Box Turtle Bulletin

Ugandan TV Covers “American View” of Uganda’s “Battle Lines Over Gay Rights”

NTV, Uganda’s largest independent television station, is broadcasting a series titled American View, which portrays an how Uganda comes across in America. This segment, titled “Battle over Gay Rights” is probably more accurately described as a Ugandan view of the American view of Uganda.

The principal Ugandan spokesperson in this segment is Ethics and Integrity Minister Simon Lokodo, a defrocked Catholic priest, who raided a gay rights conference in Entebbe in February. In this segment, Lokodo points to a clause in the Ugandan Constitution which bars same-sex marriage and, incredibly, interprets that clause as a blanket ban on all activity related to LGBT advocacy, whether marriage is involved or not.

Guess Whose Fault It Is That Heterosexual Secret Service Agents Were Caught In A Straight Prostitution Scandal

Family “Research” Council’s Tony Perkins is the Einstein who connected these dots:

Perkins: Yeah, you know that’s a great point. Just for a moment step back and look at the implications of (Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal), over the weekend we saw the news of the President’s Secret Service detail in Colombia and the issue of them hiring prostitutes and now the White House is outraged about that. Actually in a meeting this morning my staff asked, ‘why should the President be upset’? It was actually legal; it was legal there to do that, so why should we be upset? Well, the fact is we intuitively know it’s wrong, there’s a moral law against that.

The same is true for what the President has done to the military enforcing open homosexuality in our military. You can change the law but you can’t change the moral law that’s behind it. You can change the positive law, the law that is created by man, but you can’t change the moral law, it’s wrong. So what you have is you have a total breakdown and you can’t pick and choose. Morality is not a smorgasbord; you can’t pick what you want. I think you’re absolutely right, this is a fundamental issue going forward because if we say ‘let them do what we want,’ what’s next? You cannot maintain moral order if you are willing to allow a few things to slide.

The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, April 17

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Soulforce Equality Ride: Denver, CO. The Soulforce Equality Riders this week pulled into Colorado, where yesterday they met in private with representatives from Focus On the Family in Colorado Springs. Today, the riders move on to Lakewood, Colorado for an all-day protest against the anti-LGBT policies at Colorado Christian University. The riders will hold their protest on West Alameda Avenue along the campus’s south side, from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

The riders will then move on to the Mercury Cafe (2199 California St in Denver) for spoken word performances by members of the Soulforce Riders and the public. That event will take place from 9:00 to 11:00 p.m. Members of the public (and especially students from CCU) are invited to attend.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Thornton Wilder: 1897. The Pulitzer Award-winning playwright and author is best known for his plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, as well his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey. He also wrote the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt. His works touched on very broad, universal themes: the qualities of good and evil, and finding meaning in the lives of ordinary people. Our Town was particularly inventive: it’s sparse stage setting was quite “modern” in 1938, but not as avant garde as the character of the “stage manager,” who breaks the fourth wall and converses with the audience, even going so far as taking questions.

Details of Wilder’s private life are very hard to come by. The lifelong bachelor was exceptionally circumspect about his private life, although he is known to have enjoyed a wide circle of friends. He was romantically linked with the writer Sam Steward, to whom he was introduced by Gertrude Stein. They were reportedly together while Wilder wrote the third act of Our Town — in which we learn that the town’s choir director and church organist Simon Stimson commits suicide. Sadly, in 1938 it would not have been at all difficult to read that as code.

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?

What’s the Downside of Same-Sex Marriage?

Scott Lively’s answer: “Fire and brimstone raining from heaven.”

And it all goes down hill from there.

By the way, blogs around the Internets exploded with reports that someone reportedly shouted, “we will not be silenced by faggots” at the Tea Party rally held on Boston Common, Those reports relied on one lone Tweet as a source, which is why I was reluctant to pick it up and repeat it. Good thing, because in this video at about the 11:00 mark, you can clearly hear Lively shout to the protesters, “We will not be silenced by fascists! We will not be silenced by fascists! Crawl back into your holes!” Not sure that that was any better.

[Via Boston Oberver.]

More callous than Marie Antoinette

Marie Antoinette got a bad rap.

As the lore goes, she was told about the plight of the French people who were suffering during a famine. And upon learning that there was a shortage of bread, a staple of the diet, she said, “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche”. And since that day, the term “let them eat cake” has been a symbol of the callousness or obliviousness of the wealthy elite.

Actually, she probably never said it. A story written when she was a child (living in Austria) was combined with anti-royalist sentiments and, as is often the case in politics, actual truth was far less interesting than a story too good not to repeat. The real Marie was less villainous than the cartoon characterization and was reportedly concerned about the plight of the people and generous with charity. Had she also not been even more generous with herself while France was in financial disarray (or had royalists quelled the revolution) history would be kinder.

But whichever noblewoman (real or fictional) uttered the phrase, they don’t deserve to be the symbol of callousness.

The response reflects on a character so self-absorbed that it isn’t aware of the plight of others and so oblivious of the lives outside their experience that they make absurd assumptions. But at least she offered a solution. An ignorant foolish solution perhaps, but one that hints that she cared at least some little bit about their plight.

Which is more than I can say about some today in the anti-gay movement.

I don’t think we need to reiterate here that there is an epidemic of bullying in schools across the nation. At this point, it is not speculative or alleged or partisan. On this, voices as diverse as Lady Gaga and Mike Huckabee can agree.

And it is simply irrefutable that gay students are more likely to be a target than are most students. And after several kids who identified as gay (or were assumed to be) took their own lives, our community coalesced around a serious effort to reduce the terrorism that gay kids experience. One of the efforts implemented is to encourage schools to establish anti-bullying programs that specifically address anti-gay bullying. And related to that is an annual Day of Silence to bring attention to the problem and the encourage students and staff to take this problem seriously.

But solutions are not easy or obvious. Even schools that have implemented anti-bullying programs still experience levels of bullying that would have been considered unacceptable a decade ago. And people of good intention may differ on the response.

Some religious conservatives also have been worried that in their advocacy for gay kids, schools might not fully consider the consequences of some messages. Many people of faith have restrictions on sexual behavior as part of their moral code and teach their children certain rules about sex outside of marriage. Sometimes those outside the faith do not understand the nuance of such teachings. And should a public school misrepresented such teachings or declared them “harmful” and those who followed such rules as “bigots”, it could make targets out of religious kids.

Replacing gay kids as a target for scorn and humiliation with Christian kids doesn’t solve the problem, and it is valid to raise that point. And, indeed, some school districts listened to those views and were able to bring in gay people and pastors and people of diverse communities to make sure that the programs addressed everyone’s concerns and were supported by the full community. This is an area about which there should be no disagreement and, when all parties want to work together consensus is possible.

Alternately, some chose to respond directly by participating in a Golden Rule Pledge. Rather than discuss the possible implications, they sought to offset any possible negative views of Christian kids by visibly breaking the association with bigotry. By having religious kids say, “Yes, we agree, no one should be bullied and we promise to stand with you and protect you”, Christian kids could oppose the harm without having to defend their own values.

But there were those among conservative Christianity who had a less generous response. For example, Dr. Michael Brown writes today about the Day of Silence in a way that makes it clear that kids bullied to death are the least of his concerns.

Brown sets the tone by starting with dishonesty:

On April 20th, in thousands of schools across America, your hard-earned tax dollars will help underwrite the homosexual indoctrination of your kids.

Setting aside the absurd notion that protecting children from bullying is the same as “homosexual indoctrination of your kids”, the Day of Silence is not funded by tax dollars. It doesn’t really cost much of anything for students to be silent for the day and the direct costs of posters and other publicity are not paid by the schools. I suppose that one could argue that anything that occurs on a school grounds is “underwritten” by “your hard-earned tax dollars”, but by that logic it would be much more truthful to say, “your hard-earned tax dollars help underwrite the abuse of gay kids today”.

Dr. Brown is a careful writer. He usually avoids sentences or short passages that can be extracted from his writing to illustrate his animosity. He doesn’t use words like “pervert” or “abomination”. He works with innuendo and insinuation and plays on the existing biases of his target audience. Consider:

But don’t some schools already have generic, anti-bullying programs in place along with special, daylong events to highlight the destructive effects of bullying, a subject that should concern all of us? Of course they do, but that’s not enough. GLSEN insists that a special focus must be put on LGBT kids, as if bullying a gay kid was worse than bullying a fat kid.

It’s clever. In one sentence absent of any slurs he manages to insinuate that gay people are demanding special consideration, that any attention given to gay bullying takes away from other targets of bullying, and that gay activists are unfairly demanding resources that aren’t needed.

Of course, that isn’t close to true. As the epidemic of bullying illustrates, most schools have, at best, a perfunctory anti-bullying program (that isn’t implemented with seriousness) coupled with a devoted commitment to denial. The movie Bully provides an illustration of a child being tormented daily on a school bus while administrators assured the documentarian that the other children were “good as gold”.

And as any gay kid – and most fat kids – will tell you, bullying of gay kids really is worse. Fat kids have families to turn to while gay kids often do not have that option. And on most campuses there is an agreement that calling a fat kid names is “a bad thing to do” while many children attending churches of which Dr. Brown would approve do not share the belief that saying “you’re an abomination and going to hell” to gay kids is “a bad thing to do”.

But that isn’t really the most telling point about that paragraph. I’ll come back to that.

He goes on with artificial concern about ex-gays being excluded from the Day of Silence (as though there has ever been a single kid to identify as ex-gay who was in any way excluded from this student organized event). He rants about a nameless black teacher who “did not approve of equating gay activism with the civil rights movement.” He makes the usual intentionally dishonest false equation in which the balance to “don’t bully gay kids” is “a religious or moral objection to homosexuality”.

But all of that is just filler and fluff; it’s what he didn’t say that is worth noting. At no point in his 869 word essay did Dr. Brown ever express the slightest concern about the plight of tormented gay kids or provide any alternate solution. His position – that which is opposite of GLSEN’s position, can be seen in the paragraph we noted above.

Of course they do, but that’s not enough.

Dr. Brown and GLSEN are both aware of the high rate of gay teen suicides. Dr. Brown and GLSEN are well aware that openly gay teens – and even those suspected of being gay – are tormented at rates far higher than any demographic. Including the “fat kid” demographic. GLSEN believes that the current status is “not enough” and Dr. Brown disagrees.

Now Dr. Brown would never use the words. He would never say them out loud. And he’ll likely send me an email telling me that I’m misrepresenting his position and putting words in his mouth. But the message is clear.

When told that due to the famine the peasants had no bread, Marie Antoinette’s solution was, “let them eat cake”. When told that gay students are being bullied to the point that they kill themselves, Dr. Michael Brown’s answer is, “let them die.”

Marie Antoinette got a bad rap.

Lawn Seed: Contradictions of the Anti-Gay Movement (part 1)

The anti-gays scatter arguments like lawn seed: Toss them out by the handful and see which take root, with little concern for what’s actually true. That’s why the movement is such an intellectual tangle. In the next few days, I want to point out some of the contradictions you trip over when you step back and pay attention to their whole big field of weeds.

Contradiction 1: The Essential and Also Irrelevant Marriage Culture

Let’s start with these two ideas our opponents like to sow:

• We need a strong marriage culture to keep a child’s parents from separating.

• Gay couples don’t deserve marriage because their separation rates/domestic violence rates/promiscuity rates/etc. are too high.

“Marriage culture” is the anti-gay answer to “How does same-sex marriage hurt your marriage?” Well, ya see, it doesn’t hurt my marriage, but it hurts the culture of marriage, doncha know — it dampens the pressure on parents to stay together, and that hurts their children.

Or, as Maggie Gallagher puts it:

Marriage is civilization’s great attempt to integrate opposites: male and female, mothers and fathers, parents and children, love and sex, heart and pocketbook, masculinity and dependency, eros and the vow. When a marriage culture fails, sexual desire no longer unites; instead it fragments.**

This still begs the question of how same-sex marriage will hurt the marriage culture, and that’s where the second point comes in: Same-sex couples are just not the same as married couples. Calling those violent, promiscuous, unstable “gay” relationships marriage will change our conception of what marriage is.

I don’t want to argue right now whether either of those points is true (I can buy the first, though I’ve previously taken a hatchet to the second). I just want to point out their mutual incoherence:  Solid partnerships requires a strong marriage culture, you say? Then denying marriage to gay couples is explanation enough for any instability you care allege. In fact, this supposed instability now becomes a reason to legalize same-sex marriage, and even to promote it for gays and lesbians as good public policy.

Unless, of course, you’re not just anti-marriage-equality, not just anti-gay, but actually anti-gay-people (and their children), and you want to make sure gay people (and their children) have lives that are lonely, isolated, and — to use Maggie’s word — fragmented. In that case, we’ve got not so much contradiction as a Catch-22, and not so much as a Catch-22 as a crafty anti-gay scam:

We’ll deny marriage to gay couples, and that will make them more unstable, and we’ll use that instability to deny them marriage.

Naturally, this kind of circularity makes you wonder why they opposed same-sex marriage in the first place. I can’t say I know — except that it’s definitely not a careful and reasoned concern for children.

**Isn’t it fascinating that when Maggie compiled her list of opposites, she said not “masculinity and femininity” but “masculinity and dependency.” There’s an entire culture packed into just three words, with a psychological case study, to boot.

Contradiction 2: All the Science is Terrible and Also Proves Us Right! 

Read the rest of this entry »

Counter-Protests Overshadow Boston Tea Party Rally

The last thing you want is for the counter-protesters’ arrests and reports of “rushing the stage” to become the main story to emerge from an anti-gay rally, as that only serves to feed the persecution complex of anti-gay extremists. The only other story to compete with that meme is that of a photo that was posted on Flickr showing a Boston police officer’s hands around a protester’s neck. Criticism of the Boston police’s handling of the Tea Party rally prompted a statement from a department spokesperson saying that they would investigate, but that due to “the aggressive nature” of the protests (the short statement used the word “aggressive” twice) the department “supports the arrests made by the officers today.” The man in the photo was reportedly not among those arrested.

According to the narrative from Boston’s primary news outlets, those appear to be the main stories behind yesterday’s Mass Tea Party Rally held on Boston Common which featured Scott Lively of Abiding Truth Ministries an SPLC-certified hate group, and Brian Camenker of MassResistance, another certified anti-gay hate group.

Turning back to the rally itself, it’s very difficult to learn exactly what was said there. MassResistance posted a headline saying, “Mob of homosexual activists overrun & nearly shut down Boston Common Tea Party event as police look on and do nothing.” But if the The Boston Globe and local television reports are any indication, it appears that the rally was neither overrun nor “nearly shut down,” nor that the police “did nothing” amid those reports of arrests and apparent abuse. Online accounts of what Lively or Camenker said are sparse. One is from Mike Ball:

Photo by Mike Ball

Lively came on at the very end to give a benediction. Of course, given his self-righteous bent, it wasn’t a blessing at all. It was the eternal-damnation version of Deuteronomy 30. His went beyond the “I have set before you live and death; therefore choose life.” It was if you warn someone what they have to believe and they don’t do it, they’re going to hell. So there.

Some benediction, Scotto.

During his time, the counter-demonstrators kept up their yelling, calling him a murderer, in allusions to his Ugandan politicking. They did shout him down.

Photo sent to me from Matthew Murphy, who is shown holding the sign.

Ball said that turnout for the rally on Boston Common was rather small, perhaps about 100 people. About 40 more were counter-protesters. Another account, from Join The Impact MA, puts the number of counter-protests at 20, but they were joined by “100 exuberant protestors from the Occupy movement (who) charged onto the scene.” According to that account:

The din became an uproar as Lively took the microphone. In his speech, Lively blasted conservatives who would minimize the importance of social issues. Then he denounced LGBT rights activists as “fascists” who were intent on destroying civilization. Camenker met with similar pushback as he criticized the work of GLSEN for allegedly promoting homosexual recruitment of public school students—in reference to the group’s efforts to prevent anti-LGBT bullying. Lively and Camenker were loudly booed, and much of their speech-making was drowned out by Occupy chants and “mic check” counterpoint.

Not all counter-protestors joined the chanting. I (Join the Impact MA’s Don Gorton) argued that Lively and Camenker should be allowed to speak, both out of respect for freedom of expression and because they tend to discredit the opposition to LGBT equality when their extremist views are publicized. Yet the passions these two hate group leaders stir are difficult to contain. Tea Party organizers learned that giving a platform to anti-gay bigotry effectively drowns out any other message they may seek to propagate. The Boston Police kept the peace while allowing everyone an opportunity to be heard. By the time anti-government activist Carla Howell took the podium after Camenker, most of the “tea party” attendees had frittered away, the momentum of the rally dissipated.

Christian Values

The “Value Voters” have announced their Summit again, and hate groups, exclusionists, and theocrats are well represented. And again good and decent people are too reluctant to challenge it in the way that it should be challenged.

* * *

In December, a friend asked what I was doing Christmas Day. I told him that there was a church near where I live, St. James in the City Episcopal Church, that has a food pantry and I was going to see if they had a Christmas Dinner I could volunteer for. He laughed at me. It seems that if you want to volunteer at St. James, you have to sign up months in advance.

St. James caught my attention again this week when a client listed them as their church. This individual is very generous with time and money and seems committed to helping the less fortunate, so this confirmed to me that this congregation had a emphasis on contributing to the world.

St. James in the City is located on Wilshire in a section dotted with beautiful early 20’s Century Churches. Glorious architecture with heritage built for an affluent community that migrated outward leaving their mansions to be torn down and replaced with apartment buildings. The handful of older ladies that venture back each Sunday to the First Congregational nearby surely don’t support the upkeep – that is from movie production rental. And the handsome Italian Romanesque beauty that is Wilshire Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) went up for sale a few months ago.

Church attendance is down in general. And with the mega-church phenomenon sucking away many who might otherwise attend their local church, the old standbys are hurting. And mainline denominations are hurting the most.

But not St. James. It is packed on Sundays.

And one congregate wrote a few years back about her experience for a British audience, explaining the appeal.

While churches in England have, for the most part, modernised their services in an attempt to attract bigger crowds — some of them becoming painfully evangelical and happy clappy — the Episcopal church in the US still uses the older, traditional liturgies, the ones that I remember nostalgically. It was these superficial trappings that appealed to us originally. My husband, who writes music for a living, is a sucker for a choir — but it is the values that we found there that has really kept us coming back.

At our church, it is not unusual to see children with two mums or two dads, sitting next to Koreans, African-Americans, Hispanics, as well as many white middle-class families. There are monied people from Beverly Hills, rubbing shoulders with artists from downtown. Gay people next to straight. It’s jolly, social and somehow has a relevance to everyone’s life. It reflects an acceptance of all, the kind of value I’d like my children to have. And it is a community. Spirituality, I believe, comes from acknowledging that we are part of something greater than just ourselves.

I believe that she has identified something. And I think that it is a notion that mainline Christianity should note.

For too long those who have obstinately held to theological positions that do not reflect either modern understanding about sexuality or the spirit of the message found in Christ’s recorded teachings have owned the word “values”. And mainline churches have been in the public’s perception limited to “no, we aren’t all like that”.

I think it is long passed the time when Mainline Christianity stand and say, “We have strong values including inclusion, relevance, flexibility, and especially love for our fellow man. Our values predate whatever those others are selling and were, in fact, the values of our founder”.

Mainline Christianity deserves a better position that “the Christians who don’t hate you”. What they have to offer is a much needed commodity. It’s not just what they don’t give – it’s what they do give: values, the kind you wants your kids to have.

The Daily Agenda for Monday, April 16

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Miami Gay Bar Raided: 1960. Residents of greater Miami woke up on Easter morning to the news that Metro police overnight had raided the “E Club,” located at the corner of Tamiami Trail and SW 37th Avenue “at the request of a citizen. Twenty-three men, including the manager, were arrested at the “deviates’ den” and were charged with “disorderly conduct by being in a known homosexual hangout.” The manager was charged with allowing minors in the bar as well as “operating a known homosexual hangout.” Among those charged was an instructor at Miami Military Academy. When reporters informed the academy’s superintendent, he vowed, “We will drop him immediately, without question. We just can’t have a thing like that. We have enough headaches as it is. I will get in touch with him tomorrow and find out if he was arrested.” Another man from Coral Gables told police he was a teacher, but he later told the Miami News that he was a former teacher who hadn’t taught since 1956.

The names, addresses, and occupations of all twenty-two men arrested were printed in the accompanying article.  According to The Miami News:

Habitues of the place were reported to embrace each other, wear tight-fitting women’s pants and bleach their hair, (Metro Capt. Patrick) Gallagher said. When Gallagher and six other officers descended on the place Friday night, they found the dim-lit bar full of men, some of them paired off in “couples” he said. The only woman in the place told police she just dropped by for a drink, and she was not detained. Officers took all the men in the place to headquarters. Several were released after a screening and 22 were booked.

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 Sunday, April 15

TODAY’S AGENDA (THEIRS):
Family “Research” Council’s Values Bus Tour: Westlake and Cuyahoga Falls, OH. The Family “Research” Council, an SPLC-certified hate group, continues its Values Bus Tour of Ohio. Today, the tour goes to the Cleveland suburb of Westlake for morning services at Church on the Rise. The bus will be there from 9:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. The bus then departs for an Akron Tea Party “Rescue America Tax Day Rally” at Fall River Square in Cuyahoga Falls. That rally features “Joe the Plumber” (Samuel Wurzelbacher, who is running for Congress to represent the heavily gerrymandered district that stretches from Toledo nearly to Cleveland) and Rep. Jim Renacci (R-OH). That rally goes from 3:00 to 6:00 p.m.

Scott Livley, Brian Camenker, Don Feder Speak at Tea Party Rally: Boston, MA. The SPLC’s list of anti-gay hate groups will be well represented at today’s Patriots’ Day Rally on Boston Commons today, sponsored by the Massachusetts Tea Party. MassResistance’s Brian Camenker and Abiding Truth Ministry’s Scott Lively, and Don Feder (who once described himself as making Atilla the Hunn look like a “a limousine liberal”) are listed as featured speakers. The keynote speaker will be Texas GOP Congressman (and LaBarbara Award winner) Louie Gohmert. Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnston had been on the bill as another keynote speaker, but he withdrew on Thursday after learning about Scott Lively’s participation. Johnson will be at a competing Worcester Tea Party rally instead. The Boston rally will soil the Boston Common Bandstand from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m.

TODAY’S AGENDA (OURS):
Protest of FRC Values Bus: Westlake and Cuyahoga Falls, OH. GetEqual Ohio and Freedom To Marry Ohio will meet that FRC Values Bus events today with counter-rallies at both locations. The first one at Westlake will take place in front of Church on the Rise, and will go from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. The second counter-rally will take in Cuyahoga Falls at Fall River Square from 3:00 to 6:00 p.m.

Pride Celebrations Today: Łódź, Poland; Miami Beach, FL; Piteå, Sweden

AIDS Walks Today: Honolulu, HI and New Haven, CT.

Other Events Today: Women’s Fest 2012, Camp Rehoboth, DE and Scandinavian Ski Pride, Hemsedal Norway.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Leonardo Da Vinci: 1452. Born in Vinci “at the third hour of the night,” Leonardo was apprenticed to the artist Andrea del Verrocchio in Florence at the age of fourteen. Early descriptions indicate that he was tall (at least 5’8″), athletic and extremely handsome. One contemporary described him as “an artist of outstanding physical beauty who displayed infinite grace in everything he did.” At the age of twenty-four, Da Vinci was among four people accused of sodomy, a very serious accusation because it carried the death penalty. Those charges were dismissed on the condition that there were no further accusations. When accusations were made again that same year, charges were dismissed again, perhaps because one of those charged may have been linked with the powerful Medici family.

Undoubtedly, those accusations made Da Vinci very cautious, even in Florence where, despite those charges,  homosexuality was somewhat more tolerated than elsewhere (so much so that in Germany, the word Florenzer became slang for homosexual.) While there is no further contemporary mention of Da Vinci’s sexuality, it was generally known that the life-long bachelor was particularly fond of and generous with his handsome male pupils, some of whom may have inspired some of Da Vinci’s erotic sketches. Later historians mostly assumed that he was gay, an assumption that gained greater currency in the nineteenth century when German, French and British authors began examining the new understanding of what was to be called inversion, uranism, and, finally, homosexuality. Whenever nineteenth century authors sought examples of inverts in history, Da Vinci’s name nearly always earned a prominent mention.

Bessie Smith: 1894. “The Empress of the Blues” was born in Chattanooga, the daughter of a laborer and part-time Baptist preacher. He died before she could remember him, and by the time she was nine, she had lost her mother and a brother. Her older brother had joined a Black Vaudeville troupe owned by Moses Stokes, which featured Ma Rainey as blues singer. In 1912, Bessie joined that same troupe, but as a dancer rather than a singer. While it’s believed that Rainey didn’t teach Smith to sing, (Smith had been singing on the streets of Chattanooga from a very young age), Rainey is credited with teaching Smith about stage presence. By 1913, Smith began singing professionally, and her career exploded in 1923 when she began recording for Columbia Records. By then, she was the highest-paid African-American entertainer in her day.

In 1923, she entered a very stormy marriage with Jack Gee, but he was unable to accommodate her show-biz life or her open bisexuality. They separated but never officially divorced. Meanwhile, she recorded hit after hit for Columbia, including “Downhearted Blues,” “St. Louis Blues”, “Empty Bed Blues,” and the tune she is perhaps best known for today, “Gimme a Pigfoot (And a Bottle of Beer).” By the end of the 1920’s, the arrival of the “talkies” meant the end of vaudeville, while the onset of the Great Depression brought about a collapse of the recording industry. Smith continued touring in clubs, but the going was tough. By 1933, she was recording for Okeh records, where she was paid a non-royalty fee of $37.50 for each side. Those were her last recordings. She was critically injured in a car accident in 1937, her right arm nearly severed in the accident. She died the following morning at the G.T. Thomas Afro-American Hospital in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Her funeral in Philadelphia drew 10,000 mourners. Her grave however remained unmarked; her estranged husband kept pocketing the money raised for a tombstone. She finally got her marker in 1970, courtesy of Janis Joplin.

George Platt Lynes: 1907. He first wanted to start a literary career after meeting Gertrude Stein and her circle in Paris. In 1927, he opened a bookstore in Englewood, New Jersey and took up photography so he could take pictures of his friends, and that is where his creative energies went. By 1932 Lynes opened his photography studio in New York and began exhibiting in the city’s art galleries. He earned commissions from the New York City Ballet, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Bergdorf Goodmans. After World War II, he moved to Hollywood, where he became chief photographer for Vogue and photographed such illuminaries as Katharine Hepburn, Gloria SWanson, Igor Stravinsky, and Thomas Mann. His work was an artistic success, but a financial failure. He moved back to New York, but was never able to re-establish the success he once had.

The passion he had for his photography can be best seen in the photos that he took which harkened back to his reason for taking up photography in the first place: intimate (usually nude) photos of friends, lovers, performers and models. The artist Paul Cadmus, who posed for Lynes, recalled how he “used flattery to make everyone feel so comfortable.” Those male nudes were never published, at least not in his lifetime. In the late 1940s, he transfered many of his negatives to Dr. Alfred Kinsey’s Institute for Sexual Research in Bloomington, Indiana, and destroyed much of the rest of his work just before dying of lung cancer in 1955. In 2011, Rizolli published George Platt Lynes: The Male Nudes, marking the first time many of his beloved nudes appeared in print.

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 Saturday, April 14

TODAY’S AGENDA (THEIRS):
Family “Research” Council’s Values Bus Tour:Perrysburg, OH. The Family “Research” Council, an SPLC-certified hate group, continues its Values Bus Tour of Ohio. Today, the tour continues north to the Toledo suburb of Perrysburg for a Tea Party rally at Hood Park on Front Street, along the banks of the Maumee. The Teasters will denounce socialism and Medicare cuts, among other things, from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

TODAY’S AGENDA (OURS):
Protest of FRC Values Bus: Findlay, OH. GetEqual Ohio and Freedom To Marry Ohio will meet that FRC Values Bus rally with a counter rally at the Hood Park. The counter rally goes from 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Łódź, Poland; Miami Beach, FL; Piteå, Sweden

AIDS Walks This Weekend: Des Moines, IA; Honolulu, HI; Laramie, WY; and New Haven, CT.

Other Events This Weekend: Women’s Fest 2012, Camp Rehoboth, DE; International Gay & Lesbian Travel Association’s Annual Global Convention, Florianopolis, Brazil; and Scandinavian Ski Pride, Hemsedal Norway.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Iowa’s Sexual Psychopath Law Goes Into Effect: 1955.The last time anyone saw eight-year-old Jimy Bremmer alive was on the night of August 31, 1954, when the Sioux City youth went to a friend’s house two doors down to play after dinner. He left his friend’s house at around 8:00 to go home, but he didn’t make that short distance. On September 29, his decomposed body was found in a pasture north of town. His crushed skill was several feet away from his decapitated body, and both hands were missing. A man was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment. He had confessed after being sent to a mental hospital and injected with Desoxyn and Seconal. (His conviction would be overturned in 1972.)

After several years of the red scare and pink scare dominating the evening news, Iowans became convinced that the state was crawling with sexual psychopaths. On January 31, 1955 Iowa legislators introduced a bill in the Iowa House of Representatives, the purpose of which was “to provide for the confinement of persons who are dangerous criminal sexual psychopaths.” The bill extended to anyone, whether they had been convicted of a crime or not. The bill passed both houses unanimously with very little discussion and went into effect on April 14, 1955.

On the evening of July 10, 1955, two year old Donna Sue Davis was kidnapped from her crib where she was sleeping. The kidnapper had come in through the open bedroom window, and left the house with Donna Sue through that same window. A neighbor saw the kidnapper flee and gave chase, but the kidnapper got away. The next morning her body was found in a cornfield outside of town. An autopsy revealed that the child had been raped and sodomized. Her left jaw was broken and there were several bruises and cigarette burns on her buttocks. She died of a massive brain hemorrhage from a severe blow to the head. One itinerant farm hand was arrested, but investigators quickly ruled out the possibility that he committed the crime. Panic gripped Sioux Falls as hardware stores reported running out of padlocks. The Sioux City Journal on July 12 demanded that the city be made “the most feared town in American for the sex deviate.” With no other firm suspects to investigate, the police chief began a roundup of “known sex perverts.” On July 23, Gov. Leo Hoegh announced that a special ward at the state mental hospital in Mount Pleasant had been established to house them. Most of those “sex perverts,” it would turn out, were gay men who had not been charged with any crime. By the end of the year, thirty-three men had been committed, at least twenty of them from Sioux City. The Sioux City prosecutor declared, “At least word is out that they’re not welcome in Sioux City any more.”

Donna Sue’s killer was never found. The sexual psychopath law was finally repealed in 1977.

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?

Email of the Day

Oops. Not him this time.

Right now we’re under relentless attacks—that are draining us of critical resources that could be deployed in states and at the federal level to directly affect the future of marriage…. . . and these bullies think they can get away with it!

Friend, I know in my heart that they are wrong. They can’t get away with it, because you and those like you all across the country have stepped up time and time again.

But I urgently need you to stand with us today. So far, we have raised just $29,672 in this campaign. In order to respond to these latest attacks and continue to be effective throughout 2012, we NEED to reach our goal of $200,000 over the next several days. I know that a few of you reading this message can afford a gift of $5,000 or even $10,000 or more. If that is you, please consider what you can do to help at this pivotal moment.
But we’re all on the hook, responsible for how we use whatever resources we have.

If we stand united, we cannot be stopped. But if we don’t, our opponents will silence us one at a time until there is no one left to speak for marriage. So whether it’s $20 or $20,000, it’s important that we stand together in this battle.

Oh wait, that conspiratorial email didn’t come from Eugene Delgaudio. It’s from National Organization for Marriage’s Brian Brown. Lately I’ve been having trouble telling them apart.

The Daily Agenda for Friday, April 13

TODAY’S AGENDA (THEIRS):
Family “Research” Council’s Values Bus Tour: Findlay, OH. The Family “Research” Council, an SPLC-certified hate group, continues its Values Bus Tour of Ohio. Today, the tour goes north to Findlay for a rally at the Angels and Butterfly park behind the Outback STeakhouse off of I-75. The rally, which goes from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m, features Janet Folger Porter of Faith2Action; Pastor Andy Douglas of Christians for Constitutional Awareness; Linda Theis of Ohio ProLife Action, Connie Mackey, of Family “Research” Council and Genevieve Wood of The Heritage Foundation.

TODAY’S AGENDA (OURS):
Protest of FRC Values Bus: Findlay, OH. GetEqual Ohio and Freedom To Marry Ohio will meet that FRC Values Bus rally with a counter rally at the Findlay Implement Co. parking lot, 1640 North Ridge Rd. They are asking people to arrive at 5:15 p.m.

Book Discussion of “Flagrant Conduct” and Lawrence v Texas: Washington, D.C. Author Dale Carpenter will be at the Politics and Prose bookstore this evening to discuss his new book,Flagrant Conduct: The Story of Lawrence v. Texas, which gives a very interesting and never before told behind-the-scenes account of the events leading up to the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 2003 decision striking down sodomy laws nationwide. Carpenter, a professor of civil rights and civil liberties law at the University of Minnesota Law School, will discuss the book and the case with The Daily Dish blogger Andrew Sullivan tonight at 7:00 p.m. Politics and Prose is located at 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Łódź, Poland; Miami Beach, FL; Piteå, Sweden

AIDS Walks This Weekend: Des Moines, IA; Honolulu, HI; Laramie, WY; and New Haven, CT.

Other Events This Weekend: Women’s Fest 2012, Camp Rehoboth, DE; International Gay & Lesbian Travel Association’s Annual Global Convention, Florianopolis, Brazil; and Scandinavian Ski Pride, Hemsedal Norway.

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?

Red Starbursts and individual uniqueness

It’s Friday and time for some totally irrelevant fun…

We are all unique individuals… but there are times I’d prefer to be a bit less unique. And as I sit here with a packet of Starburst candies, I’m reminded of one of my peculiarities.

I have physical oddity. It seems that red Starbursts (cherry flavor) make my scalp sweat. Not just a little dampness in the direct sun, but hair dampening sweat. As best I can tell, no other candy or food item has this result, and no other Starbursts flavor or color does this. And as I’ve never met another person who experienced this phenomenon (and I suspect that most people think I’m nuts if I mention it) I guess this is one of those things that is so rare as to be virtually unique to me.

Being gay (as many of you are) places you in a minority. But what peculiarities make you unique?

The Daily Agenda for Thursday, April 12

TODAY’S AGENDA (THEIRS):
Family “Research” Council’s Values Bus Tour: Middletown (Franklin) and Dayton, OH. The Family “Research” Council, an SPLC-certified hate group, continues its Values Bus Tour of Ohio. Today, the tour heads edges its way north for a rally just off the Interstate outside of Middletown, at the Middletown Christian School. That rally goes from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.

Then the bus packs up and continues on up the road to Dayton, where they will join the Dayton Tea Party Tax Day Forum. That will take place at the Hara Conference and Exhibition Center on Shiloh Springs Road from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m.

TODAY’S AGENDA (OURS):
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Łódź, Poland; Miami Beach, FL; Piteå, Sweden

AIDS Walks This Weekend: Des Moines, IA; Honolulu, HI; Laramie, WY; and New Haven, CT.

Other Evens This Weekend: Women’s Fest 2012, Camp Rehoboth, DE; International Gay & Lesbian Travel Association’s Annual Global Convention, Florianopolis, Brazil; and Scandinavian Ski Pride, Hemsedal Norway.

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?