Box Turtle Bulletin

The Daily Agenda for Friday, June 15

TODAY’S AGENDA (Ours):
White House LGBT Pride Month Reception: Washington, D.C. In continuing an annual event that has occurred each year since President Barack Obama took office, the White Hose will host am LGBT Pride Month Reception this afternoon at 4:00 p.m. This reception takes place after the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was implemented last September, and a month after Obama officially evolved on the marriage issue.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Baltimore, MD; Bisbee, AZ; Boise, ID; Bozeman, MT; Calderdale, UK; Columbus, OH; Denver, CO; Edmunton, AB; Erie, PA; Flagstaff, AZ; Gloucester, UK; Grand Rapids,MI; Iowa City, IA; Lancaster, PA; Lansing, MI; Las Cruces, NM; Louisville, KY; Memphis, TN (Black Pride); Nashville, TN; Oldenberg, Germany; Outer Banks, NC; Oxford, UK; Portland, ME; Portland, OR; Providence, RI; Redditch, UK; Saskatoon, SK; Syracuse, NY; Thunder Bay, ON; Turin, Italy; Vienna, Austria; Zagreb, Croatia and Zurich, Switzerland.

AIDS Walk This Weekend: Oakland, CA.

Other Events This Weekend: Stadfest, Berlin, Germany; Folsom Street East, New York, NY; Frameline LGBT Film Festival, San Francisco, CA; and Tel Aviv LGBT International Film Festival, Tel Aviv, Israel.

TODAY’S AGENDA (Theirs):
Faith and Freedom Conference: Washington, D.C. Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition will kicked off their annual Conference and Strategy Briefing yesterday at the Renaissance Hotel in Washington, D.C. Yesterday started off light, mostly dedicated to individual lobbying on Capital Hill and other networking events, today is where the serious fun begins. Confirmed speakers for the next two days include: Grover Norquist, Rick Santorum, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Glenn Beck, D’Souza, James O’Keefe, Concerned Women for America’s Penny Nance, Family “Research” Council’s Tony Perkins and Ken Blackwell, National Review Online’s Jonah Goldberg, Southern Baptist Convention’s Richard Land, Tea Party Patriots’ Jenny Beth Martin, and Former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Other elected officials speaking at the conference include GOP Presidential candidate Gov. Mitt Romney, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Rob Portman (R-OH), Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), Sen. Mike Lee (UT), Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), Rep. Randy Forbes (R-VA), Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (R), Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R), Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch (R), and former Virginia Gov. Allen George (R).

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Neil Patrick Harris: 1973. His Doogie Howser days are long over, and since then NPH has been able to cross two important acting barriers. A former child actor, he was able to successfully navigate the difficulties of becoming an adult actor in Broadway, film, and television. And he has also navigated the difficult transition from assumed-straight actor to a highly visible gay one, with partner David Burtka and twin children who were born in 2010. And as a very visible gay actor, he still manages to play straight roles on film and television. And to add just one more difficult accomplishment to his resume, last weekend he singlehandedly made the Tony Awards watchable again. As always, he made that look easy also.

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?

Yep, marriage is a certainty

Sometimes it is the throw away comment that tells the story. And sometimes the source is the unexpected.

This morning Rush Limbaugh was ranting about how President Obama is being advised and directed by the very wealthy (which is an odd objection considering Rush’ wealth and the usual Republican fundraising sources, but I digress). And he had three examples.

“The least risky of these is gay marriage”

Wait. What?

The next was contraception funding and he rushed to commercial break do I never heard the third.

I wasn’t sure I could believe my ears. Limbaugh declared that Obama’s marriage evolution was less risky than contraception? But then it got better.

Back from the break, Limbaugh asserted that the President was hoping to hold off endorsing marriage equality until closer to the election so it could be part of a media point but that rich donors forced his hand. I’m not sure whose ass he pulled that out of, but it sounded to me as though Limbaugh thinks that supporting equality is some campaign position that can win elections.

Which puts our readers in the rare position of hoping Rush Limbaugh is right for once.

Cook county: “my bad”

In a scenario reminiscent of the Proposition 8 trial in California, the lawsuit against the state of Illinois is having difficulty finding opposition.

The official defendant of the state’s discriminatory policy is David Orr, the Cook County Clerk. But Orr has filed a brief saying, basically, “yep, my bad, it’s discrimination all right”. The Illinois Attorney General intends on filing a brief indicating that it is his her belief that banning gay marriage is a violation of the constitution and the Governor is booking his seat on the Equality Train, as well.

So who will defend discrimination?

It may be the Thomas More Society, a Chicago-based Catholic legal group created to defend abortion protesters (not to be confused with the very truly evil Thomas More Law Center). As best I can tell the TMSociety does nothing but defend the crazy people who try and shove aborted-fetus placards in your face and they are likely to find themselves completely unprepared for the challenge.

Exodus Leader Supports Jamaica’s Anti-Gay Laws; Exodus Responds With Statement Opposing Criminalization

Today, Exodus International released a new statement:

Criminalization of Homosexuality
Exodus International believes that every human life, regardless of sexual orientation, is of inestimable and equal worth to God and that defending this principle is foundational in offering a Christian response to any issue. As such, Exodus International has not supported and will not support any legislation that deprives others of life and dignity based on their sexual orientation or the expression of such within the confines of a consensual adult relationship. We stand with all who are defending this basic, biblical tenet and remain committed to sharing the compassion, hope and life-giving grace and truth of Jesus Christ.

Finally, we stand with the LGBT community both in spirit, and when necessary, legally and physically, when violence rears its head in Uganda, Jamaica or anywhere else in the world.

We’ve long followed the rippling aftermath of Exodus board member Don Schmierer’s disastrous participation in an anti-gay conference in Uganda. It took Exodus president Alan Chambers fifteen months to express regret over that and issue its first policy statement against criminalization. That statement is no longer available on Exodus’s web site. This new statement, which can be read more broadly, is now on a page alongside other Exodus policy statements.

The sudden reference to Jamaica may be puzzling to those who are unaware of recent events. Taken from a glass-half-full scenario, it can be seen as another positive sign that Chambers takes seriously his commitment to being more pro-active when these issues arise. It was just yesterday when Mike Airhart at Truth Wins Out revealed that another Exodus board member stepped into yet another international incident:

On May 29, Exodus board vice chairman Dennis Jernigan blogged about his work the previous week in Jamaica to defend that nation’s antigay laws and criticize President Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron for their support of Jamaican LGBT human rights. We reprint Jernigan’s May 29 complete blog post below, with the key text highlighted by us.

The highlighted test from Jernigan’s blog post describes a meeting that Jernigan had with the Jamaican Observer’s editorial staff:

… this is when I first realized what I had been thrust into! In a boardroom with about 30 editorial staff members and reporters, I discovered that the Prime Minister of Jamaica was receiving pressure from our president and the prime minister of Great Britain to change the anti-sodomy laws of Jamaica … or risk losing financial support. That is when I knew why I was there. I shared my entire story and then fielded questions – for almost two hours! When asked about what I thought about President Obama’s recent remarks concerning homosexuality, I told them I love my president but I believe he is greatly deceived and risks undermining the very foundation of our nation … the family. Incidentally, the paper began publishing the interview the very next day on the first three pages … the headline being my quote concerning my belief that President Obama is deceived! I felt the grace of God in those interviews. I never felt fear at all … and feel I impacted an entire nation in the process. [Emphasis Mine]

Jamaica has an exceptionally long history of often shocking violence against LGBT people. Popular musicians often exhort audiences to kill gay people in their lyrics, and violence against gay people is often glorified in social media and on the streets. Sometimes those abuses occur in the context of trying to “cure” people of their homosexuality. According to the U.S. State Department’s 2011 report on human rights:

The Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All Sexuals, and Gays (J-FLAG) continued to report serious human rights abuses, including assault with deadly weapons, “corrective rape” of women accused of being lesbians, arbitrary detention, mob attacks, stabbings, harassment of gay and lesbian patients by hospital and prison staff, and targeted shootings of such persons. Police often did not investigate such incidents. During the year J-FLAG received 84 reports of sexually motivated harassment or abuse, which included 71 cases of attempted or actual assault, including at least two killings, and 21 reports of displacements. Members of the police force reportedly were the perpetrators in 12 cases. J-FLAG data showed that young people, ages 18 to 29, continued to bear the brunt of violence based on sexual orientation. This violence created a climate of fear that prompted many gay persons to emigrate, while the gross indecency laws left those who remained vulnerable to extortion from neighbors who threatened to report them to the police unless they were paid off.

…The trial of six suspects arrested for the 2005 robbery and murder of prominent gay rights advocate Lenford “Steve” Harvey, initially begun and then postponed in 2007, had not resumed by year’s end.

…Gay men were hesitant to report incidents against them because of fear for their physical well-being. Human rights NGOs and government entities agreed that brutality against such persons, primarily by private citizens, was widespread in the community.

Jamaica’s anti-sodomy law makes consensual relationships a felony, punishable by a ten-year prison sentence. There is considerable international pressure on Jamaica to repeal its sodomy law and to offer basic human rights protections against violence directed at LGBT people, but even those minimal calls remain highly controversial and deeply unpopular.

It is in this climate that Jernigan boldly stepped into. In actions which are highly reminiscent of board member Don Schmierer’s ill-fated and notorous trip to Uganda, Jernigan strongly supported Vice-president of the Jamaica Association of Evangelicals Rev. Peter Garth’s reading of Michael Swift’s 1987 satire “A Gay Revolutionary” which the more extreme anti-gay activists often mis-identify as “the gay agenda.” (The satire labels itself as a satire in the prologue, which is typically omitted when deployed by anti-gay extremists.) Jernigan’s comments only served to lend further credence to the satire’s so-called validity:

According to Garth, the gay community has been instructed to talk about gays as loudly as possible and to portray them as victims, not as aggressive challengers and to make them look good and the people opposed to them look bad. As such, Garth said the Church is trying to influence others to look at the structure which provides value for our nation.

A former member of the gay community, Rev Dennis Jernigan, said that community has all the creative, financial and intellectual power. According to Jernigan, an American citizen, the gay community gives more than the 10 per cent tithe that Christians give to the church, as they are very adamant about their agenda. “If I was still in that group and was still a part of that agenda, of course I would take that as my battle cry and I would do everything in my power to bring it to pass,” he said.

In another Jamaica Observer article which identifies Jernigan as Exodus’s vice chairman (and thus suggesting that Jernigan was speaking on the organization’s behalf), he describes himself as having fully changed his sexuality:

Jernigan said he was transformed that night.

“All of a sudden, I felt a level of freedom, a level of acceptance, a level of affirmation I had not expected. That night, God gave me a brand new identity, that is the best way I can put it to you,” Jernigan said, likening the experience to the biblical tale of Lazarus, who is described as rising from the dead through Jesus’s power.

“He told me, ‘son, that homosexuality is not what I intended for you, that’s a deception. Put that off and put on the truth,” Jernigan said.

“All of a sudden, my sexuality changed. I was intending never to be married. I said, I’ll just be celibate for the Lord, I want to be pure. But God said, ‘no, I have even greater plans for you. I will give you a wife, I will bless you with a wife’. And then because I felt so robbed of life for so much of my life, God said ‘I will give you, as many children as you want. I said okay,” Jernigan told the Monday Exchange with a chuckle, his wife laughing as she chimed in beside him, “I agreed.”

Jernigan is vice-chairman of the board of directors of Exodus International, a group that calls itself the largest ministry for homosexuals in the world and which specialises in so-called ‘gay conversion’.

The Exodus vice-chairman’s statements stand in remarkable contrast to actions and statements recently take by Exodus’s president. Last January, Chambers acknowledged, “The majority of people that I have met, and I would say the majority meaning 99.9% of them, have not experienced a change in their orientation.” Exodus removed all Reparative Therapy books from its online bookstore and began disassociating itself from the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), which is the biggest proponent of Reparative Therapy. Earlier this month, Exodus responded to a proposed California bill which would prohibit licensed therapist from providing Sexual Orientation Change Efforts (COCE) to minors with a statement which read, in part, “As an organization, we do not subscribe to therapies that make changing sexual orientation a main focus or goal.”

Dennis Jernigan speaking to reporters in Jamaica.

But obviously, the Exodus vice chairman and Exodus president are not even close to reading from the same script. Jernigan made the goal of changing sexual orientation the centerpiece of his message:

While the US has been racked by heated debate about the ‘gay conversion’ religious movement, Jernigan says his own conversion isn’t all that uncommon in his country.

“This may sound really mystical to you,” he said, “But I know hundreds of men and women in the United States who have walked out of homosexuality and now walking the true freedom. That’s the story you are not hearing, but that’s the truth.”

“That is why I am so adamant about this, freedom is possible,” he declared, his voice cracking with emotion. It is a message he is determined to impart to Jamaicans.

When the vice-chairman of Exodus International left his home in Muskogee, Oklahoma for Jamaica a few weeks ago, intending to share his music in Christian concerts and in ministry, he had no idea that homosexuality was a hot-button issue here. When he found himself in the middle of a huge debate about homosexuality and gay marriage he said he questioned why God had led him to this country at this particular time.

“I said, ‘hmmm… God, what are you up to? You’ve plunged me right in the middle of this’.

“But I want to save your nation. I don’t want to do anything other than minister to you, to tell you my story, to serve the people of Jamaica, because I don’t want to see happen here, what happened in America,” he said.

Jernigan also appeared in this video, in which he repeated the classic Reparative Therapy line of what causes homosexuality. He also placed his ex-gay message in a very political context:

As I said, the fact that it only took Chambers one day to respond to this latest revelation can be seen as a glass half-full. This is measurable progress and I don’t want to lose sight of that.

But the glass is also still half empty. Once again we are learning of an Exodus official traveling to a volatile country in full ignorance — and an admitted ignorance — of the fact that “homosexuality was a hot-button issue here.” Exodus may feel that they have a special expertise on helping conservative Christians resist their same-sex attractions, but they clearly have no expertise about how homosexuality itself is perceived in other cultures.

It is extremely reckless of them to parachute into countries where they have no idea what’s going on, and then leaving it up to the local LGBT community to deal with the aftermath when they jet home. They already have ample evidence of what happens when Exodus officials neglect to do their homework before traveling to volatile countries. There is just no excuse for making this same mistake yet again.

At some point, you would expect there would be consequences to making these kinds of errors. In a truly accountable organization Jernigan would hand in his resignation. But don’t count on that happening. Three years after the Uganda debacle, Don Schmierer is still serving as Exodus’s treasurer.

The Daily Agenda for Thursday, June 14

Individualism in the original thirteen-star flag

It’s Flag Day, a day established in 1916 to commemorate the Second Continental Congress’s adoption of the Stars and Stripes on June 14, 1777. The original specification for the flag was simple: “Resolved, that the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new Constellation.” That was it. Consequently, there were as many early American flag designs as there were designers.

An eighteen star, eighteen stripe flag, commemorating Louisiana's entry into the union.

In 1795, the number of stars and stripes rose to fifteen in honor of Vermont and Kentucky’s entry into the union. As more states entered, flag makers added stars and stripes accordingly, although some flag makers decided having too many stripes made their flags look a little too busy. They took the initiative of going back to thirteen stripes for the original thirteen states. In 1818 when there were twenty states in the union, Congress decided to curb the potential stripe explosion and adopted the thirteen stripe flag with twenty stars, while specifying that new stars would be added as needed each July 4. But the arrangement of stars remained unregulated, and flag makers continued to demonstrate a great deal of creativity throughout the nineteenth century. When the forty-eight star flag came into being in 1912 with statehood for Arizona and New Mexico, Congress finally got around to declaring a uniform design for the stars and stripes.

Fifty star flag measurement specification

Today, the flag’s design is tightly specified (PDF: 1.16MB/34 pages) with careful measurements and colors defined according to the the CAUS Standard Color Reference of America. But very few commercially-made flags adhere to that standard: the measurements and aspect ratios are almost always wrong and the colors are typically off. Those that do are called Government Specification or G-Spec flags. The rest of us make do with whatever the flag makes decides it will be. In some ways, things never really change much after all.

TODAY’S AGENDA (Ours):
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Baltimore, MD; Bisbee, AZ; Boise, ID; Bozeman, MT; Calderdale, UK; Columbus, OH; Denver, CO; Edmunton, AB; Erie, PA; Flagstaff, AZ; Gloucester, UK; Grand Rapids,MI; Iowa City, IA; Lancaster, PA; Lansing, MI; Las Cruces, NM; Louisville, KY; Memphis, TN (Black Pride); Nashville, TN; Oldenberg, Germany; Outer Banks, NC; Oxford, UK; Portland, ME; Portland, OR; Providence, RI; Redditch, UK; Saskatoon, SK; Syracuse, NY; Thunder Bay, ON; Turin, Italy; Vienna, Austria; Zagreb, Croatia and Zurich, Switzerland.

AIDS Walk This Weekend: Oakland, CA.

Other Events This Weekend: Stadfest, Berlin, Germany; Folsom Street East, New York, NY; Frameline LGBT Film Festival, San Francisco, CA; and Tel Aviv LGBT International Film Festival, Tel Aviv, Israel.

TODAY’S AGENDA (Theirs):
Faith and Freedom Conference: Washington, D.C. Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition will kick off their annual Conference and Strategy Briefing today at the Renaissance Hotel in Washington, D.C. Today begins with a luncheon with Sens. Rob Portman (R-OH) and Marco Rubio (R-FL). Other confirmed speakers for the three day conference include: Grover Norquist, Rick Santorum, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Glenn Beck, D’Souza, James O’Keefe, Concerned Women for America’s Penny Nance, Family “Research” Council’s Tony Perkins and Ken Blackwell, National Review Online’s Jonah Goldberg, Southern Baptist Convention’s Richard Land, Tea Party Patriots’ Jenny Beth Martin, and Former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Other elected officials speaking at the conference include GOP Presidential candidate Gov. Mitt Romney, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY),  Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), Sen. Mike Lee (UT), Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), Rep. Randy Forbes (R-VA), Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (R), Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R), Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch (R), and former Virginia Gov. Allen George (R).

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Boy George: 1961. George O’Dowd’s first stage name was Lieutenant Lush when he performed with Bow Wow Wow. That tenure was short lived: he was booed off the stage. He then joined up with drummer (and regular boyfriend) Jon Moss (previously of The Damned and Adam and the Ants), bassist Mikey Craig and guitarist/keyboardist Roy Hay. They called their group In Praise of Lemmings and then Sex Gang Children. When they finally realized that they had a androgynous Irish singer, a black bassist, a Jewish drummer and an English keyboardist, they decided to call themselves Culture Club, with Boy George as the frontman. Their debut album Kissing to be Clever was released in 1982, and their single “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?” became an international hit. “Time (Clock of Heart)” and “I’ll Tumble 4 Ya,” gave them the distinction of being the first group since the Beatles to have three Top 10 hits in the U.S. from a debut album. Their next album Colour By Numbers, did almost as well, with “Church of the Poison Mind” and “Miss Me Blind” hitting the Top Ten in the U.S. and “Karma Chameleon” holding the #1 spot for three weeks (and for six weeks in the U.K.).

By the late 1980s, Boy George left Culture Club behind when his relationship with Moss soured and he began descending into a nasty heroin addiction. After rehab, he had a few modest hits as a solo artist, including the title song from the movie The Crying Game in 1992. He wrote the musical score for the London musical Taboo, which was based on his life. It earned him a Tony Award for Best Musical Score. But his troubles continued to follow him. In 2005, he was arrested in New York for cocaine possession and filing a false burglary report. The drug charge was dropped and he pleaded guilty to the false report. He was sentenced to five days of community service, fined $1,000 and ordered into drug rehab. In 2008, he was arrested and charged with assault and false imprisonment. He was convicted and sentenced to fifteen months imprisonment. He was released after four months and was placed under home detention. His latest album, Ordinary Alien, was released in 2010 after a more than ten year hiatus.

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?

Exodus Loses 11 Ministries Following Recent Changes

As we’ve been tracking changes taking place with Exodus International’s messaging and change in focus over the past several months, many of us have been wondering if some of those changes might result in an exodus from Exodus. Eleven ministries out of perhaps 250 isn’t exactly a rush for the doors, but the year is also only half over since Exodus president Alan Chambers tried out his new talk last January and began distancing Exodus from NARTH.

Two of the ministries to leave the Exodus fold are particularly noteworthy. Frank Worthen’s New Hope Ministries in San Rafael, California, is the surviving granddaddy of ex-gay ministries. It was founded in the early 1970s. Also in the mid-1970s, Worthen’s New Hope created a residential program called, Love In Action, which eventually became an independent ex-gay ministry. (Love In Action recently changed its name to Restoration Path, and remains in the Exodus network.) But most notably, Worthen was one of the co-founders of Exodus International itself in 1986 1976.

Also departing from the Exodus umbrella is Andrew Comiskey’s Desert Stream Ministries, currently located in Grandview, Missouri, with several branch ministries around the world. Comiskey wrote an open letter to Chambers in April criticizing Exodus for distancing itself from the particular type of ex-gay therapy known as Reparative Therapy.

Ex-Gay Watch’s David Roberts wrote of another ministry that is going its own way: “And perhaps most amazing of all, Exchange Ministries, located in the same city as Exodus [Orlando], was the ministry where Chambers got his start.”

Update: David Robers clarifies with this comment: “Actually, if comparing apples to apples, it’s a little more dramatic.  The current total in the Member Ministries listing— the actual ex-gay ministries to which Exodus would refer people for counselling, etc — is at 70 now.” Made a note of it. Believe me, after this week we want to make sure we’re comparing apples to apples.

How Different Are the Children of Parents Who Have Opposite-Sex Relationships?

Lawrence, Kansas:

The strange case began when a patron of the Walmart store in the northwest part of the city called police to report seeing a child with his arms tied behind him sitting on the ground next to a van. When police arrived, they found a 5-year-old boy and a 7-year-old girl, both with their arms and feet bound and blindfolded, and an adult male with them, said Sgt. Trent McKinley of the Lawrence Police Department.

…The officers untied the children and called for an ambulance. They also realized three other juveniles were in the van, the windows of which had been obscured by clothing and other items. The other juveniles, a 12-year-old girl, a 13-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy, locked themselves inside the van. Juvenile officers were able to talk them into coming out of the van after about an hour, McKinley said.

The a man believed to be the father was arrested, but not after fighting with police and being tasered. A woman believed to be the mother was arrested inside the Walmart.

This counts, right?

Runnin’ For President Ain’t Nuttin But A Booty Call

Fred Karger, the openly gay candidate who is still pressing his issues-based campaign for the Republican nomnation, had a rough go of it in Utah which will hold its primary on June 26. He met with Republican leaders and urged the LDS Church to end its campaigns against marriage equality. One of those GOP leaders he met was Washington County Party Chairman Willie Billings. Karger said that meeting went well — Karger gave Billings a Frisbee and a T-Shirt. But when Billings took the items home, his wife threw then out and fired off an email to the Karger campaign:

From: nanette Billings <—->
Subject: running for president

Message Body:
you are an idiot. You met with my husband Willie Billings today about you being on the Utah ballot. He brought your frisby and tshirt home and it is now out in the trash. I never want to hear from such a radical idiot again. you think you are conseritave? conseritave means you beleive in the values of the founding fathers and God. Do you know you cant procreate right? Well thank goodness for that Nanette Billings

She confirmed the email to Yahoo News. She also said:

“My feeling is the only reason he’s running for president is to find more [sexual] partners,” Nanette Billings told Yahoo News in a phone interview. “To get more people on his bandwagon.”

Who said Utahns are nice?

Well, maybe not ENTIRELY boring

When you hear “but there’s no gay gene”, it can make you want to pull your hair out. Or, if as in my case you want to keep every last hair that you have, you want to go into excruciating detail as to exactly what science does or doesn’t say, what twin studies reveal, and lesbian auditory evoked potentials.

Instead, just refer them to this amusing and interesting primer from Ma. Isabel Garcia in the Philippine Star. The entire article is a joy, but here is the masterpiece ending paragraph.

Biodiversity is a concept that we are so eager to promote because we recognize that it faithfully reflects nature’s realities. But we cannot seem to readily think “diversity” when it comes to gender. Somehow, we become frugal and intellectually budgeted when we classify human genders that nature gives rise to. Most of us are limited to thinking only in binary gender denominations — male or female. If you want to look for gender, look at the person, inner and outer spaces, and put genitals in the bottom of your clues. The person will tell you rich, scrumptious tales. Genitals are boring.

Marriott supports marriage

It will be interesting to see exactly how this is taken by, say, the half dozen people who make up One Million Moms or by the National Organization for Marriage (but not yours). Marriott International wants you to consider them when it comes time to plan your wedding. And they are doing so in not-coy or ambiguous terms.

On their website on a page titled “gay-wedding-venues“:

Weddings and Civil Ceremonies

Marriott hotels provide ideal venues for ceremonies honoring you and your partner. With luxurious hotels and stunning resorts all around the world, we offer the perfect settings and Planning Services for your most special day.

Event Planners

Marriott event planners and luxurious venues work hard behind the scenes so you can shine in the limelight. We’re waiting with the welcome, the amenities, the catering, and the rest of the celebration you and your cast of stars deserves.

Considering that a number of big businesses have recently become increasingly vocal in support, this might not be very remarkable… if Bill Marriott were not the Chairman of the Board, if the Marriott family (which owns about a fifth of the stock) was not Mormon, and if Mitt Romney (who is named after Willard Marriott) had not at one point been on the Board of Directors.

Regnerus Admits He Lacks the Data to Critique Same-Sex Parenting (*so why is he doing it?)

This is getting uglier.

Prof. Mark Regnerus has been giving interviews about his study on parents who’ve had same-sex relationships, saying things like this:

Well, in the generation that are adults now, kids raised in a same-sex household were more likely to experience instability and shifting household arrangements. For example, 14 percent of kids whose moms had a lesbian relationship reported spending more time in foster care, well above the average of 2 percent among all respondents.

That leapt out at me because the error is obvious: The second sentence in no way supports the first. Children whose “moms had a lesbian relationship” weren’t necessarily “raised in a same-sex household” — the children might have never even met their mother’s lesbian partner, much less have been raised by her. Jim Burroway has done some great work pointing this out, and I’d like to extend it. In fact, I’d like to go so far as to show that Regnerus himself admits that he has, well, nothing.

Regnerus’s team interviewed 15,058 people. Few of them had a gay parent; even fewer lived with their gay parent’s partner for a significant time; and fewer still came from what Regnerus calls a “‘planned’ gay family.”

A couple points:

• Regnerus is fond of talking about “lesbian mothers” and “gay fathers,” but he defines them as adults who have ever had a same-sex romantic relationship, even if it only happened once, even if it only lasted a few days.

• Regnerus has no data on “planned gay families.” He derived those numbers from looking at “respondents who claimed that (1) their biological parents were never married or lived together, and that (2) they never lived with a parental opposite-sex partner or with their biological father.” The numbers are a guess.

Back to those numbers, though. Regnerus obviously can’t draw any conclusions male same-sex parenting based on a sample of less than 1. How about lesbian same-sex parenting? Is his sample of 30-45 respondents enough to significantly describe the broader population?

No. Not unless the total nation-wide population of adults raised by two lesbian parents is about 50 or fewer. And I suspect it’s more.

Here’s the kicker: Regnerus agrees with me. His article bemoans the low sample sizes of studies that offered up good results for same-sex parenting:

It is not surprising that statistically-significant differences would not emerge in studies employing as few as 18 or 33 or 44 cases of respondents with same-sex parents, respectively…Even analyzing matched samples, as a variety of studies have done, fails to mitigate the challenge of locating statistically-significant differences when the sample size is small.

Look at the numbers in that quote. Now look back at the numbers in the table. This is Regnerus telling us he’s got, as I said, nothing.

Now here’s why this is so ugly.

• In the study’s introduction, Regnerus frames it as an examination of same-parenting and a corrective to flaws in earlier, positive studies on same-sex parenting.

• But Regnerus’s data on same-sex parenting contains the same sample-size flaws for which he which criticized those other studies.

• So once he leaves his introduction and enters analysis, he abandons all pretense of studying same-sex parenting and focuses instead on parents who have ever had a same-sex romantic relationship, regardless of whether they raised a child with that same-sex partner.

• Nevertheless, he does not correct his introduction in order to frame the issue properly.

• And finally, he grants interviews to conservative outlets, claiming that his study shows the harm of same-sex parenting, even though his own words, in his own study, demonstrate that he knows his sample size is just too damn small to say anything with confidence.

Am I wrong to call this ugly? Prof. Regnerus could well be following this blog, given Jim’s excellent and well-publicized work. I hope the professor provides us an explanation and justification for what he’s telling the press.

Boys Scouts Board Member: Drop the Gay Ban

James Turley, global chairman and CEO of tax firm Ernst & Young, also sits on the board of directors at Boy Scouts of America. In an interview with CNBC, Turley said that his experience led him “to believe that an inclusive environment” was “important throughout our society”:

“I support the meaningful work of the Boy Scouts in preparing young people for adventure, leadership, learning and service, however the membership policy is not one I would personally endorse,” he said in remarks made to CNBC. ” … I intend to continue to work from within the BSA Board to actively encourage dialogue and sustainable progress.”

Another board member, AT&T’s chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson, was supportive, but less willing to go out on a limb:

“Diversity and inclusion are part of AT&T’s culture and operations, and we’re proud to be recognized as a leader in this area,” he said in a statement to CNBC. “We don’t agree with every policy of every organization we support, nor would we expect them to agree with us on everything. Our belief is that change at any organization must come from within to be successful and sustainable.”

Washington’s Ref 74 Qualifies For The Ballot

It is now official:

The secretary of state’s office announced Tuesday that Referendum 74 passed the signature-verification process that has been taking place since last week.

Sponsors turned in 247,331 signatures, far more than the minimum of 120,577 valid voter signatures required. A 3 percent random sample was done and of the 7,561 signatures that were sampled during the check, 6,877 were accepted and the rest were rejected.

Last February, when Governor Chris Gregoire signed the marriage equality bill into law, opponents announced that they would immediately begin the task of collecting signatures to put a referendum on the ballot to overturn the law. They filed those signatures with the Secretary of State earlier this month, just one day before the law was to go into effect. By filing the signatures, they blocked the law, which now remains suspended until voters can approve Ref 74 in November. Unlike most other campaigns, a “yes” vote on Ref 74 will result in marriage equality for the state’s residents.

The Daily Agenda for Wednesday, June 13

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Baltimore, MD; Bisbee, AZ; Boise, ID; Bozeman, MT; Calderdale, UK; Columbus, OH; Denver, CO; Edmunton, AB; Erie, PA; Flagstaff, AZ; Gloucester, UK; Grand Rapids,MI; Iowa City, IA; Lancaster, PA; Lansing, MI; Las Cruces, NM; Louisville, KY; Memphis, TN (Black Pride); Nashville, TN; Oldenberg, Germany; Outer Banks, NC; Oxford, UK; Portland, ME; Portland, OR; Providence, RI; Redditch, UK; Saskatoon, SK; Syracuse, NY; Thunder Bay, ON; Turin, Italy; Vienna, Austria; Zagreb, Croatia and Zurich, Switzerland.

AIDS Walk This Weekend: Oakland, CA.

Other Events This Weekend: Stadfest, Berlin, Germany; Folsom Street East, New York, NY; Frameline LGBT Film Festival, San Francisco, CA; and Tel Aviv LGBT International Film Festival, Tel Aviv, Israel.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
LGBT Leaders Welcomed to White House With Rubber Gloves: 1995. Relations between the LGBT community and the Clinton Administration were at a low point in 1995. Instead of repealing the ban against gays in the military, the Clinton Administration negotiated “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” with conservative Democrats and Republicans. Instead of filing a Justice Department brief with the Supreme Court to weigh in on a lawsuit challenging Colorado’s Amendment 2 which would have banned civil rights protections for gay people, Attorney General Janet Reno sat on her hands. But with the White House beginning to cast an eye toward the 1996 elections, they realized that they needed to do something to try to placate a seriously pissed off constituency.

So on June 14, the Clinton Administration invited 40 gay leaders, including state senators and representatives, city council members, judges and other elected officials from around the country, to a special White House meeting. The meeting’s purpose was to announce that Marsha Scott, a deputy assistant to President Clinton, was being named as White House liason officer for gay and lesbian issues. They were also there to learn about a new 30-member presidential advisory council on HIV/AIDS. But before the meeting even got started, things got off on the wrong foot with the sight that greeted the LGBT leaders when they showed: Secret Service agents had put on rubber gloves before granting them access to the White House. The activists were furious when agents told them they were wearing the gloves to protect themselves from HIV. “For that to even happen at the White House shows they haven’t a clue about AIDS,” said Act Up spokesman Steve Michael. “It just shows where they’re at.”

What was supposed to be a grand kiss-and-make-up session quickly turned into yet another embarrasment for the Administration. Secret Service director Eljay Brown issued a statement saying that he regretted “the unfortunate actions” taken by his agents. “It is not the policy of the Secret Service to wear gloves merely based on known sexual preference.” The Treasury Department, which had jurisdiction over the Secret Service, was asked to investigate. White House press secretary Mike McCurry said, “It’s safe to say the chief of staff (Leon Panetta) and others were distressed by that and believe it to be an error of judgment.”

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Paul Lynde: 1926. He studied drama at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois with fellow students Cloris Leachman, Charlotte Rae, Patricia Neal, Jeffrey Hunter and Claude Akins. Imagine what that class must have been like. After graduating in 1948, he moved to New York and became a stand-up comic and a Broadway actor. In 1960, he appeared in Broadway’s Bye Bye Birdie, as well as in its film adaptation in 1963. But most of his work was in television, where he appeared in numerous sitcoms (he was Uncle Arthur in Bewitched) and lent his voice to animated cartoons. He is probably best known as the “center square” for the game show Hollywood Squares, with host Peter Marshall, where Lynde became famous for his one-liners and double entendres. They say his sexual orientation was an open secret in Hollywood. It’s hard to imagine any secret being more open than his. Especially considering Hollywood Squares answers like these:

Peter Marshall: In the Wizard of Oz, the lion wanted courage and the tin man wanted a heart. What did the scarecrow want?
Paul Lynde: He wanted the tin man to notice him.

Peter Marshall: What do you call a man who gives you diamonds and pearls?
Paul Lynde: I’d call him “darling”!

Peter Marshall: Paul, in what famous book will you read about a talking ass who wonders why it’s being beaten?
Paul Lynde: I read it, “The Joy of Sex.”

Peter Marshall: Paul, why do Hell’s Angels wear leather?
Paul Lynde: Because chiffon wrinkles too easily.

Peter Marshall: According to legend, who looks better, a pixie or a fairy?
Paul Lynde (in deeper voice): Well, looks aren’t everything! (laughter) Well, I guess I would say…I would have to go with the fairy. (more laughter)

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?

Ugandan Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox Bishops Call for Anti-Homosexuality Bill’s Revival

Daily Monitor, Uganda’s largest independent newspaper, reported this worrisome call on Sunday:

Top religious leaders from across the country have asked Parliament to speed-up the process of enacting the Anti-Homosexuality law to prevent what they called “an attack on the Bible and the institution of marriage”.

Speaking after their recent annual conference organised by the Uganda Joint Christian Council (UJCC), an ecumenical body which brings together the Anglican, Catholic and Orthodox churches, the bishops resolved that the parliamentary committee on Gender should be tasked to engage the House on the Bill which is now at committee level.

“We also ask the Education committee to engage the Ministry of Education on the issue of incorporating a topic on human sexuality in the curricula of our schools and institutions of learning,” the resolutions signed by archbishops Henry Luke Orombi, Cyprian Kizito Lwanga and Metropolitan Jonah Lwanga, indicated.

This is a worrying development. Roman Catholic Archbishop Lwanga’s Christmas message of 2009 included his opposition to the Anti-Homosexuality Bill. He reiterated that message the following January. He was also a signatory to a multi-faith letter in 2010 which criticized the bill. More than a year later, we learned that prior to the Archbishop’s statements, the Vatican had intervened with its opposition to the bill. This statement now appears to be an about-face on the part of Lwanga.

Meanwhile, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill’s sponsor, M.P. David Bahati, continues to lie about the bill’s provisions:

Among some of the propositions in the Bill was one of death and life sentence for those for those caught engaging in homosexuality for a second time.

However, Mr Bahati said these penalties had since been removed from the Bill.

This is as untrue now as it has been every time Bahati has repeated this lie since the bill’s first introduction in 2009. It was referred to the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee, where it languished until 2011. When the committee finally reported the bill back onto the House floor in May, 2011 they suggested removing some clauses of the bill while adding of a new clause criminalizing the conduct of same-sex marriages. As for the death penalty provision, the committee recommended a sly change to the bill, removing the explicit language of “suffer(ing) death,” and replacing it with a reference to the penalties provided in an unrelated already existing law. That law however specifies the death penalty. Which means that the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee recommended that the death penalty be retained through stealth. Bahati then went on to claim that the death penalty was removed even though it was still a part of the bill. The Eighth Parliament ended before it could act on the committee’s recommendation.

On February 7, 2012, the original version of the bill, unchanged from when it was first introduced in 2009, was reintroduced into the Ninth Parliament. The bill was again sent to the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee. Despite reports to the contrary, the original language specifying the death penalty is still in the bill, and will remain there unless the committee recommends its actual removal and Parliament adopts that recommendation in a floor vote.