Box Turtle Bulletin

Marriage equality predicted for France

The Pink News is reporting that France’s newly elected President, François Hollande, is committed to bringing marriage equality to France, and has the parliamentary votes to do so. A communique issued by Jean-Marc Ayrault, the new Prime Minister, states:

“The Government is determined to challenge prejudice and to put an end to discrimination and violence. It will implement the commitment of the President of the Republic to the right to marriage and adoption to gay couples.”

France’s current system, called PACS, is the weakest of Europe’s same-sex relationship recognition schemes.

Marriage positions: the politic and the personal

Too often our debate over marriage is given – by both sides – in carefully crafted language that has been focus group tested and is designed to “best get the point across”. And for some reason, politicians and pundits are firmly convinced that viewers and voters will never catch on that this canned, stale, “message driven” approach is anything less than fully sincere.

But once in a while – rarely – someone speaks with clarity and honesty that is so obviously based on reality and personal experience that it glows. This, part of Australia’s battle for marriage equality, is such a time:

Malawi’s New President Calls On Parliament to Repeal Anti-Gay Law

The BBC Reports:

In her first state of the nation address to parliament, (President Joyce) Banda said: “Some laws which were duly passed by the august house… will be repealed as a matter of urgency… these include the provisions regarding indecent practices and unnatural acts.”

The BBC’s Raphael Tenthani in the main city, Blantyre, says the president has the support of a majority of MPs and so should be able to get parliament to overturn the law. However, he says it will be an unpopular move with many church leaders, as well as the wider population in this conservative country.

Banda’s call was part of a much larger sweeping announcment that many unpopular and controversial laws implemented by her predecessor would be revisited.

Banda became President after her predecessor, Bingu wa Mutharika, died of a heart attack. Mutharika pardoned a couple in 2010 after they were found guilty of participating in a same-sex engagement ceremony and sentenced to fourteen years in prison. Mutharika then imperiously commanded that everyone stop talking about those “satanic” gays. As Mutharika’s rule became increasingly autocratic, a rift developed between him and vice President Banda. Meanwhile Britain suspended aid to Malawi over Mutharika’s autocratic rule, which included his police breaking up opposition protests with live ammunition.

When Mutharika died last month, his supporters tried to implement a bloodless coup to prevent Banda from taking office. But when it became clear that the army would side with Banda and support the constitution, opposition melted and she was sworn in. She is now reversing many of Mutharika’s policies in order to get donor funding restored.

What Makes Paul Cameron Tick?

I can’t help but think that so much of his animus is motivated by some deep, deep wounds caused by this alleged “raping”. There seem to be a lot of unresolved issues there, and I can’t help but pity someone who is that psychologically bound.

— BTB commenter “DJ”

I couldn’t agree more. While I can’t claim to know Cameron’s mind, I do think that child sexual abuse — or perhaps some form of child abuse in general — is an unexplored area (at least I haven’t explored it much) which may explain some of the behaviors that we see among anti-gay activists.

A few weeks ago, gay blogs excitedly posted about a study which showed that some individuals who grew up with controlling parents (mainly fathers) and were identified as likely being gay themselves through testing but who otherwise denied that they were gay, those individuals were found to be more likely to employ “defensive processes” which include displays of greater hostility toward gay people. There’s a lot of “more likelies” and “some individuals” in that statement, but many people nevertheless jumped to the obvious oversimplification (homophobe=gay!). But the way the study was constructed it doesn’t allow us to work backwards from someone’s outward homophobia to conclude that they are probably gay — unless you’re talking about someone who is in the ex-gay movement obviously.

But that study was still fresh on everyone’s minds when David Pakman interviewed Paul Cameron earlier this week, and that may explain everyone’s excitement that Cameron acknowledged that he had “some feelings” after having been sexually abused at the age of three until he was about eight or ten when he became “thoroughly interested in girls.” I think for a lot of gay and pro-gay bloggers, that was big “aha!” But for me, that looked like a normal developmental process, at least as normal as such a one could be under the circumstances.

Is Cameron secretly gay? I don’t know. If he were, it would go along way toward explaining what he told The Rolling Stone’s Robert Dreyfuss in 1999, when he explained how he thought “untrammeled homosexuality” could take over and destroy an entire society:

“If you isolate sexuality as something solely for one’s own personal amusement, and all you want is the most satisfying orgasm you can get — and that is what homosexuality seems to be — then homosexuality seems too powerful to resist. The evidence is that men do a better job on men, and women on women, if all you are looking for is orgasms.”

He doesn’t explain what evidence he has for that statement — I’ve never seen it, and given the high degree of individual variability of what one likes and dislikes among gays I seriously doubt that such evidence exists. But Cameron nevertheless found the idea compelling. He told Dreyfuss, “I’m convinced that lesbians are particularly good seducers.” And in the next paragraph, Cameron called homosexuality “pure sexuality. It’s almost like pure heroin. It’s such a rush.” People have been pondering what he meant by that for the thirteen years since then.

Despite his protestations, he may be just another closet case. But I think the rush to latch onto that as an explanation for anti-gay extremism may prevent us from seeing another important, more painful, and little-discussed factor that is staring us in the face: child sexual abuse.

As a refresher, here’s the video again:

And here’s the transcript, beginning at the 11:14 mark where the relevant part of the conversation takes place:

Pakman: What age were you when you decided, “I’m going to evaluate men and evaluate women, and I’m going to choose for the rest of my life I will be attracted to women.” How were you when you did that?

Cameron: Well I didn’t do that so much consciously. I reacted to my environment. As you’re probably aware, I was seduced or raped as a child. I was about three. And I was raped homosexually. And so had that continued, I don’t know where I would have ended up. But I do know that the culture was directed toward heterosexuality overcame whatever feelings I had — and I had some that I acquired as a three year old. And by the time I was, say, eight or nine or ten, I was thoroughly interested in girls.

Pakmna: But Dr. Cameron, with all due respect, don’t you think that if we combine the attraction that you stated that you had to men when you were very young, combined with the fact that your entire life you have focused on homosexuality, sex between men to a degree that almost no one that I’ve come across except a handful of people, isn’t it possible that you are gay?

Cameron: (Laughs) Well it’s impossible. I’m … No one… Gay is kind of a political term. Am I interested in homosexual relations? Not at all. I don’t… on a scale of one to a hundred? Zip. And uh, as a matter of fact, as I’ve dealt with people who have this affliction or this desire or this interest, if anything I’m repelled by it. I’m probably about a minus a hundred.

This isn’t a new revelation. Reporter Paul Harkavy obtained a similar revelation from Cameron in 1996:

Paul Cameron was about four years old, he recalls, when a young man accosted him in an apple orchard and ordered him to perform oral sex.

The memory makes him chuckle. “I must have been a beautiful and charming little boy,” says Cameron. “But I didn’t like it much. He just told me, ‘Hi, kid, I want you to do this.’ I remember that he was kind of dirty, and that bothered me.” He didn’t tell his parents about the incident. “Kids want to live their own lives,” he explains. “They don’t want to tell everybody everything.” Nor did he tell his folks about another molestation a year later, after his family had moved from Pittsburgh to Florida, when a female stranger lured him into her apartment, gave him a bath and “fiddled” with his genitals.

“I remember that one more fondly,” Cameron says with a laugh. “I went out and looked for her apartment afterwards–never did find it, though. I had a much more positive experience with the woman. I thought it was a rather pleasant experience.”

In other words, Cameron wasn’t molested once, but twice — at least.

I’m going to have to admit that I haven’t done much studying in this area. (Maybe some crowdsourcing in the comments will come in handy here. BTB readers are the best in the land when it comes to things like this.) But I have broached the subjects with a very few therapists who deal with child sexual abuse, and they confirm that one of the common effects of such abuse is that the abuse victim often doesn’t see his or her sexuality as something he or she owns. From a very early age, that that person was taught that his or her sexuality belongs to someone else, and that other people have mastery over that his or her sexual being. And for too many children, that instruction comes painfully early in life, long before that child even has an opportunity to understand that the child even is — or will be — a sexual being. That child is taught that the most private and intimate parts of that child’s body and being are the property of someone else.

I am not aware of any studies which examine possible pathways of child sexual abuse and homophobia in adulthood. Those few therapists I talked to weren’t aware of any either. If someone does know of any, I’d really appreciate it if you would let me know in the comments or via email. So without those studies, all we have is a hypothesis in search of evidence.

But with very little effort, one can easily imagine that this must play a link. Being a closet case may explain the shame and strong aversion that some homophobes exhibit when they are around gay people, but I wonder if it is enough to explain the obsession, the rage, and sometimes the violence. In Cameron’s case, the violence isn’t physical. He commits extreme acts of violence to the truth which he has taken to radical, almost pathological, extremes.

As I have pointed out many times, his willingness to lie about scientific research has led to denunciations by the American Psychological Association in 1983, by the Nebraska Psychological Association in 1984, the American Sociological Association in 1985 and 1986, the Canadian Psychological Association in 1996 and, more recently, the Eastern Psychological Association in 2007. I cannot think of any other individual who has racked so many denunciations by so many organizations, and yet Cameron keeps on going as though he had never been challenged in his life.

And his anger against gays has been quite astonishing. As early as 1983, he was advocating “medical extermination” for gay people with AIDS. In 1999, he penned an article describing in approving terms how the Nazis “dealt with” homosexuality. That’s a road on which few other anti-gay extremists have dared to travel.

You can add Cameron to Joe Dallas, an ex-gay activist who says that he was molested as a child. Ditto Alan Chambers, Richard Cohen, Greg Quinlan, the late Anthony Falzarano — the list is particularly long in the ex-gay movement. Melissa Fryrear, a ex-gay advocate who was formerly with Focus On the Family, routinely told “Love Won Out” audiences that she had never met a gay man or a lesbian who hadn’t been sexually violated as a child. She also said she had been abused as a child.

As a matter of fact, it is extremely easy to find people in the ex-gay movement who say they were abused as children. Partly because it’s become something of a dogma in the ex-gay movement that most gays were abused as children and that’s why they became gay. Being molested is an almost de rigeur touchstone in ex-gay testimonies of transformation. Alan Chambers said in 2006 that of those who contacted Exodus International, “85 percent of the men and women have been sexually molested prior to age 13.” He assumed that his statistic applied to the entire gay population. But of course it doesn’t. It applies only to those whose deep-seated shame and pain over their sexuality — a sexuality that was already claimed by someone else — has led them to want to try to change that horribly corrupted sexuality. Or to just get rid of it altogether in exchange for a lifetime of celibacy.

But testimonies of molestation outside of the ex-gay movement are quite rare, which makes Cameron’s statement rather unique. But I’ve often wondered if a similar explanation may lie behind the anger displayed by some of the more extreme anti-gay activists. Take Scott Lively, for instance. He talks about growing up in an abusive household, but he has never mentioned sexual abuse as far as I know. The closest he comes to suggesting that sexual abuse might have occurred in his family was during his infamous 2009 talk in Kampala, Uganda. He opened that talk with a brief introduction, in which he said, “I have another sister that wasn’t able to enter into marriage until she was in her 40’s because of the pain of the family life that we had.”

Is that a hint? I don’t know. But something must surely explain the incredible anger that lies just underneath the surface. It doesn’t take a psychologist to understand that there are some rather deep unresolved emotional issues at play, whatever their source may be. There is a whole field of questions that I think deserve exploring, and I hope some enterprising researchers or grad students take up the question soon.

The Daily Agenda for Friday, May 18

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Durban, South Africa; Eskilstuna, Sweden; Kiev, Ukraine; Long Beach, CA; New Hope, PA; Oklahoma City, OK; and Springfield, IL.

AIDS Walks This Weekend: Buffalo, NY; Ft. Lauderdale, FL; London, UK; Los Angeles, CA; Minneapolis, MN; New York, NY; and Orlando, FL.

Other Events This Weekend: California Music Festival & AIDS Walk, Los Angeles, CA; Tijuana Cultural Days Against Homophobia, Tijuana, BC; and Inside Out Toronto LGBT Film Festival, Toronto, ON.

Jack Baker and James McConnell applying for a marriage license in Minneapolis.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Marriage In Minnesota: 1970. Later this year, Minnesota voters will consider a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. Forty-two years ago, gay marriage was a hot topic then as well. The drama began four years earlier, when Mike McConnell met Jack Backer in 1966 on a blind date at a Halloween party in Oklahoma where they were both 24-year-old grad students. On Baker’s 25th birthday, they became “betrothed,” as they put it, in a private ceremony. They moved to Kansas City, Missouri, and that’s when they met activists Barbara Gittings and Frank Kameny. “That’s what lit our fires of pride,” recalled McConnell in Joyce Murdoch and Deb Price’s Courting Justice: Gay Men And Lesbians V. The Supreme Court. “These fine people were willing to say, ‘Look, I’m as good as anybody else.’ That’s all I needed to hear.”

In April, 1970. McConnell accepted a job at the University of Minnesota’s library and and Baker enrolled as a first year law student. Three weeks later, on this date in 1970, the couple applied for a marriage license in Minneapolis. Their presence caused a minor stir among nervous office workers. Baker told them, “If there’s any legal hassle, we’re prepared to take it all the way to the Supreme Court. This is not a gimmick.” There were legal hassles. Not only were the denied a license, but the university fired McConnell when news of their application hit the papers.

A federal judge blocked McConnell’s firing. He called the episode “rather bizarre, but concluded that “An [sic] homosexual is after all a human being and a citizen…. He is as much entitled to the protection and benefits of the laws… as others.” Unfortunately, that decision was reversed on appeal, and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up the case.

Meanwhile a state judge, ruling on the marriage case itself, sided with county officials and ordered them not to issue a license. While McConnell and Baker appealed that decision, McConnell legally adopted Baker in August 1971, which allowed them at least some of the benefits of marriage (inheritance, medical decision-making, even reduced tuition for Baker) and the two were married in a private ceremony a month later by Methodist ministers. But in October, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled in Baker v. Nelson that state law prohibits same-sex marriage. The U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the appeal “for want of a substantial federal question,” and Baker v. Nelson became established precedent.

First Published Report Of New “Exotic” Disease Among New York Gays: 1981. June 5, 1981 is typically cited as the date of the first published report on a new disease which would become known as AIDS, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a notice concerning five previously healthy gay men in Los Angeles who died from rare infections which were normally easily curable (See June 5).

But the first published report actually appeared in a New York gay newspaper, The New York Native, in an article titled “Disease Rumors Largely Unfounded” by Dr. Lawrence Mass. He reported on swirling rumors of a new “exotic” disease in Gotham’s gay community appearing as a “gay cancer” or a rare form of pneumonia which typically only appeared in people with severely suppressed immune systems, such as cancer and transplant patients or the elderly. “What’s unusual about the cases reported this year is that eleven of them were not obviously compromised hosts,” Mass explained. “The possibility there exists that a new, more virulent strain of the organism may have been ‘community acquired.'” But Mass and Dr. Steve Phillips of the New York Department of Health said that there was not enough evidence (yet) to make a clear connection between the new disease and the gay community.

It wouldn’t be long before that link was made. Chroniclers of the AIDS crisis now recognize Dr. Mass as being the first to write about the emerging epidemic in print. Dr. Mass went on the help found the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, and was the principle author of the organization’s Medical Answers About AIDS through four revisions spanning ten years.

CA Supreme Court Upholds Decision for Lesbians Denied Restaurant Seating: 1984. On January 13, 1983, Zandra Rolon and Deborah Johnson made dinner reservations at Papa Choux, a very elegant Los Angeles restaurant. They specifically reserved a “Romantic Booth” in the restaurant’s Intimate Room, which featured sheer curtains around the booths, strolling violinists, and a measure of privacy. When they arrived for dinner, they were seated at the reserved booth, at first, but then they were told that they had to move. The manager told them, falsely, that a city ordinance prohibits such seating. They sued and won, and the case was upheld on appeal. On May 18, 1984, the California denied the restaurant’s request for a hearing, and Seymour Jacoby, the owner, took out a newspaper ad saying that “true romantic dining died on this date.” The couples attorney, Gloria Allred, countered, “This is not the death of romance. It is the death of discrimination.” A few days later, about 100 or so bar customers gathered for a “wake” as the restaurant closed its six curtained booths.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Patrick Dennis: 1921. His 1955 novel, Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escapade, based on growing up with his real life Aunt, Mame Dennis, became one of the best-selling books of the 20th century. It remained  on the New York Times bestseller list for 112 weeks, and became the basis for the movie Auntie Mame in 1958 starring Rosalind Russel. But that wasn’t fabulous enough. It went on to become a Broadway musical in 1966 starring Angela Lansbury and Bea Arthur. From there it became a Hollywood musical starring Lucille Ball and Bea Arthur. Mame’s outrageous main character defined camp. Mame’s commitment to imagination and style can best be summed up in her most famous line: “Life is a banquet, and most poor sons of bitches are starving to death. Live!”

Dennis married in 1948 and had two children. He struggled with his bisexuality and was said to have been a fixture in Greenwich Village. He tried to commit suicide at one point, and after years of leading a double life, he decided to leave his family after he had fallen in love with another man. By the 1970s, his novels fell out of favor and out of print. His caviar tastes and extravagant nature, not unlike those of his quasi-fictional Mame, soon had him flat broke. He began a second career as a butler, and a rather anonymous one at that. He worked at the estate of Ray Kroc, founder of McDonalds, where it is said that his employers had no idea who he really was.

Top: Don Bachardy and Christopher Isherwood. Bottom: Isherwood sitting for Bachardy

Don Bachardy: 1934. He met writer Christopher Isherwood on Valentine’s day when he was eighteen and Isherwood was 48, and they remained together as partners until Isherwood’s death in 1986. Bachardy still lives in the house they shared together in Santa Monica. It’s a shame that virtually every biography about Bachardy starts with that introduction because he is a talented painter in his own right. He studied at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles and the Slade School of Art in London. His first one-man exhibition was held in 1961 at London’s Redfern Gallery. Most of his work is portraiture, and several of his sketches appeared in Isherwood’s novels.

If Bachardy was sometimes overshadowed by his relationship with Isherwood, he seems to have come to terms with it. But it did pose problems between them earlier in their relationship. During a particularly difficult period when Bachardy was studying in London, they almost broke up. Isherwood imagined what it would be like to live without Bachardy, and wrote A Single Man in which Bachardy’s character was already dead before the novel began. If you know the novel’s story, the result is not a happy one. Bachardy and Isherwood remained together for 33 years, and their relationship became an integral part of each other’s art. When Isherwood was dying of cancer, he continued to sit for Bachardy’s portraits. “Chris was in a lot of pain towards the end,” he told The Sunday Times. “But he had sat for me so often over the years, and I knew this was something we could still do together. Each day, I could be with him intensely for hours on end.”

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?

LGBT Rights March Broken Up In Tbilisi, Georgia

Orthodox priest confronts pride marchers in Tbilisi, Georgia (Photo via the Russian web site Anti-Dogma.)

Religious protesters, including Orthodox priests, broke up a march commemorating the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi today. About 20 pro-LGBT marchers paraded through the main street of Tbilisi when they were confronted by anti-gay protesters who blocked the marchers and began fighting.

“This shows that Tbilisi has a long way to go to become a modern European city. We expected a negative reaction but did not expect to be attacked,” one of the march’s organisers, Natia Gvianishvili of rights group Identoba, told AFP.

Police intervened when the fight broke out and at least three people have been detained. Georgia’s Parliament-appointed human righst ombudsman called for tolerance:

Georgian ombudsman Giorgi Tugushi said that politicians should address gay, lesbian and transgender issues because “only in this case it will become possible for our state and society to develop in a democratic and liberal direction.”

“The development of tolerant values is one of the most important preconditions for the formation of democratic society,” Tugushi said in a statement.

You can find more photos of the march at the Russian crowd-sourced web site Anti-Dogma.

Pan American Health Organization Calls on Governments To Impose “Adequate Sanctions” Against Ex-Gay Therapy

The Pan American Health Organization today released position statement (PDF: 356KB/4 pages) which calls therapies to change sexual orientation “‘cures’ for an illness that does not exist,” and calls on governments to ensure that “clinics offering them should be reported and subject to adequate sanctions.” The PAHO also calls on professional associations to “call for the de-psychopathologization of sexual diversity and the prevention of interventions aimed at changing sexual orientation.”

The PAHO’s position statement lays out the problem:

In several countries of the Americas, there has been evidence of the continued promotion, through supposed “clinics” or individual “therapists,” of services aimed at “curing” non-heterosexual orientation, an approach known as “reparative” or “conversion therapy.” Worryingly, these services are often provided not just outside the sphere of public attention but in a clandestine manner. From the perspective of professional ethics and human rights protected by regional and universal treaties and conventions such as the American Convention on Human Rights and its Additional Protocol (“Protocol of San Salvador”), they represent unjustifiable practices that should be denounced and subject to corresponding sanctions.

The position statement references the 2009 American Psychological Association review (PDF: 816KB/138 pages) of sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE)m which found that “enduring change to an individual’s sexual orientation is uncommon,” and that “there was some evidence to indicate that individuals experienced harm” from such therapies. PAHO concludes:

Health professionals who offer “reparative therapies” align themselves with social prejudices and reflect a stark ignorance in matters of sexuality and sexual health. Contrary to what many people believe or assume, there is no reason – with the exception of the stigma resulting from those very prejudices – why homosexual persons should be unable to enjoy a full and satisfying life. The task of health professionals is to not cause harm and to offer support to patients to alleviate their complaints and problems, not to make these more severe. A therapist who classifies non-heterosexual patients as “deviant” not only offends them but also contributes to the aggravation of their problems. “Reparative” or “conversion therapies” have no medical indication and represent a severe threat to the health and human rights of the affected persons. They constitute unjustifiable practices that should be denounced and subject to adequate sanctions and penalties.

Pride comes to Burma/Myanmar

This picture has nothing to do with Gay Pride, but it is haunting and beautiful and I couldn't resist posting it.

I can think of few things more dreary than “an evening of music and talks held in the ballroom of a hotel.” But when you have never had the freedom to gather for an evening of music and talks, then it truly must be an exhilarating experience. And I am delighted that the gay community in Burma/Myanmar has, for the first time, had the opportunity to act as a community. (BBC)

The festival reflects a new climate of political reform that has led to the election of a civilian government, ending 50 years of military rule.

Gay relationships are still a crime in Burma, but the law is not strictly enforced.

…”In the past we didn’t dare do this. We’ve been preparing to hold this event for a long time… and today, finally it happened,” gay make-up artist Min-Min told the AFP news agency.

Those of us in countries where we have rights and relative equality can forget that while we may grouse, “Oh not another one of these boring events, do I really have to go?”, others lack the luxury and joy that an evening of music and talks held in the ballroom of a hotel can bring.

Imagine. Being able, for the first time, to go openly to a hotel and fill an entire ballroom with people and music that speaks to us and speeches that tell our experience.

No, not dreary. Not dreary at all.

Hey Obama, Miss Nancy wants his title back

Time Magazine reminds us that the First Gay President isn’t a title that can be applied to President Obama for more than one reason.

Miss Nancy

Loewen is one of several historians who believe that James Buchanan, who served from 1857 to 1861, was in fact our first gay president. He is the only president to have remained a bachelor throughout his life. (His niece, Harriet Lane, handled the duties of First Lady during his term in office.) He shared a home with William Rufus King, an Alabama Senator and Vice President under Buchanan’s predecessor, Franklin Pierce. Their relationship was reportedly so close that Andrew Jackson and other contemporaries referred to them as “Miss Nancy” and “Aunt Fancy”.

It is difficult to say with absolute certainty that Buchanan was homosexual. The term – as well as the modern understanding of the concept – had not yet been developed. But however best described, Miss Nancy was decidedly atypical in his sexual comportment and would never be accepted as a presidential contender today.

Considering his life – and the perceptions of his life by those around him – I believe that it is fair to say that James Buchanon was our First Gay President (providing that we recall the limitations of language). But should some revelation prove that to be false, there’s always his successor, that young Illinois Republican who had a penchant for sharing beds with other men.

The voice on the radio

Donna Summer, queen of disco, has died at 63.

Like many divas, Summer’s career was created and cultivated in gay dance clubs. But, as divas sometimes do, Summer thought that the immense record sales – most of whom were not to gay people – meant that she had broad-based adoration and forgot that without core support from a fanbase those hype-driven sales would not be possible.

In the 80’s, Summer became a born-again Christian and lost connection with the gay community. In the process some statements and attitudes were attributed to her that suggested hostility and condemnation. Summer denied making the statements and claimed that in their efforts to protect her, her staff failed to make her aware that the gay community was hurt and angry. And though that seems a bit difficult to swallow in whole, she did apologize and disavow any negative statements.

Perhaps her career could have thrived despite music transitional periods had she not squandered her gay fan base. But it did not. After decades of less-than-really-successful albums and almost-kinda-comebacks, she still is known mostly for the hits of her disco years.

For me, perhaps the Donna Summer moment is from 1979, sitting in the family van listening to A.M. radio outside of Mercy Hospital while waiting for my father to finish his pastoral rounds.

Someone found a letter you wrote me, on the radio
And they told the world just how you felt
It must have fallen out of a hole in your old brown overcoat
They never said your name
But I knew just who they meant.

I was so surprised and shocked, and I wondered, too
If by chance you heard it for yourself
I never told a soul just how I’ve been feeling about you
But they said it really loud
They said it on the air
On the radio

Donna Summer’s Last Dance

TMZ has the breaking news that Donna Summer has died at the age of 63 after battling cancer.

The Daily Agenda for Thursday, May 17

Today is International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (Warning: the web site plays music on autoplay. Why do they insist on doing that?!?). The day is observed with conferences and workshops around the world to devise strategies to improve the legal and cultural standing of LGBT people. Other activities are aimed at drawing media attention to homophobia and transphobia, and lobbying for equal rights. May 17 was chosen to coincide with the anniversary of the World Health Organization’s removal of homosexuality from its list of mental disorders (see below).

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebration: Tirana, Albania. This Pride celebration, Albania’s first, deserves a special mention. It takes place today in a majority Muslim nation — about 70% of the country is Muslim. Albania had been a hermit Stalinist state until 1991 when the Republic of Albania was declared following the collapse of communism. Since then, Albanians have rushed to make up for lost time in catching up with the rest of Europe. And what a rush it has been. Homosexuality remained illegal there until 1995, but in 2009 Prime Minister Sali Berisha announced his support for same-sex marriage. Parliament didn’t take up Berisha’s proposal, opting instead in 2010 to unanimously adopt a comprehensive anti-discrimination law that covered both sexual orientation and gender identity, making Albania one of a very few European countries to provide protections for transgender people.

Albania’s embrace of LGBT rights has been far from uniform. In 2010, Deputy Commission for Labor, Social Affairs and Health, Tritan Sheh said that “homosexuality should be treated by medical staff as hormonal disorder, as well as psychological.” He was reprimanded by the Albania’s Commissioner for Protection from Discrimination. When Albanian LGBT advocates announced today’s march, Deputy Defense Minister Ekrem Spahiu told a local newspaper, “What remains to be done is to beat them up with a stick. If you don’t understand this, I can explain it: to beat them with a rubber stick.” Prime Minster Berisha called his remarks unacceptable. “Different sexual orientation is as ancient as antiquity itself, and they exist regardless of religious belief,” said Berisha. “Tirana is a city of tolerance, Albania is a country of freedom. This is our goal.”

And so today the march is on, organized by the Albanian LGBT advocacy group Pink Embassy. “May 17 will be a special day,” said Altim Hazizaj. “the LGBT flag will be raised for the first time in Tirana.”

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Durban, South Africa; Eskilstuna, Sweden; Kiev, Ukraine; Long Beach, CA; New Hope, PA; Oklahoma City, OK; and Springfield, IL.

AIDS Walks This Weekend: Buffalo, NY; Ft. Lauderdale, FL; London, UK; Los Angeles, CA; Minneapolis, MN; New York, NY; and Orlando, FL.

Other Events This Weekend: California Music Festival & AIDS Walk, Los Angeles, CA; Tijuana Cultural Days Against Homophobia, Tijuana, BC; and Inside Out Toronto LGBT Film Festival, Toronto, ON.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Gays Cured Worldwide: 1990. It’s amazing that it took so long, but the World Health Organization finally removed homosexuality from the tenth edition of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (also known as ICD-10). It took the WHO nearly seventeen years to catch up with the American Psychiatric Association, and when they did they followed the APA’s same cautious approach by including the diagnosis of “Ego-Dystonic Sexual Orientation,” for those who were troubled by their homosexuality. That diagnosis served as a loop-hole allowing therapists to continue to try to “cure” gay people of a mental disorder that no longer existed. The APA removed that diagnosis from its list of mental disorders in 1987. It is still in the WHO’s list of disorders.

Massachusetts Begins Issuing Same-Sex Marriage Licenses: 2004. Six months earlier, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, in a 4-3 ruling, found that the state could not bar same-sex couples from marrying and gave the legislature 180 days to “take such action as it may deem appropriate” before issuing licenses to gay couples (See Nov 18). The state Senate responded by asking whether civil unions would suffice, but the four justice who made up the majority of the original decision wrote, “”The dissimilitude between the terms ‘civil marriage’ and ‘civil union’ is not innocuous; it is a considered choice of language that reflects a demonstrable assigning of same-sex, largely homosexual, couples to second-class status.”

Republican Gov. Mitt Romney issued a statement supporting an amendment to the state constitution which would have banned both same-sex marriage and civil unions (reversing a 2002 campaign promise that he had made to gain the endorsement of the Log Cabin Club of Massachusetts) but the legislature narrowly defeated it. The second proposal, a compromise amendment which would have banned marriage equality only,” mustered enough support, with Romney’s reluctant support (he still preferred the first proposal) to be held for a second vote a year later (proposed constitutional amendments require 25% support in two consecutive years before being passed on to voters). Meanwhile, the legislature took no action to implement the court’s decision.

On May 17, the day the court’s decision was due to go into effect, Gov. Romney cited a 1913 law prohibiting non-residents from marrying in Massachusetts if the marriage would not be valid in their home state, and instructed town clerks to deny marriage licenses to out-of-state gay couples. The 1913 law, which had been enacted to block interracial marriages for out-of-state couples subject to Jim Crow laws in their home states, hadn’t been enforced in decades.

When the compromise proposed constitutional amendment came up for a second vote in 2005, Gov. Romney withdrew his support, saying that it confused voters who wanted to ban both same-sex marriage and civil unions. The measure lost the necessary support in the legislature. Romney then backed a revival of the first proposed amendment which would have banned marriage and civil unions both, but that proposal failed to gain the necessary 25% support in the state legislature in 2006. Romney left office in 2007, and the  so-called “1913 law” was repealed in 2008.

IOC Allows Trans People To Compete In Assigned Gender: 2004. The International Olympic Committee ruled that post-operative transgender people will be able to compete in events in Athens according to their self-identified gender, provided the new gender is legally recognized and the athlete is two years into post-operative hormonal therapy. IOC Medical Commission Chairman Arne Ljungqvist announced the rule change in response to the increasing numbers of transgender athletes attempting to qualify for Olympic competition. “Although individuals who undergo sex reassignment usually have personal problems that make sports competition an unlikely activity for them, there are some for whom participation in sport is important,” he said. The IOC’s rule change came about after it become apparent that case-by-case evaluations were insufficient. Transgender advocates criticized the post-operative requirements, noting that many athletes cannot afford the surgeries where national or private health insurance doesn’t cover it.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Howard Ashman: 1950. Playwright and lyricists, Ashman first achieved acclaim for his collaboration with Alan Menken on Little Shop of Horrors. That collaboration put the songwriting duo on a course for greater hits to come. In 1986, Ashman wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation and wrote the lyrics for two new songs, “Some Fun Now” and “Mean Green Mother From Outer Space.” The latter of two received an Academy Award nomination. In 1989, he was co-producer, lyricist and occasional writer for Disney’s The Little Mermaid. It was his idea to give Sebastian the Crab a Jamaican accent, and the calypso song, “Under the Sea,” earned Ashman and Menkin the 1989 Oscar for Best Original Song. Asman died in 1991 of complications from AIDS shortly after completing work on the Disney films Beauty and the Beast and before he could complete Aladdin. Ashman was posthumously named a Disney Legend in 2001, and Beauty and the Beast is dedicated to him. Ashman was survived by his partner, architect William Lauch.

Annise Parker: 1956. The Houston native had worked for over 20 years in the oil and gas industry as a software analyst, but she was never far from public service. In 1986, she was president of the Houston GLBT Political Causcus, which is the South’s oldest LGBT organization. Taking the position at the height of the AIDS scare was daunting “It was a scary, very different time,” she said. “The two most visible lesbian activists in Houston were myself and Sue Lovell (who later became a City Council member). We had regular death threats, our tires slashed, vandalism.”

But the narrow focus of LGBT politics wasn’t a good fit for her. “I was bored with gay stuff,” she said. “I threw myself just as hard into 10 years of neighborhood activism.” That neighborhood activism led to her becoming president of the Neartown Association in 1995, and in 1997 she won an at-large seat on Houston’s City council, making her the first openly gay individual elected to citywide office in Houston. In 2003, she won her bid to become city controller, the second highest office in city government. But her greatest triumph came in 2009, when she overcame blistering attacks from anti-gay groups to win the race to become Houston’s mayor on December 12, 2009. When she assumed office on January 2, 2010, Houston became the largest U.S. city ever to have an openly gay mayor. She won a second term in 2011.

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?

Californian Presbyterians defy the church

The Northern California branch of the Presbyterian Church (USA) has basically told the church’s court that it can go pound sand. And in mostly united voice. (LA Times)

The Presbytery of the Redwoods, which governs churches from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Oregon border, voted 74 to 18 Tuesday to reject the church’s official denunciation and instead support the Rev. Jane Adams Spahr, who had been found guilty by an ecclesiastical court of violating the Presbyterian Constitution and her ordination vows for marrying 16 same-sex couples.

Church officials said they believe that never before in the history of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has a presbytery defied the wishes of its highest court in this fashion.

Get that? That’s 80% of delegates who said no.

They didn’t just “defy the wishes”, they defied the church and in language that is impossible to ignore. It wasn’t just that times have changed or that we must be inclusive or some mushy-gushy love everyone response. Rather, they said that to rebuke Spahr would be “inconsistent with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” In other words, equality isn’t despite the gospel message, it IS the gospel message.

It will be fascinating – truly fascinating – to see the consequence. This is the first time that I can recall that a region has said, in essence, “Scism? What schism? We’re proud Presbyterians standing for justice and just what are you going to do about it? Ya gunna kick us out?” Come July, they will get their answer.

I think it likely that the General Presbytery will vote for equality. But it certainly is going to be pins and needles. And Presbyterian theologian Robert Gagnon is going to be pissed!

Fox News distorts its poll – are they liars or just really stupid?

Fox News poll: Majority opposes gay marriage, doesn’t want constitutional amendment

That’s the headline.

Do you believe gays and lesbians should be:
A. allowed to get married
B. allowed a legal partnership similar to, but not called, marriage
C. should there be no legal recognition given to gay and lesbian relationships.

That’s the question.

37% – legally married
33% – legal partnership
25% – no recognition
5% – “We both love soup“

That’s the response

I’ve looked at this question upside and downside. I even played it backwards in case Satan had a secret message that only Led Zeppelin fans could hear. But try as I might, I see no question about “do you oppose gay marriage”.

I prefer Haagen Dasz ice cream. I really do. In fact, I think it is by far the best ice cream readily available in your local market. But if I’m at your house and you are serving homemade blackberry pie and you offer a scoop of Dryer’s vanilla, I’ll say “yes”. Because while I do love me some Haagen Dasz, I do not oppose Dryer’s.

You see, I understand the difference between preference and opposition. But I guess that is a subtlety which is too confusing for Fox. Or, at least, I hope that they were being stupid and not going for intentional deceit. I vastly prefer idiot to liars.

But I do give them credit for getting the second part mostly right. And perhaps they may wish to look closely at what it says about the American majority (a view not easily evident in the perceptions of their talking heads):

Would you favor or oppose amending the U.S. Constitution to define marriage as being between a man and a woman?

29% – strongly favor
9% – somewhat favor
2% – depends
14% – somewhat oppose
40% – strongly oppose
7% – “we could talk or not talk forever… and still find things to not talk about“

Considering that there are more people strongly opposed to discrimination that who favor it in any fashion, I don’t see Mitt pushing this too loudly in the coming months. Unless, of course, he didn’t notice how John McCain’s electoral transformation into a raving right-wing nut worked out for him.

As for their third question about why Obama evolved, well the choices were laughable. Really. I did laugh. (But they kinda were spot on.)

And finally, some other numbers Romney should pay attention to are:

37% of Republicans oppose amending the Constitution, 23% of them strongly. No age bracket or economic level supports this notion. It’s a loser idea supported only by a niche and hated by everyone else and it should be jettisoned. Of course he won’t do so.

57% of Republicans support relationship recognition, 13% of them marriage. Saying that you oppose civil unions puts you in the nutcase fringe within the party. Look around at who agrees with that. You’d never enter a business deal with them; they are loons.

Love allowed at the Tokyo Mouse House

Despite once living for a few years in San Jose’s Nihonmachi, I admitedly know little about Japanese culture. But I do know that despite an entire genre of homoromantic manga (yaoi) created specifically by and for female Japanese, actual homosexuality is not socially welcomed and that if some enterprising L. Ron Hubbard type wanted to create a new religion in Japan, Walt Disney might be a good deity choice.

So it is not too surprising that the decision of Koyuki Higashi, a Japanese lesbian activist, to avail herself of Disneyland Tokyo’s Royal Dream Wedding package has taken the media (and the twitterati) by storm. (Reuters)