sites, is experiencing some sort of a hack. Some of you may encounter a pop-up window either here or at other web sites asking for a log-in ID, password, or other personal information. I saw a popup on BTB show up late last night.

We NEVER collect personal information, nor do we requiere log-in information to visit BTB. If you see such a popup, please close it promply. Sitemeter says they are working on the problem.

The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, June 26

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Defense Department Hosts First Ever LGBT Pride Month Observance: Washington, D.C. This time last year, gay and lesbian servicemembers could be drummed out of the service if their superiors knew they were gay. But since “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was repealed, that is all water under the bridge. Mostly. While trans employees can work openly at the Pentagon, transgender people are still barred from serving. Today, the Defense Department will hold an LGBT Pride event at the Pentagon with DoD’s General Counsel Jeh Johnson as keynote speaker. That will be followed by a panel discussion on “”The Value of Open Service and Diversity.” The event is open to service members, civilian employees, and members of the media and take place from 1:00 to 2:00 p.m. EDT in the Pentagon Auditorium, Room BH650.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Life Magazine’s “Homosexuality In America”: 1964.

“Homosexuality shears across the spectrum of American life — the professions, the arts, business and labor. It always has. But today, especially in big cities, homosexuals are discarding their furtive ways and openly admitting, even flaunting, their deviation. Homosexuals have their won drinking places, their special assignation streets, even their own organizations. And for every obvious homosexual, there are probably nine nearly impossible to detect. This social disorder, which society tries to suppress, has forced itself into the public eye because it does present a problem — and parents especially are concerned. The myth and misconception with which homosexuality has so long been clothed must be cleared away, not to condone it but to cope with it.”

Over the next fourteen pages, Life magazine explored what they called the “sordid world” of the gay community. The articles provide interesting vignettes and photos of gay life in the pre-Stonewall era, but reading through them today probably tells us more about society’s revulsion towards gay people than it does about gays themselves. At one point, author Paul Welch accompanies a Los Angeles police officer acting as a decoy to try entrap a gay man into propositioning him. Even if the proposition involves going to a private home for the evening — the same type of invitation being made in straight bars all across Los Angeles that very same night — it would end badly with an arrest and possible lifetime registration as a sex offender. LGBT activist Dale Jennings arrest in the privacy of his own home and the city’s embarrassing failure to secure a conviction in a well-publicized case twelve years earlier (see June 23) had done nothing to stem police harassment.

One education pamphlet compiled for Los Angeles police warned that what gay men really want is “a fruit world.” Welch continued: “Although the anti-homosexual stand taken by the Los Angeles police is unswervingly tough, it reflects the attitude of most U.S. law-enforcement agencies on the subject.” On January 1, 1967, gay Angelenos would reach their breaking point and the Black Cat riots would become the high water mark in police harassment in Los Angeles — more than two years before the Stonewall rebellion in New York.

32 Killed in Arson Fire At New Orleans Gay Bar: 1973. It was a Sunday. The UpStairs Lounge, a second floor gay bar in New Orleans’s French Quarter, had hosted members of the local Metropolitan Community Church who attended a beer bust following church services. The evening was still early, not quite eight o’clock when the bartender heard the door buzzer downstairs ring, a sound that usually meant that a cab was outside the take a patron home. When another bar employee went to check on the cab, he found instead that the staircase was engulfed in flames from a molotov cocktail that had been tossed into the entrance, and those flames were rapidly climbing the wooden staircase into the bar.

The bartender, Buddy Rasmussen, led about twenty or thirty people through an unmarked exit which led to the roof, and they were able to hop onto other buildings and make their escape. But more than thirty others in the lounge ran to the windows instead, only to discover they were barred. By the time one of the patrons managed to squeeze through the bars, his body was already in flames and he died right after landing in the street below. Another patron escaped, but when he realized his boyfriend didn’t make it out, he went back in to find him. Fire crews later discovered their burned bodies holding each other. MCC pastor Rev. Bill Larson clung to the bars at a window where he died, his body melted into the window frame. His charred body remained visible from the street below for several hours afterwards.

Twenty-nine people died that night, and three more died later from their injuries. The fire at UpStairs lounge may very well have been the worst mass murder of gays in American history, but aside from the first day’s coverage, New Orleans could barely muster a yawn. Newspaper photos of Rev. Larson’s body against the window frame came to symbolize the city’s apathy toward the tragedy. Talk radio hosts told jokes (“What will they bury the ashes of queers in? Fruit jars.”), and the press quoted on cab driver saying “I hope the fire burned their dresses off.” Not only did the New Orleans Police Department barely investigate the crime, they could hardly be bothered to identify the victims. Major Henry Morris, chief detective of the New Orleans Police Department said, “We don’t even know these papers belonged to the people we found them on. Some thieves hung out there, and you know this was a queer bar.” Churches refused to allow families to hold funerals on their premises. Other families refused to claim their dead sons’ bodies. Four unidentified bodies ended up being dumped in a mass grave. No one was ever charged.

Here are two news reports of the fire, a lengthy film report from CBS news, and a shorter one from NBC:

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Lance Loud: 1951. PBS aired the groundbreaking documentary series An American Family in 1973 which would become the first reality television series in history. Millions of Americans were glued to their television sets watching the Loud family of Santa Barbara, California, go about their daily lives with film cameras in tow. Lance Loud, the family’s eldest twenty-year-old son who was living in New York City, quickly became the star of the program. He came out to America in the second episode when his mother went to visit him at the Chelsea Hotel, and his daring unconformity became an inspiration for young Americans, gay and straight.

Loud had returned to California by the time the series aired, so he decided to move back to New York City to take advantage of his newfound fame. He formed a band called the Mumps, which played New York’s famed CBGB and Mix, and toured with the Talking Heads, Television, Ramones, Cheap Trick and Van Halen. But after five years and a loyal following, they failed to attract a major recording contract. After the band broke up, Loud returned to Los Angeles and became a writer. His articles were published in Interview, Details, Vanity Fair, among others. He also had a regular column, “Out Loud,” in The Advocate.

Loud found the fame he earned from An American Family to be hollow. Americans had watched as his parents’ relationship careened toward divorce, leading Loud to say, “Television ate my family.” Loud himself went through years of substance abuse. When he was diagnosed with AIDS and hepatitis C, Loud agreed to appear in one final cinema verité documentary for PBS. But this time he made the decision to perform as a role model for what not to do with one’s life. Lance Loud! A Death in An American Family aired in 2003, two years after he died of liver failure.

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?

Even Oreos Are Getting Into the Act

Did you know Oreos have a Facebook page?

Wait’ll the “million moms” see this!

What they said…

They said that if Don’t Ask – Don’t Tell was repealed that homosexuals would cause chaos for the Military and – if allowed to have their relationships recognized on base – would make a mockery of marriage in a holy space. (Army Times)

“We are so honored to be a part of this historic moment to be one of the first gay couples allowed to unite in a civil union on a military base,” the couple said in a statement after the ceremony.

“We hope to be an inspiration to others in the LGBT community that struggle with the challenge of marriage equality. And that this issue is not just about the military, but the equal sacrifice and shared burdens of our loved ones who are civilians.”

They said that chaplains were horrified and feared being pressured into performing marriages against their will.

It was presided over by Kay Reeb, a Navy chaplain with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, who also serves at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst.

Reeb, who had never presided over a civil union ceremony before, said she was delighted to take part.

“I told them the same thing I tell every couple — love each other and trust in each other and in God, that’s what keeps us together,” he said.

They said that if allowed to serve openly, everyone would suffer: the heterosexuals who would be made uncomfortable and have their deep religious beliefs offended and the homosexuals who be subjected to abuse.

Air Force Capt. Ryan Quinn, who also attended the event, said he was “amazed by the beauty” of the ceremony.

“I really do think this is an important event. And I was happy to be here with them and their families,” he said. “The amount of support I’ve seen for them from the people (at the base) and the military community makes me proud to serve in the Air Force.”

Somehow, I think the changes we see for the better are due at least in part by people listening – and weighing – what they said.

Pride occupied

Beliefs are funny things. They don’t need to be tied to reason or logic or be in any way consistent. They just need to be asserted and believed.

This past weekend a segment of our community, calling themselves “Occupride”, trotted out to the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade to protest the corporations that are supporting our community.

OccuPride, the Occupy movement for Gay Pride, temporarily blocked the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade today, effectively slowing down the route for contingents while making their presence known in a peaceful manner. An estimated hundred or so protesters intercepted annual walk up Market Street. The group chanted such gems as, “Out of the sidewalks into the streets,” “Community, not commodity,’ and “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re not going shopping.”

I think that last one was pretty self evident.

As for their objections, they seem to be angry at corporations funding pride. They aren’t upset with the Pride committee, but with the corporations for, well it’s hard to know why they are angry that they contributed. They mostly just object to their existence. (Examiner)

“I think the corporatization, the commercialization of pride has really gotten out of hand,” said Tommi Avicolli Mecca, a longtime activist and Castro district resident. “I think they’re really consciously trying to buy favor in the community.”

This year, Avicolli Mecca and other activists are organizing OccuPride, a series of protest actions inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement and loosely affiliated with Occupy San Francisco. While there have been unsanctioned protests at Pride in previous years, Avicolli Mecca said this year activists had more to be angry about.

“I don’t know why the people at Pride are taking money from banks this year,” Avicolli Mecca said, referring to Wells Fargo and Bank of America, which are listed as sponsors for the San Francisco Pride Celebration & Parade and have drawn fire from the anti-Wall Street movement for foreclosing on homeowners. “I know that Pride needs money, but there’s other ways to get money.”

Well, yes of course there are. You can just pick it off the money tree.

As best I can tell, what makes evil corporations evil (other than just being part of a capitalist system) is that they fail to give back to the community, they put profits over people, and they just aren’t being responsible neighbors. So we should protest their funding of gay pride events. (Irony isn’t really their strong point.)

Instead we should rely on funds from good sources. Like, well… okay, by definition there aren’t any good people who actually have money. Because if they did, that would make them part of the evil wealthy elite.

But that doesn’t matter! That isn’t the point, the point is that these are Corporations! And that’s Bad! So let’s protest and Speak Truth to Power and Stand United and make them Go Away! And if no one funds Pride in the future (or, like Wells Fargo, gives money to oppose anti-gay amendments) we don’t want their Evil Corporate Money anyway. We’d rather lose than take their evil filthy corporate money!!

Which makes me wonder, where do I go to occupy the Occupiers?