Box Turtle Bulletin

OKC’s Draper Park Christian Church Invites Holocaust Revisionist To Speak

Scott Lively, whose Abiding Truth Ministry is an official SPLC-certified hate group, has been invited by the pastor of Draper Park Christian Church to preach to the congregation on April 27-29. Lively is the author of The Pink Swastika, now in it’s fourth edition, in which he claims that “homosexuals invented and ran the Nazi Party.” It’s unlikely that the unsuspecting members of Draper Park Christian Church are aware of what is in store for them this weekend. To help prepare them for what’s coming, I think it’s important to lay out explicitly what Lively teachers, including:

(P 32) It was no coincidence that homosexuals were among those who founded the Nazi Party.  In fact, the party grew out of a number of groups in Germany which were centers of homosexual activity and activism.  Many of the characteristic rituals, symbols, activities and philosophies we associate with Nazism came from these organizations or from contemporary homosexuals.

(P 36) Famous events in Nazi history are also linked to homosexuality; events such as the burning of the German Reichstag in 1932, the 1938 pogrom called Kristallnacht, and the 1944 attempt on Hitler’s life.  Even the enduring image of Nazi book-burning, familiar to us from newsreels of the 1930s, was directly related to the homosexuality of Nazi leaders.

He claims that the Nazi’s hatred of Jews came from German homosexual’s “hatred” of Judeo-Christian values:

(P 100): As we seek to understand Nazism, it is important to remember that Judaism and its Christian and Islamic offshoots are fundamentally opposed to homosexuality.  As we begin to grasp the relationship between homosexuality and occultism on one hand, and between homosexuals and Nazism on the other, the hatred of the Nazis for Jews and Christians may be more easily explained.  The Jews were the people responsible for the demise of pagan world domination.  Their theology (especially in its Christian form) banished pagan practices, including homosexuality, to a hidden and often reviled subculture.  This is not to say that anti-Semitism is strictly a result of occult or homosexual influences.  But at its very root there is a spiritual element to the Holocaust that suggests that it was, in some respects, vengeance against the people whose moral laws had relegated pagan sex-religions to obscurity and ignominy.

As for the German gays who themselves were sent to concentration camps, Lively has an answer for that: it’s the result of a war between “butches” and “fems”:

(P43-44) This, then, is the explanation for the paradox of the Nazi persecution of homosexuals.  It is found in the history of two irreconcilable philosophies linked by a common sexual dysfunction.  The  roots of this conflict extend back into the eighteenth century and span a 70-year period which saw the rise of homosexual militancy in the movement that gave Nazism to the world.

According to Lively, Nazism may have been vanquished in World War II, but violent fascism remains the inevitable result of gay people being treated as equals in society:

(P275) One of the symbols with which homosexuals in the United States have chosen to represent their movement is the phoenix, a mythical bird that was said to burn itself on a funeral pyre every five hundred years and then rise from the ashes more majestic than before (Alyson Almanac:56).  A more apt symbol for the historic cycle of homo-fascism and resulting social chaos would be hard to find.  From the ashes of Nazi Germany, the homo-fascist phoenix has arisen again — this time in the United States.

(P297-298) …(H)omo-fascism did not die with Adolf Hitler. It lives on in the neo-Nazi movement and in “gay” culture itself. Clearly, actual Nazis exist today as a radical fringe of society with no real power to threaten civilization. This would be a comforting realization if we presumed that Nazism was itself the source of the evil that threatened to engulf the world and was not merely the product of a deeper and still-enduring social problem. Our thesis, however, is that Nazism was the consequence of Germany’s abandonment of Judeo-Christian morality and that the primary sponsors of its transformation were homosexuals.

Lively claims that what happened in Germany is inevitable to happen in America, in some form or fashion, if equality for LGBT people is enshrined in law.

(P299-300) If the rise of Nazism in Germany was made possible, at least in part, by the homosexualization of German society, what does this bode for America as we watch the steady advance of the “gay” agenda in this culture? Should we expect to witness something like the rise of a Third Reich on American soil? Or would the effect on American society be of an entirely different character? Is the “gay” movement in the United States sufficiently similar to its German counterpart as even to warrant concern? (Certainly the German “gay” culture was far more militaristic than the homosexual movement here, for example). Or is this the wrong question? Is there something about homosexuality (or the broader problem of sexual libertinism) that inevitably destroys the society that embraces it?

…We know that the implicit goal of homosexual political activism is to legitimize homosexual conduct and relationships in a society. This necessarily requires a society to abandon its commitment to marriage as the exclusive domain of acceptable sexual conduct. The abandonment of this standard logically opens the door to every other form of sexual promiscuity. Clearly, such a transformation of attitude is now occurring in America.  What we will find is that this transformation is not the result of random social forces, but of deliberate and systematic political activism by the “gay”  movement.

He has even tried to tied homosexuality to the 9/11 terror attacks:

(P269) We turn next to the relationship between the Nazi regime and the Islamist terror groups which share its militarism and its anti-Semitism. …Islamist terrorism has become an issue of great interest since the attacks of September 11th, 2001, against the United States. Interestingly, the leaders of the nineteen terrorists, including ringleader Mohamed Atta, have been reported to be homosexuals.  ..

This is just a taste of what Lively is likely to preach this weekend at Draper Park. He shared many of these themes during other talks that he has given, including his infamous self-described “Nuclear Bomb” that he dropped in Kampala, Uganda in 2009. It was there where he said that gay men were the “kind of monsters” who would operate Nazi Germany’s gas chambers, and he added the Rwandan Genocide to his list of crimes he holds gay people responsible for. Within days, there were marches in the streets calling for the round-up of gay people and “strengthening” that nation’s laws against homosexuality. By the end of the year, there was a proposal before Uganda’s Parliament to kill gay people, and criminalize virtually everyone else, including family and friends, who had any connection with them.

Draper Park appears to have some sort of connection with First Stone Ministries, an Exodus-affiliated ex-gay ministry under the leadership of Stephen Black. It’s unclear what role he plays in this, but this wall post on Draper Park’s facebook page “thanks Stephen Black of First Stone Ministries” while pointing to an article put out by MassResistance (another SPLC-certified hate group,) about Lively, an “upcoming DPCC keynote speaker.” Exodus International president Alan Chambers quickly moved to disassociate his organization from the upcoming event:

We have learned that Scott Lively is slated to speak on April 27-29 at Draper Park Christian Church, a location where Exodus International held a regional conference in 2009. We want to say clearly and without question that Exodus International has no connection to this event. Furthermore, due to our vast differences with Mr. Lively’s viewpoints, including his stance on the criminalization of homosexuality, we will not participate in, support or promote any event involving Mr. Lively.

Lively has managed to do something no one else has: He has united unusual coalition among Oklahoma City pastors who oppose his message, including some who also oppose gay rights. Wayne Besen has those details, which include a press conference on Thursday, and a live broadcast of Oklahoma: Inside Out Friday evening devoted to Lively’s appearance.

The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, April 24

TODAY’S AGENDA:
College Republicans Host Bradlee Dean to Speak: St. Cloud, MN. Bradlee Dean, whose You Can Run But You Cannot Hide Ministry is a one-man SPLC certified hate group, was invited by the College Republicans chapter at St. Cloud State College to speak today. The firebrand self-styled hard rock pastor once said that Muslims were more moral than Christians because Muslims don’t shy away from calling for the execution of gay people. The invite from St. Cloud’s College Republicans have drawn fire from the state GOP, with state party executive director Ben Zierke warning that if they go through with the event, they better not plan on any future jobs with the state GOP in the future:

“Sometimes young people need to have better judgment in who they invite to things under the Republican banner,” said Minnesota Republican Party chair Pat Shortridge. “If you are going to do dumb things, and not take the advice of the state college Republicans and the state chairman of the Republican party, it might have some consequences.”

But Abbey Gooch, chair of the St. Cloud College Republicans, is not backing down because, she said, Dean has been “so nice to us”:

“I have been praying and praying and praying and just saying lord I don’t know what to do any more,” she said. But she said they are going to go forward.  “I am sticking with my guns and going through with it.”

So it looks like it’s game on, beginning at 7:00 p.m. at Richie Auditorium.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
University of South Florida President Denies Hiring Homosexuals: 1963. Dr. John Allen, president of the University of South Florida, strongly denied charges that the school “harbored homosexuals” on its faculty. He also denied that the school was “soft on communism,” was anti-religious or that controversial writings by “‘beatnik’ authors was typical of literature found in the school’s reading program.

All of those charges were levied against USF and other Florida state colleges and institutions by the Johns Committee, Florida’s version of the McCarthy Red and Lavender Scares in Washington. Named for its first chairman, state Senator and former Governor Charley Johns, the Johns committee was established in 1956 to investigate so-called communist links to the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In 1957, the Florida legislature broadened the committee’s mandate to investigate gays in the state’s colleges and universities, and reiterated that mandate again in 1961. Florida’s leaders of higher education proved eager to demonstrate that Florida’s sons and daughters were safe in their institutions, with many throwing their campuses open to heavy-handed investigators calling individual students and teachers out of class for interrogations. The results of those investigations were made public in a report in 1963, in which Johns claimed credit for “flush(ing) 71 homosexual public school teachers and 30 homosexual deans and professors of universities.” Dr. Allen responded, quite forcefully, that his school was certainly not infested with homosexuals. The committee, he pointed out, established only one clear case of a gay teacher among the entire 500 person-staff, which was only “one-fifth of one per cent,” as he put it. That person resigned immediately. Charges had been levied against two others which could not be supported, and reports indicated that they “later left the university for other reasons.”

New Orleans Police Institutes Massive Gay Roundup: 1981. In a 1982 article published in the Columbia Journalism Review, Randsell Pierson wrote a very informative piece wondering aloud, “Can the Straight Press get the gay story right?” Pierson had interviewed several closeted gay reporters at the New Orleans Times-Picayune who all said that they feared pitching gay-related stories to their editors for fear of being identified as gay. It was that silence, Pierson said, which helped to explain why homosexuality was still illegal in 25 states and the District of Columbia. Lapses in coverage of gay issues was surprising, and among the many examples that Pierson offered up was this one:

Over a period of three days on the weekend of April 24, 1981, New Orleans police rounded up and jailed more than 100 gay men and women in a series of raids in the French Quarter. Those arrested were charged with “obstructing sidewalks” in front of gay bars. The arrests prompted a vigorous political response from the local gay community, which charged that the police were trying to drive gays out of the French Quarter. A protest meeting attended by 700 gays helped to persuade Mayor Ernest Morial and Police Chief Henry Morris to promise to investigate charges of police harassment. All charges against the arrested gays were subsequently dropped.

Two of the city’s three television stations — WDSU (NBC) and WVUE )ABC) — followed the breaking story and sent film crews to the protest meeting held on the Tuesday following the weekend arrests. The Times-Picayine/States-Item waited five days after the first arrests to report on the story. The account, buried in section 5, said nothing about the protest meeting, which would seem to have been the logical peg, and failed to include in its tally the arrests a group of thirty-nine gay men picked up the previous Sunday. Reporter Allan Katz, who wrote the story, says: “They wanted somebody to do something in a hurry. You would think that because the story was four days old before they assigned it to a reporter they didn’t consider it a major story. About the only time in my experience we really try to relate to gay news is when something really controversial comes up.” Apparently, the arrest of more than 100 men and women in a city not under martial law was not considered “really controversial.”

[From Randsell Pierson’s “Uptight on Gay News: Can the Straight Press Get the Gay Story Straight? Is Anyone Even Trying?” Chapter 59 in Larry Gross & James D. Woods (eds.) The Columbia Reader on Lesbians & Gay Men in Media, Society, & Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999): 368-376]

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?

LaBarbara Tweets About “Sudden Death” of PFOX Founder Anthony Falzarano

Peter “Porno Pete” LaBarbera tweeted that Anthony Falzarano, co-founder of the ex-gay group PFOX (Parents and Friends of Ex-gays and Gays, allegedly), has died. LaBarbera isn’t generally one to be trusted with conveying much of anything true, but since he’s not saying something about an openly gay person, it is conceivable that fabrication reflex remained unengaged when he sent out this tweet. So I’ll go with LaBarbera as a source, this time. If LaBarbera’s wrong, then Mr. Falzarano will have the rare privilege of seeing his own obituary, and maybe he can take it as an object lesson. If LaBarbera’s right, then we can still go forward with that object lesson albeit with a grudging admission that in this one instance, LaBarbera may have somehow managed to tweet something true.

Falzarano was certainly one of the more colorful figures in the ex-gay movement. Sadly, he didn’t get as much ink in this blog as he deserved. (As you’ll see, he created his own ink.) But by 1999 when Mark Pietrzyk wrote this rundown on a number of figures in the ex-gay movement, Falzarano had already managed to create three different creation myths about himself as an ex-gay man, two of which were, in Pietrzyk’s charitable view, “in considerable tension with each other.” In one of those creation myths, Falzarano claimed to have been one of Roy Cohen’s house boys. Pietrzyk also noted that Falzarano had two polar opposite stories about what it was like for him to be gay, depending which audience he was talking to. But one thing that remained an integral part of Falzarano’s message was that gay people and AIDS both were agents of the devil.

Falzarano has blasted the gay rights movement as being filled with the “spirit of the anti-Christ,” and his language abounds in the sorts of conspiratorial and apocalyptic tropes that one might think would embarrass some of his backers in religious right and conservative circles. At the “Homosexuality and American Public Life” conference held at Georgetown, in which such figures as ABC News commentator William Kristol and neoconservative cleric Rev. Richard Neuhaus played prominent roles, Falzarano declared that the media is “controlled by” a 1,200-member gay journalists’ organization, and that “their objective is to homosexualize America and destroy Judeo-Christian values. … Disney studios is [also] controlled by the gays.” Appearing on a CBS News special report, Falzarano was quoted as saying, “AIDS comes from the devil, directly from Satan. He uses homosexuals as pawns and then he kills them.” At a recent P-FOX conference, Falzarano described Matthew Shepard, the 105-pound boy who was brutally beaten and killed by thugs, as “a predator to heterosexual men.” One of Falzarano’s recent projects is to gather a group of parents who have lost children to AIDS to sue the American Psychiatric Association for malpractice, on the grounds that the APA’s declassification of homosexuality as a mental illness in the 1970s led to the creation of a generation of homosexuals who died of AIDS.

PFOX’s founding was seeded by the Family “Research” Council in 1996, and for a while it looked as if PFOX would become a major player in the ex-gay movement. Their second conference in McLean, Virginia in 1998 drew Alveda King, niece of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to address the gathering. In 1999, GOP presidential candidate Alan Keys was the keynote speaker. But Falzarano’s caustic and erratic behavior proved to be his (and PFOX’s) undoing. The very organization he helped to found canned Falzarano as leader in August 1999 and turned to Richard Cohen to, I don’t know, restore its credibility? At any rate, Falzarano tried again with a new venture, Parents and Friends ministries. At least there he was consistent.

Fast forward to 2007, when Exodus International held its annual conference in Irvine, California. A brand new ex-gay survivor’s movement was born in a gathering that same weekend, also in Irvine. Before the ex-gay survivor’s conference got underway, three former ex-gay leaders issued formal apologies for the harms that they did while involved with the ex-gay movement. When we posted interviews with the three former ex-gay leaders (Michael Bussee, Darlene Bogle, and Jeremy Marks), Falzarano felt moved to leave this comment:

…My name is Anthony Falzarano. I am director of an ex-gay ministry in West Palm Beach FL. I know that Exodus International has failed many of you. It is not the ministry that was so filled with the Holy Spirit when I got help from it. The devil has invaded the leadership and Exodus has got a lot of repenting to do for the lukewarmness that has entered its ranks…BUT please don’t blame God for the weakness of Exodus. Keep your focus on Jesus Christ and the Bible. I had to leave Exodus because as I began to point out to them the great attack that was coming from within our leadership I was villanized. …

Again with the devil. And for whatever reason, Falzarano would turned his focus on Darlene Bogle. She used to be a leader of an Exodus-affiliated ex-gay ministry when she met the woman who would later become her partner at a 1990 religious conference. Darlene soon left the movement to built a life with Des. In 1996, Des was diagnosed with breast cancer, and she passed away in 2005. When Falzarano learned about her death in 2008, he wrote to Darlene saying that Des’s death was God’s way of “calling you back” to the ex-gay movement. Darlene was shocked:

I was appalled when I read his words, which on the surface seem so compassionate. It was such a strong reminder of why I left Exodus and could never consider going back under their “umbrella of faith.” How arrogant of Anthony to send such a condemning statement as to ask if God was sending me a message! [Emphases in the original]

When we posted about that, Falzano again felt the need speak up in BTB’s comments. Not to apologize, but to say this:

Dear Darlene, I would not be so happy about the fact that you no longer feel conviction about living as a practicing lesbian. Romans Chapter 1 beginning about vs. 18 describes you now. I pray that you have not blsphemed the Holy Spirit. Keep doing what your doing Darlene and you will give an account to God for all the OTHER people you deceived into the gay lifestyle with you “gay theology”. The Word of God tells us that in the “last days” many will depart from the FAITH and will tell you what you want to hear VS. WHAT YOU NEED TO HEAR……….

Two months later, Falzarano appeared again in BTB’s comments section, in another series of comments in a thread about California’s Prop 8:

Marrioge can only be defined by God. Because He invented it. Tolerance of homosexual people cannot mean acceptance of the gay lifestyle! The gay activists are really not the true friend of the homosexual person. They are using homosexual person as a pawn to achive their agenda which is to attempt to destroy the Church of Jesus Christ. The gates of hell will not prevail against the Church! You can abandon the ship of the gay political movement by jumping on to the “rescue liferaft called the ex-gay movement. Our website parentsandfriends.20m.com wil give you details. May God Bless and protect you, Anthony

He left several more comments on that thread, but it quickly became apparent that he was more interested in promoting his web site than engaging in any sort of dialogue. We placed him on moderation, and he stopped coming by. The next time we noticed him, he was in New York lobbying against marriage equality. We all know how well that went.

I tried calling the number on his web site to confirm LaBarbera’s tweet, but I got a recording saying that the number is “not reachable,” with no options to leave a message. If what LaBarbera is tweeting is true, then Falzarano is dead. Undoubtedly, his passing is deeply mourned by his family and friends. We offer our condolences, as we do to anyone who experiences the painful shock of losing a loved one. But as for his passing itself, make of it what you will, but also be mindful of the lessons you try to foist onto others. They may become your legacy.

Update: Ex-GayWatch confirmed Falzarano’s death with the coroner.

The Anti-Gay Religious Freedom Contradiction

Our anti-gay opponents scatter arguments like lawn seed, tossing them out by the handful and seeing which take root, with little concern for what’s actually true. That’s why the movement is such an intellectual tangle. This is part of a series pointing out the contradictions you trip over when you step back and pay attention to their whole big field of weeds.

Contradiction 4: We must destroy liberty in order to save it.

This plant branches in two directions.

Branch 1:

Everywhere they look, our opponents see threats to religious freedom. But I’m forced to wonder — are they championing the principle of liberty, or just protecting their anti-gay animus? They seem to exalt their own freedom while destroying it for others. Hence our fourth contradiction:

• Repealing DADT is a threat to the religious freedom of military chaplains.

• The government should not allow military chaplains to perform same-sex wedddings.

The repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell scared the hell out of some chaplains. (And of course NOM exploited the fear, defrauding its donors of money by claiming — falsely — that a new set of guidelines would force military chaplains to perform same-sex weddings.)  So how did the anti-gays respond? Rep. Todd Akin, along with the usual rag-tags, tried to amend the National Defense Authorization Act to outlaw chaplains from officiating at same-sex weddings, stripping them of the right to follow their own conscience.

That amendment failed. And who knows: Maybe those folks weren’t concerned with religious freedom anyway (though I’d to hear them say it on the record). But then how do you explain the Orwellian Military Religious Freedom Protection Act?

The bill starts by affirming each chaplain’s “right of conscience” when it comes to same-sex relationships. Lovely, fine, that’s in accord with the bill’s name. Then we get to the last bit, the freedom-robbing, anti-gay sweet spot:

A military installation or other property owned, rented, or otherwise under the jurisdiction or control of the Department of Defense shall not be used to officiate, solemnize, or perform a marriage or marriage-like ceremony involving anything other than the union of one man with one woman.

Ah. So chaplains can’t use their offices, or their chapels, or even their homes (if owned by the military) to conduct a religious service in accord with their own rights of conscience. They can’t even perform a “marriage-like ceremony” that isn’t actually marriage! You might want to argue that the government should forbid that. You might even want to make sure the government does forbid that. But then please, don’t call your law the Military Religious Freedom Protection Act.

Unless…

Branch 2:

Unless your concept of freedom is novel and strange. For instance, here’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan speaking against marriage equality:

We cherish true freedom, not as the license to do whatever we want, but the liberty to do what we ought.

Ignore the straw man leading that sentence (entering a and legal binding marriage contract is the opposite of seeking the license to do whatever you want). Look rather at the second half: freedom as the liberty to do what we ought. By this strange and tautological definition, every tyranny can call itself free; every tyrant can say he gives his subjects the liberty to do what they ought. This definition is even more chilling from the mouth of a man with narrow and specific ideas about what you ought. And it’s far from the American ideal of freedom, where you can follow your own conscience as long as it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

It gets scarier. We see this same strange concept of freedom from the man who almost won the Republican presidential nomination, the man who is the presumptive Republican front-runner for 2016, Rick Santorum:

That is what when [the Founders] talked about the ‘pursuit of happiness.’ If you go back and read the definition in Webster at the time of the Declaration, or certainly thereafter, what ‘happiness’ was defined as doing good. Doing good, doing what is moral. So the pursuit of something ordered and morally good is what our Founders were saying. Which is in other words living your life consistent – taking those rights and living them consistent with God’s law. That was the goal and the aim of America.

Funny: Webster published his first dictionary 52 years after the Declaration of Independence, and even then, his definition of happiness was neither as narrow nor as limited as Santorum would have you believe:

The agreeable sensations which spring from the enjoyment of good; that state of a being in which his desires are gratified, by the enjoyment of pleasure without pain; felicity; but happiness usually expresses less than felicity, and felicity less than bliss. Happiness is comparative. To a person distressed with pain, relief from that pain affords happiness; in other cases we give the name happiness to positive pleasure or an excitement of agreeable sensations. Happiness therefore admits of indefinite degrees of increase in enjoyment, or gratification of desires. Perfect happiness, or pleasure unalloyed with pain, is not attainable in this life.

Of course, we don’t expect the truth from Rick Santorum. That makes it no less frightening. He promises a world in which freedom means the ability to act in accordance with Santorum’s notion of God’s law.

Santorum and Dolan and other radical (yet mainstream) social conservatives converge on this point: The government must destroy the freedom to live according to your own conscience in order to save your freedom to live according to theirs.

This second branch, to me, is scarier than the first.

Mormon Families and Friends Have a Message for the Church

This video was premiered at a conference of LGBT-affirming Mormons that took place in Washington, D.C. over the weekend. The video is sponsored by EmpathyFirstInitiative.org and MormonStories.org. The second web site was founded by John Dehlin, who also founded the Mormons for Marriage web site in 2008 to support marriage equality for LGBT Americans.

The Daily Agenda for Monday, April 23

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Soulforce Equality Rider Meet with LDS Officials: Salt Lake City, UT. The Soulforce Equality Ride, which is in Salt Lake City through Tuesday, will meet today with officials of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints this morning from 10:00 a.m. to noon. The meeting came about from a letter addressed to the church’s First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve in March. A request to meet members from leadership was declined, but, according to Soulforce, weeks of negotiations led to the church agreeing to provide members of their PR and public policy teams for the meeting. The letter laid out four calls to action:

• Cut all ties with and denounce the group Evergreen International (and any other anti-LGBT group that supports dangerous “therapy” practices). Evergreen’s practices are not in accordance with church policies surrounding LGBTQ individuals. The church cannot say it no longer supports “ex-gay” or “reparative” therapy while sending General Authorities to speak at Evergreen events.
• Stop funding anti-LGBTQ groups that are fighting against civil marriage equality across the country, and stop encouraging your members to fund these groups. Civil marriage is a secular issue that does not affect the Church or inhibit the Church from refusing to accept or perform same gender marriages. The civil recognition of a same gender marriage in no way weakens the marriages or family bonds of members of the Church.
• Encourage LDS Business College to update their policies around LGBTQ individuals so that they are in accordance with current Church teachings.
• Add sexual orientation and gender identity/expression to your current non-discrimination/anti-harassment policy for church employees and volunteers. According to your own teachings LGBTQ individuals can be healthy and active members of the church. These individuals deserve the same protections and rights of other employees. They deserve a work environment free of bullying and shaming.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Hate Crimes Statistics Act Signed Into Law: 1990. Following strong support from the Administration and Congress, President George H.W. Bush signed the Hate Crimes Statistics Act into law in a ceremony at the Old Executive Office Building which, for the first time, included LGBT advocates, along with representatives from the ACLU, NAACP, and other groups that had criticized Bush’s record on civil rights. The LGBT representatives were invited only after agreeing not to turn the signing ceremony into an opportunity to protest the Bush administration’s AIDS policies. The law, which requires the Justice Department to institute a program to systematically collect hate crime statistics based on race, religion, ethnic background and/or sexual orientation, was the first federal law to specifically identify gays, lesbians and bisexuals. The Justice Department and FBI have been issuing annual Hate Crime reports since 1992. All reports from 1995 on are available on the web.

Sen. Rick Santorum’s “Man On Dog” Interview: 2003. In an interview printed in USA Today, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) was in the midst of blaming the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandals on liberals and the “right to privacy lifestyle” (which Santorum made abundantly clear that he did not accept), Santorum then cast his eye toward the pending U.S. Supreme Court case Lawrence v. Texas which would strike down sodomy laws later that summer. Santorum defended sodomy laws and lanched his most infamous polemic against gay families:

AP: OK, without being too gory or graphic, so if somebody is homosexual, you would argue that they should not have sex?

SANTORUM: We have laws in states, like the one at the Supreme Court right now, that has sodomy laws and they were there for a purpose. Because, again, I would argue, they undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family. And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does. It all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn’t exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution, this right that was created, it was created in Griswold — Griswold was the contraceptive case — and abortion. And now we’re just extending it out. And the further you extend it out, the more you — this freedom actually intervenes and affects the family. You say, well, it’s my individual freedom. Yes, but it destroys the basic unit of our society because it condones behavior that’s antithetical to strong healthy families. Whether it’s polygamy, whether it’s adultery, where it’s sodomy, all of those things, are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family.

Every society in the history of man has upheld the institution of marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. Why? Because society is based on one thing: that society is based on the future of the society. And that’s what? Children. Monogamous relationships. In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing. And when you destroy that you have a dramatic impact on the quality —

AP: I’m sorry, I didn’t think I was going to talk about “man on dog” with a United States senator, it’s sort of freaking me out.

The AP reporter wasn’t the only one freaking out. Dan Savage wrote a New York Times op-ed calling Santorum out for his blatant bigotry. Noting that Sen. Trent Lott had lost his post as Senate majority leader over remarks praising staunch segregationist Sen. Stromm Thurmond’s (R-SC) 1948 presidential bid, Santorum was assured of escaping this outrage with no sanctions. “Unlike the former majority leader, Mr. Santorum didn’t slip up and say something in plain English that every good Republican knows must only be said in code. Unlike Republican appeals to racist voters, Republican appeals to homophobic voters are overt.”

But a month later, Santorum’s comments were largely forgotten, except among the LGBT community. Lamenting that “the Santorum scandal didn’t have legs,” a 23-year-old reader of Dan Savage’s “Savage Love” column suggested holding a contest to “‘include’ (Santorum) in our sex lives–by naming a gay sex act after him.” Savage agreed, and invited readers to send in their suggestions. By June, the votes were counted, and a definition was promulgated:

Hey, everybody: We have a winner. Savage Love readers, by a wide margin, want Sen. Rick Santorum’s name to stand for… THAT FROTHY MIXTURE OF LUBE AND FECAL MATTER THAT IS SOMETIMES THE BYPRODUCT OF ANAL SEX! It was a landslide for that frothy mixture; the runner-up, farting in the face of someone who’s rimming you, came in a distant second. So congratulations to WUTSAP, who nominated that frothy mixture, and a big thank you to the thousands who voted.

The definition was created, but it still wasn’t obvious that Santorum’s name would be equated with the aforementioned byproduct. Four months after Santorum’s infamous comments and two months after the definition was created, the neologism was still struggling to catch on. It wasn’t until the end of the year when a new web site was created that SpreadingSantorum ended up becoming the most successful Google bomb in history. And with that, a callow comment which almost faded into history has become the name by which Santorum will be known for the rest of his life.

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

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The Ice Broke On The Santa Cruz River Today

That’s Tucson lingo for the first day of the year when temperatures reach 100 degrees, which occurred at 1:51 p.m. As you can see from that link, guessing when the ice breaks is the subject of office pools and radio/television station contests. Today’s ice break is the second earliest date since record-keeping began in 1895.

By the way, this is what the Santa Cruz looks like once the ice has broken. I think it’s adorable how Google Maps colors it blue.

The Daily Agenda for Sunday, April 22

Today in Earth Day, which marks the anniversary of what many consider to be the birth of the modern environmental movement. The first Earth Day was in 1970, and was the brianchild of Sen. Gaylord Nelson (D-WI) in response to the massive 1969 oil spill off of Santa Barbara California. Back in the day when bipartisan and left-right cooperation was still considered a civil virtue, Nelson was joined by conservative Congressman Pete McCloskey (R-CA) to inaugurate the first Earth Day, which ultimately led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Richard Nixon and the passage of the Clean Air, Clean Water, and the Endagnered Species Act. Just try to imagine that kind of cooperation on anything today.

TODAY’S AGENDA (Ours):
Rally Against Amendment 1: Durham, NC. People of Faith to Protect ALL Families will hold a rally against Amendment 1, the North Carolina proposal to ban not just same-sex marriage (which is already illegal in the Tar Heel State), but all state and local recognitions of gay or straight relationships outside of marriage. The rally will feature Jay Bakker, the son of Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, and begins at 1:00 p.m. a the Trotter Building (410 W. Geer St.). Other speakers include Quaker peace activist David LaMotte, Pilgrim United Church of Christ pastor Rev. Ginger Brasher-Cunningham, evangelical author Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, charismatic Christian leader Jimmy Chalmers and Baptist minister Brian Ammons. Directly following the rally, attendees will march to the polls to take advantage of Sunday voting during the early voting period. The afternoon concludes with a party at Durham’s Fullsteam Brewery (422 Rigsbee Ave.), beginning around 3 p.m.

Fairness Campaign Protest Against Neo-Nazis: Frankfort, KY. The Fairness Campaign has joined other social justice groups planning to oppose a rally organized by the Neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement (NSM) at the Kentucky State Capitol this Saturday, April 21 at 3:00 p.m. Among the NSM’s myriad positions of prejudice, they believe, “Only those of pure white blood…may be members of the state…Accordingly, no Jew or homosexual may be a member…”

Protesting organizations include the Kentucky Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, Standing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), W.E.N.C.H., and others. In Louisville, carpools to Frankfort will meet at 1:00 p.m. at the Fairness Campaign (2263 Frankfort Avenue, Louisville) and Carl Braden Memorial Center (3208 West Broadway). Opposition groups will convene at 2:30 p.m. in front of the Capitol Annex (702 Capital Avenue, Frankfort).

Soulforce Equality Ride to Attend Weekly Broadcast of Mormon Tabernacle Choir: Salt Lake City, UT. The Soulforce Equality Ride, which is in Salt Lake City for the next few days, will attend the weekly broadcast of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir this morning at 9:00 a.m. Then at 11:00 a.m. the group will go to Sacred Light of Christ Church (823 S 600 E) for morning services. Later that evening the Equality Riders will return to Sacred Light for a potluck dinner at 6:00 p.m. followed by ” Stories from the Road – A Fireside by the 2012 Soulforce Equality Ride,” beginning at 7:00 p.m, where Soulforce riders will share their experiences across the country.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Mobile, AL; Phoenix, AZ and Potsdam, Germany.

Other Events This Weekend: Sunshine Stampede Rodeo, Davie, FL .

AIDS Walks This Weekend: Binghamton, NY and Miami, FL.

TODAY’S AGENDA (Theirs):
Family “Research” Council’s Values Voter Bus Tour: San Diego, CA. The Family “Research” Council, an SPLC-certified anti-gay hate group, will take its joint bus tour with the Heritage Foundation to San Diego for an all day event at Skyline Wesleyan Church (11330 Campo Road in La Mesa) to talk about their so-called “Saving the American Dream” plan. They will also be doing voter registration and signing up volunteers. Celebrities on hand will be televangelist James Robison, too-looney-even-for Fox commentator Glenn Beck, and “creationist” proponent Jay Richards.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
“Conquering AIDS” Op-Ed in the New York Times: 1983. The epidemic was coming on its two year anniversary, and as of April 13, 1983, 1,339 people had been diagnosed with AIDS, with 505 known deaths recorded. Nearly half of them were in New York City. Dr. Kevin M. Cahill, director of the tropical disease center at Lenox Hill Hospital, became alarmed at the lack of action, both on the part of federal officials as well as New York’s City Hall under Mayor Ed Koch. Cahill attributed that lack of urgency to “politicians (who) handled the epidemic with unaccustomed wariness. Almost without exception, public leaders evaded the epidemic issue, avoiding even the usual expressions of compassion and concern. The victims’ sexual orientation apparently made involvement risky,and the politicians directed their courage and energies elsewhere.” Cahill wondered why the medical community was “stragely absent” as the disaster escalated:

When a fatal infection struck down veterans attending an American Legion convention, health professionals across America joined in the search for a solution. When women using tampons became ill with toxic-shock syndrome, medical centers immediately focused their enormous talents on that problem. But when the victims were drug addicts and poor Haitian refugees and homosexual men, no major research programs were announced. Until it became clear that the disease could spread to the general population through blood transfusions, organized medicine seemed part of a conspiracy of silence.

Cahill applauded the “many instances of individual courage” by physicians, nurses and technicians who took up the fight with “a quiet dignity and decency that deserves special respect.”

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The Daily Agenda for Saturday, April 21

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Celebration of Life Rally: Salt Lake City, UT. The Celebration of Life Rally is to show community support for LGBT people and their allies. The rally is sponsored by Soulforce Equality Ride (which is in Salt Lake City for the next few days), Equality Utah, Utah Pride Center, Ogden’s OUTreach Resource Center, PFLAG, City of Hope Church, Sacred Light of Christ Church, and Affirmation (An affirming group for LGBT Mormons). It goes from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. at City Creek Park at N. State and E. 2nd Sts, and features free food, fun, and entertainment.

Circling the Wagons Conference for LGBT Mormons: Washington, D.C. According to their web site:

The goal of the Mormon Stories “Circling the Wagons” conference is to create a space where LGBTQ or SSA individuals and their families and allies can gather to acknowledge, explore and honor shared experiences. No issues strike more deeply than who we love and how we understand and honor God. These issues carry an especially profound weight in Mormon communities and have been the source of a great deal of misunderstanding, judgment and hurt. Consequently, gay Mormons are deeply divided over how to address same-sex attraction and negotiate the choices they face.

In convening this conference, we are inviting LGBTQ Mormons and their families and allies to step beyond historic divisions to establish a shared space where all who have ever self-identified as Mormon and have experienced same-sex attraction can speak truthfully and respectfully. Mormon Stories and the Open Stories Foundation are hosting this conference as an expression of our longstanding commitment to LGBTQ issues and in the spirit of our “Shared Values”

Guest speakers will include author Carol Lynn Pearson; Mitch Mayne, an out gay man who is also executive secretary of his LDS ward; and Sister Jeannine Gramick, a Catholic nun and the co-founder of a ministry in support of LGBT people. The conference takes place today at the Community of Christ, 3526 Massachusetts Avenue NW, from 11:00 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., with dinner provided.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Beaumaris, Wales, UK; Mobile, AL; Phoenix, AZ; Potsdam, Germany and Tallahassee, FL.

Other Events This Weekend: Sunshine Stampede Rodeo, Davie, FL and the ONE National Archives Queer Film Festival, Los Angeles, CA.

AIDS Walks This Weekend: Binghamton, NY and Miami, FL.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Wall Street Journal Covers Ex-Gay Movement: 1993. The article opens with a description of an ex-gay meeting at the Foursquare Pentecostal Church in Hayward, California, near San Francisco, where a 31-year-old former missionary talked about his dispair over trying to change:

He confesses: “It’s not working, and I don’t know why.” The others, regulars at this Friday-night support group, are sympathetic; they know the temptations of the flesh and the damnation they figure awaits those who succumb. “It’s a matter of will,” says one. “You have to make the choice.” Maybe, suggests another, it is demonic possession.

The erstwhile missionary’s eyes grow watery. He has begged God to free him, has surrounded himself with Christians and spent a month in an in-patient treatment program. But nothing has worked, and thinking about it just makes it worse — especially at these meetings. “I’m having sex, I’m having fun, and I don’t feel bad about it,” he confesses. “Not getting AIDS is all I care about.”

Having sex, having fun and not feeling bad about it are not options here. One of those interviewed was John Evans, who had helped to found Love In Action (which would later move to Memphis), and who had already left the ex-gay movement when his best friend, Jack McIntyre, killed himself over not being able to “change.” McIntyre had spent four years in Love In Action before winding up in the psychiatric ward at Marin General Hospital:

There, in 1977 at age 46, he recorded his thoughts in a letter: “No matter how much I prayed and tried to avoid the temptation, I continually failed. . . . I love life, but my love for the Lord is so much greater, the choice is simple. . . . To continually go before God and ask for forgiveness and make promises you know you can’t keep is more than I can take. I feel it is making a mockery of God and all He stands for in my life.”

In room 104, he gave himself Communion, swallowed a lethal nightcap of Valium and Dalmane — tranquilizers and sleeping pills — and lay down on a couch to a quiet death.

By 1993, EXodus International claimed 65 affiliated ministries, but Evans said, “They’re destroying people’s lives. If you don’t do their thing, you’re not of God, you’ll go to hell. They’re living in a fantasy world.” Among those in that fantasy world was John Paulk, who was also interviewed for the Journal:

Mr. Paulk had been a prostitute, a female impersonator named Candi and an alcoholic who tried to kill himself before he decided to become straight and marry an ex-lesbian he met in church last year. “I had no sexual interest in women at all,” he says. “But when you begin a relationship with a woman that you believe God has led you to, then you develop attraction to that person. To say that we’ve arrived at this place of total heterosexuality — that we’re totally healed — is misleading.”

In 1993, Paulk was a cautious “success story” for the nascent ex-gay movement. He would later become much more confident in his “success” while at Focus On the Family. There, he would help found Love Won Out, the traveling ex-gay roadshow and informercial put on in conjunction with Exodus International. (Exodus is now the sole producer of Love Won Out.) He and his ex-lesbian wife, Anne, became the face of the ex-gay movement in a massive publicity campaign in 1998 that culminated in their photo appearing on the cover of Newsweek. In 2000, Wayne Besen photographed Paulk as he was leaving a gay bar in Washington, D.C.

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

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Minnesota for Marriage Works Hard to Deceive

You’re not going to believe this:  Minnesota for Marriage, a group that believes in old-fashioned values and traditional marriage — a group that is trying to pass a state anti- marriage amendment — is lying!

They do it in this video, part of lengthy series they’ve made for their campaign. Let me sum it up. The narrator asks:

I have read there are a growing number LGBT couples in society and that Americans are supportive of gay marriage. Is this true?

And then answers:

The answer to both questions is no.

She offers this proof:

• The 2010 Census estimated there are about 646,000 gay and lesbian couples in the US, compared to 594,000 in the 2000 Census, an 8.8% growth rate, smaller than 9.5% growth in total US households.
• There were actually fewer same-sex couples in the 2010 Census than in the Census Bureau’s 2000 American Community Survey (ACS)!

The Census and the ACS are different reports, with different methodologies, so it’s wrong for M4M to treat them as directly comparable. Let’s come back to that. I was more intrigued by their first point, which does compare Census to Census. When I checked the numbers, these were the first I found:

• 594,391 same-sex households in 2000
• 901,997 same-sex households in 2010
• 52% increase over the decade

At this point it’s tempting to shout, LIARS!, but I wanted to double check before I accused M4M. I’d hate to convey false information, even if it helped my case. And I’m glad I did, because it turns out the Census Bureau did revise their 2010 figure to 646,464:

…the form structure of the 2010 Census…may have caused sufficient data capture errors in the gender item that inflated the census counts, especially for the numbers of same-sex spousal households. (page 2)

So M4M was right after all. But then I thought…what about the 2000 figures? Were they revised, too? And a tiny voice said to me:

Oh, surely not. M4M wouldn’t compare revised-down 2010 figures with unrevised 2000 figures. That would be deliberately misleading! Traditional marriage advocates are champions of morality, would never lie to those who trust them and send them money!

But I checked anyway, feeling ever so slightly cynical. And…here are the revised figures for both Censuses:

• 358,390 same-sex households in 2000
• 646,464 same-sex households in 2010
• 80% increase over the decade

My faith in our opponents’ goodness has been shaken.

Oh, and what about that 2010 ACS number they mentioned, the one indicating the number of same-sex couples has declined? According to the Census Bureau (page 10), the pre-2008 ACS figures were inflated, just like the 2000 Census figures.  M4M is again comparing good data to bad data.

Okay, that’s a lot of numbers. Here’s a handy chart summarizing the whole thing, with a sliding scale from, well, from good to evil.

Minnesota for Marriage took Census data showing the number of same-sex household has increased by 80%, and twisted it to say that it hadn’t increased at all. I must say, I am shocked — SHOCKED! — that an anti-gay group would lie to its supporters to advance its fundraising and its agenda (is that redundant?).

Of course, when I say shocked, I mean I’m shocked the way our puppy Chloe shocks me when she chews up an expensive shoe: She’s done it before, and she’ll do it again, but it’s still distressing to see.

Dissention Rises Within Exodus International

Last January, Exodus International president Alan Chambers appeared on  a surprise panel at the Gay Christian Network’s annual conference in Orlando, and made the surprising admission that “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.” At about that same time, it was noticed that Exodus International had removed several books on Reparative Therapy from their online bookstore.

[NOTE: Contrary to popular misconceptions, Reparative Therapy is not a generic term for sexual orientation change therapy. It is a term describing one particular form of therapy promoted by Joseph Nicolosi, co-founder of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). Reparative Therapy derives its name on Nicolosi’s theory of the so-called “reparative drive.” Please see this for a  more complete description.]

It quickly became apparent however that the rest of Exodus may not be fully behind Chambers’s overtures. Mike Goeke, an Exodus International board member and former vice-president, published an op-ed just two days later describing homosexuality as being different — and in its way, worse — than “any sin,” a position that is in marked contrast to Chambers’s discussion of homosexuality from a theological standpoint. Now Andrew Comiskey, who heads Desert Streams Ministries, opened the debate on the clinical front by issuing a letter expressing his “concern over Exodus distancing itself from reparative therapy” and calls for changes at Exodus over Chambers’s recent comments and actions.

The letter was posted briefly at Andrew Comiskey’s web site, but it was later removed. A copy has been uploaded at Ex-Gay Watch (PDF: 180KB/7 pages). In the letter, Comiskey takes issue with Alan Chambers’s statements indicating that Exodus would de-emphasize the possibility of sexual orientation change as part of its ministry. Saying that Desert Streams Ministry (DSM) employs “the most commonly employed ‘healing’ format in (Exodus International’s) network,” he adds:

Regarding sexual orientation change, we at DSM will continue to uphold change as a reasonable goal for Christians with SSA who are earnestly seeking Him and who are willing to do the hard work of resolving their gender disintegration through Christ and His healing community. (We realize that not all will graduate into a state of readiness for marriage. However, that should not preclude anyone from seeking full sexual restoration.)

Alan’s comments about change unwittingly played into the enemy’s hands. To question sexual orientation change on the basis of residual struggles is weak theology and psychology. Very few who have overcome destructive, life-dominating issues live without a trace of the problem. To then describe that ‘trace’ as a reason to tone down the idea of change makes no sense to us.

As for Exodus’s drawing back from promoting Reparative Therapy in particular:

We at DSM are only indebted to the good of reparative therapy and its underpinnings in developmental psychology. How else would we understand how we become disintegrated in our gender identities, as well as gain objective markers en route to wholeness?

We cannot afford to distance ourselves from the whole healing community, which must involve solid reparative therapists. They can do what we cannot in our ministries, and vice-versa. We need them! …We would like to know how Exodus plans on representing and integrating solid clinical insight on the Board and in its offerings.

Comiskey’s disagreement with Chambers is twofold. First is the disagreement over Reparative Therapy and the prospects for change in sexual orientation. The second disagreement however is theological, and Comiskey devotes several paragraphs over those theological points. Exodus International, like Chambers, has always been Evangelical in its underpinnings. And so has Comiskey, having come from the Vineyard movement which was the genesis of the dominant Christian-based ex-gay movement in the 1970s. But lately, Comiskey appears to be leaning much more toward Catholic theology, which would mean that if Chambers is making a departure from a clinical standpoint, Comiskey is making a similarly pronounced one from a theological point of view. Nevertheless, Comiskey charges that Chambers’s particular theological positions — some of which are perfectly at home in just about any Baptist setting, for example — places Exodus in danger of “cater(ing) to the culture.”

Comiskey closes with four “recommendations,” with the third recommendation just barely stopping short of calling for Chambers’s ejection from Exodus:

1 That a distinction be made between Alan’s calling and job description, and the needs of the member ministries. Alan is not equipped to handle all that he is currently trying to do. We perceive him as neither a theologian nor a healer but as an inspirer and evangelist, a bridge-builder in need of refinement. He is being chastened for making unfortunate comments. God bless him; haven’t we all? We trust that those he trusts will help him to stay low and clarify the way forward for his renewed season of service.

2. In order for DSM to remain a member ministry, we need to see a higher caliber of commitment to theological and clinical excellence from Exodus. Consider the courage of those with SSA who are seeking genuine integration. They deserve the best! The stakes are high—we are all experiencing the fall-out from a few misplaced, well-intentioned words. We must all do our part, and could draw upon expert friends of Exodus, e.g. Nicolosi and Gagnon, and Exodus elders like the Worthens and Joe Dallas.

3. The process of distinguishing Alan’s role and that of the member ministries must be done slowly and carefully, with Alan playing a reduced role (at best) in the process. We would suggest team leadership here, and sensitive protocol between these newly distinguished expressions of Exodus.

4. Pray more and facebook less. We could all repent of a little wounded self importance. Those overcoming same-sex attraction are inclined to narcissism and its wounds. We all need to get low and give this work back to Jesus. We at DSM hesitate to follow any one person’s lead. Jesus will make such things clear as we wait together.

Ex-Gay Watch’s David Roberts, who first reported on plans for a re-branding effort at Exodus International last November, saw Comiskey’s letter as “the first public shot in the coming insurrection at Exodus” among Exodus member ministries who are “hard line ‘change is possible’ and reparative therapy proponents.” Warren Throckmorton, similarly, wondered aloud whether the letter marks a “schism” at Exodus. Undoubtedly it sparked some interesting conversations behind the scenes, to say the least. Comiskey has since removed the letter from his web site. He has offered no explanation for its removal.

The Daily Agenda for Friday, April 20

TODAY’S AGENDA:
National Day of Silence: Everywhere. The National Day of Silence is a day when students across the country vow to take a form of silence to call attention to the silencing effect of anti-LGBT bullying and harassment in schools. According to the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network’s (GLSEN) 2009 National School Climate Survey, nearly 9 out of 10 LGBT students report verbal, sexual or physical harassment at school and more than 30% report missing at least a day of school in the past month out of fear for their personal safety.

The Day of Silence web site has important information and resources for those who are participating, and Lambda Legal has put together a pamphlet (PDF: 568KB/3 pages) detailing your legal rights in connection with your participation in the observance. If you are a student in a U.S. K-12 school and feel like your rights are not being respected, please click here to let GLSEN know.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Beaumaris, Wales, UK; Mobile, AL; Phoenix, AZ; Potsdam, Germany and Tallahassee, FL.

Other Events This Weekend: Sunshine Stampede Rodeo, Davie, FL and the ONE National Archives Queer Film Festival, Los Angeles, CA.

AIDS Walks This Weekend: Binghamton, NY and Miami, FL.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
China Removes Homosexuality From List of Mental Disorders: 2001. After consulting with mental health organizations in the U.S. and elsewhere, the Chinese Psychiatric Association published the third edition of the Chinese Standards for Classification and Diagnosis of Mental Disorders, which formally removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. The move came as Chinese psychiatry was coming under international scrutiny for the growing use of mental institutions to detain dissidents and members of the banned Falun Gong sect. The delisting of homosexual was controversial: the Beijing Youth Daily gave prominent space to a senior psychiatrist who called gay people “abnormal.”

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?

Rachel Maddow Covers the Retracted Ex-Gay Study and the Movement It Bolstered

Last night, Rachel Maddow did a two-part segment on the ex-gay movement prompted by Gabriel Arana’s article in The American Prospect last week. In the first segment, Rachel provides a history of the mental health community’s stance on homosexuality along with background information on Robert Spitzer’s role in removing homosexuality from the American Psychiatric Association’s list of mental disorders. She also covered Spitzer’s controversial paper presented at a 2001 meeting of the APA (it was later published in 2003 in the Archives of Sexual Behavior) which claimed to show that efforts to change sexual orientation could be successful. That paper, which made national headlines, was a boon to both the ex-gay and anti-gay industry for the next decade. Last week, Robert Spitzer retracted that paper in an interview with Gabriel Arana.

The second segment features an interview with Gabe himself, in which he talks about his interview with Spitzer in which Spitzer recanted his 2001 paper.

The Daily Agenda for Thursday, April 19

Today is Yom Hashoah, the internationally recognized date set aside as the Holocaust Remembrance Day. The date corresponds to the 27th day of Nisan on the Hebrew Calendar to commemorate the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum will host a live webcast of the National Days of Remembrance ceremony in the US Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C. this morning at  11 a.m. EDT.

TODAY’S AGENDA:
White House LGBT Conference on HIV/AIDS: Atlanta, GA The White House will host the next of its series of conference s on LGBT issues today on the topic of HIV/AIDS. The conference is hosted by the White House Office of Public Engagement and the White House Office of National AIDS Policy in partnership with Morehouse School of Medicine, and takes place today from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. at the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta.

Early Voting Begins on North Carolina’s Amendment 1: NC. Early voting begins today in North Carolina’s primary, in which the major issue remaining is Amendment 1, which would amend the North Carolina constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage (even though it is already prohibited by law) along with any other state recognition of any sort of relationships, gay or straight, outside of marriage. When the proposed amendment was first placed on the primary ballot, it was feared that an anticipated contested Republican presidential primary coupled with an absence of an urgent reason for Democrats and independents to go to the polls would spell doom for the Tar Heel State’s LGBT community. But now that the GOP primary race has effectively ended, prospects for Amendment 1’s defeat have brightened considerably. If you live in North Carolina, get yourself and everyone you know to the polls now.

As for everyone else, if you donate now, your gift will be doubled with a matching gift from several leading North Carolina citizens (only one of whom is gay; the rest are straight allies). Please make your donation today to Protect ALL NC Families to defeat Amendment 1.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Beaumaris, Wales, UK; Mobile, AL; Phoenix, AZ; Potsdam, Germany and Tallahassee, FL.

Other Events This Weekend: Sunshine Stampede Rodeo, Davie, FL and the ONE National Archives Queer Film Festival, Los Angeles, CA.

AIDS Walks This Weekend: Binghamton, NY and Miami, FL.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Dick Sargent: 1930. His best known role was that of the second Darrin in the 1960s sitcom Bewitched, after having taken over that role in 1969 when Dick York was forced to leave due to ongoing health problems. It was a fortuitous second chance for Sargent: he was the producers’ first choice for the role in 1964 but was forced to turn it down because he was under contract with Universal Studios to appear in the short-lived sitcom Broadside, a WWII comedy about four girls on an island with 4,000 sailors. (Hilarity allegedly ensued, but only for one season.) Before he got his second chance at Bewitched, Sargent appeared in several films and television programs which helped pad his resume with a growing list of solid if not particularly memorable roles.

He never really made it onto the A-list, bit he did have a solid run opposite Elizabeth Montgomery as America’s favorite put-upon Mortal. And what a strange, gay time he must have had on the set, with openly-flamboyant Paul Lynde as practical-joker Uncle Arthur and the closeted and conflicted Agnes Moorhead as Endora (a character whose style and sarcasm deserves the everlasting homage of drag queens everywhere.) The series ended in 1972 and immediately went into syndication for whole new generations to enjoy. Meanwhile, Sargent kept working in minor roles and voiceovers for commercials and cartoons.

In 1974, he appeared with lesbian Fannie Flagg in the game show “Tattletales,” in which Hollywood couples would try to guess each others’ answers to embarrassing questions about marriage, sex, or other coupley topics. They were, ostensibly, “dating” for the game show’s purposes. Sargent finally came out on National Coming Out Day, October 11, 1991, over concerns about high suicide rates among gay teens. He revealed that when he was a student at Stanford he twice tried to kill himself when he realized he was gay.  the following summer, he was Grand Marshall of the Los Angeles Gay Pride parade alongside his former Bewitched co-star and friend, Elizabeth Montgomery. He became involved with the AIDS Project Los Angeles and the American Foundation for AIDS Research. He died in 1994 of prostate cancer.

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

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

The Daily Agenda for Wednesday, April 18

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Soulforce Equality Ride: Denver, CO. The Soulforce Equality Riders are spending this week in Colorado. Today looks like it will be more of a fun day, with a meet and mingle during Happy Hour at the Denver Hamburger Mary’s, located at 700 E. 17th Ave., from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Beaumaris, Wales, UK; Mobile, AL; Phoenix, AZ; Potsdam, Germany and Tallahassee, FL.

Other Celebrations This Weekend: Sunshine Stampede Rodeo, Davie, FL.

AIDS Walks This Weekend: Binghamton, NY and Miami, FL.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
GOP Chairman Warns of “Perverts Who Have Infiltrated Our Government”: 1950. The Red- and Lavendar-Scare of Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) received a boost today when Guy George Gabrielson, Republican National Chairman, issued a letter addressed to about 7,000 party workers. Under the title “This is the News from Washington,” Gabrielson wrote:

Perhaps as dangerous as the actual Communists are the sexual perverts who have infiltrated our Government in recent years. The State Department has confessed that it has had to fire ninety-one of these. (see Feb 28) It is the talk of Washington and of the Washington correspondents corps.

American sensibilities were extremely delicate in 1950, particularly on a subject as contentious as homosexuality. In many respects, it was still the “love that dares not speak its name.” Newspaper editors were reluctant to actually use the word “homosexual,” preferring instead to dance around the subject wherever possible. (The use of the word “pervert,” on the other hand, was totally acceptable and routine.) Gabrielson expressed his frustration over editors’ concerns over their readers delicate sensibilities:

The country would be more aroused over this tragic angle of the situation if it were not for the difficulties of the newspapers and radio commentators in adequately presenting the facts, while respecting the decency of their American audiences.

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