Box Turtle Bulletin

The Daily Agenda for Monday, April 9

TODAY’S AGENDA: (THEIRS)
Family “Research” Council’s Values Bus Ohio Tour Begins: Steubenville, OH. The Family “Research” Council, an SPLC-certified hate group, kicks off it’s Values Bus Tour of Ohio today with the Heritage Foundation. The tour is part voter registration drive, and part propaganda tour, where they will disseminate “materials on defending life, marriage and religious liberty.” The tour’s first stop is at Steubenville’s Ft. Steuben Park, 120 S. 3rd St., from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m.

Tomorrow, the bus goes to Columbus for a noontime rally at the Ohio Statehouse, where they will be joined by Linda Harvey from Mission America (another SPLC anti-gay hate-group) and Janet Folger Porter from Faith 2 Action. That rally will be met with a counter rally, details of which you can find here.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Freud’s Letter to a Concerned Mother: 1935. The letter is often described as being to “an American mother,” perhaps because it was sent anonymously to the American sexologist Dr. Alfred Kinsey from “a grateful mother. Kinsey, in turn, shared it with the American Journal of Psychiatry, where it appeared in the April 1951 edition. The handwritten letter reads as follows:

April 9th, 1935.

Dear Mrs. ——

I gather from your letter that your son is a homosexual. I am most impressed by the fact that you do not mention this term yourself in your information about him. May I question you, why you avoid it? Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation, it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest men among them. (Plato, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc.) It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime and cruelty too. If you do not believe me, read the books of Havelock Ellis.

By asking me if I can help, you mean, I suppose, if I can abolish homosexuality and make normal heterosexuality take its place. The answer is, in a general way, we cannot promise to achieve it. In a certain number of cases we succeed in developing the blighted germs of heterosexual tendencies which are present in every homosexual, in the majority of cases it is no more possible. It is a question of the quality and the age of the individual. The result of treatment cannot be predicted.

What analysis can do for your son runs in a different line. If he is unhappy, neurotic, torn by conflicts, inhibited in his social life, analysis may bring him harmony, peace of mind, full efficiency, whether he remains a homosexual or gets changed. If you make up your mind he should have analysis with me — I don’t expect you will –, he has to come over to Vienna. I have no intention of leaving here. However, don’t neglect to give me your answer.

Sincerely yours with kind wishes,
Freud.

P. S. I did not find it difficult to read your handwriting. Hope you will not find my writing and my English a harder task.

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 Daily Agenda for Easter Sunday

J.C. Leyendecker’s cover for the Saturday Evening Post, April 11, 1925 (Click to enlarge)

So here’s some trivia for you. In most of the world, Easter Sunday, which commemorates the resurrection of Jesus, typically goes by a name derived from the Greek (Paskha), which in turn comes from the Hebrew (Pesaḥ), which is Hebrew for Passover. Early Christianity replaced the Passover lamb with “the Lamb of God” and kept the name for their own commemoration of the Resurrection. The Greek Πάσχα was quickly transliterated into the Latin Pascha, and together those two languages gave rise to the modern Pashkë (Albanian,) Påske (Danish and Norwegian), Pasen (Dutch), Pääsiäinen (Finnish), Pâques (French), Pascua (Galician), Pak (Haitian Creole), Páskar (Icelandic), Pasqua (Italian), Páscoa (Portuguese), Paşti (Romanian), Πасха (Pascha, Russian), Påsk (Swedish), Paskalya (Turkish), Πаска (Paska, Ukrainian), Phục sinh (Vietnamese), and Pasg (Welsh). [Thanks, Google Translate!]

But in the good old King James English, we call it Easter, which has nothing to do with the Paschal sacrifice or Passover or any of that. The Old English word Ēastre or Ēostre refers to the month of the Germanic calendar which the Venerable Bede in the Eighth century said was named for the Anglo-Saxon goddess Ēostre. (Easter in modern German is rendered as Ostern,) Which means that in the Lord’s Red-Letter English, we have long since taken the Paschal Lamb out of Pascha and replaced it with Easter eggs, bunnies, bonnets, and Peeps. Happy Easter everyone!

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Celebrations This Weekend: Spring Diversity, Eureka Springs, AR; Mr. Gay World, Johannesburg, South Africa; White Party, Palm Springs CA

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Sean Kennedy: 1987. He would have been twenty-five today if he hadn’t been killed on May 16, 2007 at about 3:45 a.m. as he left a local bar in Greenville, South Carolina. According to local news reports at the time, the sheriff’s department said that Stephen Andrew Moller got out his his car, walked up to Sean, shouted comments about Sean’s sexual orientation, and punched him hard enough to break several facial bones. When Sean fell, his head hit the pavement so hard that his brain separated from his brain stem. Fifteen minutes later, one of Sean’s friends received a voice mail from Moller:

Hey. (laughter) Whoa stop. (laughter) Hey, I was just wondering how your boyfriend’s feeling right about now. (laughter) (??) knocked the fuck out. (laughter). The fucking faggot. He ought to never stick his mother-fucking nose (??) Where are you going? Just a minute. (laughter). Yea boy, your boy is knocked out, man. The motherfucker. Tell him he owes me $500.00 for breaking my goddamn hand on his teeth that fucking bitch.

Greenville County sheriff’s office arrested Moller as part of a homicide investigation; his arrest warrant described the act as “a result of the defendant not liking the sexual identity of the victim.” But by the time the case reached the grand jury in October, the indictment was reduced to involuntary manslaughter, for which South Carolina law set the maximum penalty at five years. Moller’s attorney argued that Moller “had no idea (Sean) was gay until after the fact. It’s just a freak incident that should never have happened.”

As part of a plea deal, Moller was sentenced to three years, minus seven months for time served. After getting his GED, Moller’s sentenced was reduced again and he was released after just 13 months, his “goddamn hand” having healed quite nicely in the meantime.

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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Rest in Peace, Thomas Kinkade

Thomas Kinkade, painter of treacly images of cottages in the woods surrounded by lush plants and strategic sourceless beams of light, has passed. He was 54.

The self described “Painter of Light” was, perhaps, the best known living artist of the past decade or so. And while his paintings were not my taste, if you like schmaltz then Kinkade was your man. Viewing his work almost entirely as a commercial enterprise, Kinkade painted not from his vision but rather to give the masses what they wanted. He found no artistic inconsistency with painting one of his cottage in the woods scenes and then adding in Snow White. But then, I don’t find it inconsistent either.

My interest in Kinkade, and for commenting on his passing, is purely personal. I wearied of hearing, “oh, like the painter” upon introducing myself and had to force myself not to react when some poor soul walked away thinking my first name was Thomas. Had they confused me with Val or Shannon, I might be a bit less irritated.

But I will say that at least he didn’t paint on velvet and as best I can tell he never included either Elvis or Marilyn in any of his pictures. And, other than to those who sought to attach their wagon to the Kinkade syrup-train, he seems not to have caused much harm.

Kinkade is described as a devoted Christian (Church of the Nazarene) but seems to be more of the Happy Christian variety than the God’s Gunna Get Ya bunch. And other than a wee drinking problem and a string of unhappy investors, he was mostly liked and admired and from all accounts was a good husband and father.

I wish him peace wherever he may be, and offer condolences to his family.

[And to those who really insist on asking: yes. Other than a few odd exceptions, all the Kincaids – with all the various spellings of the name – are related (though perhaps somewhat distantly). So I get to count Thomas, and the far more objectionable Cliff, as kin. The distant “no relation” kind of kin, but entitled to the same tartan nevertheless.]

The Daily Agenda for Saturday, April 7

I can really be so gemisht sometimes. I have it in my goyish calendar that today is the first day of Passover. It is the first full day of Passover, but I really should know better. In fact, I do know better. Which is why I should have noted in yesterday’s Agenda that Passover begins at sundown yesterday. And I should have done that yesterday because the beginning of Passover is the most important part of Passover — indeed, perhaps the most solemn occasion in the entire Jewish calendar — when the traditional Seder takes place. And which is why yesterday I should have wished you Chag Sameach, a joyous festival. Yesterday.

Anyway, Happy Pesach, belatedly.

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Harry Hay Centennial Celebration: Los Angeles. At 11:a.m., there will be a ceremony at the foot of the Cove Avenue Steps on Silver Lake Blvd. recognizing the site as a historic place by the City of Los Angeles. The staircase leads up the the cul-de-sac where LGBT-rights pioneer Harry Hays lived. It was at his home where on November 11, 1950, a group met to form the Mattachine Society. Those steps will be dedicated as “The Mattachine Steps” to mark the historic site. Following the dedication, the Radical Faeries will host a picnic in an adjoining park overlooking the Silver Lake Reservoir (east side).

Then, at 2:30, there will be a book signing and reading of Stuart Timmon’s newly updated biography, The Trouble with Harry Hay, at Stories bookstore, 1716 Sunset Blvd, in Echo Park.

Celebrations This Weekend: Spring Diversity, Eureka Springs, AR; Mr. Gay World, Johannesburg, South Africa; White Party, Palm Springs CA

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Harry Hay: 1912. Today is the centenary of Harry Hay, who founded the Mattachine Society which became the first successful society of gay men and women. It wasn’t the first such society however; that distinction went to the short-lived Chicago Society for Human Rights, which didn’t last a year (See Dec 10). But Hay wound up holding a curious and tenuous link between the Chicago group and the Mattachines when, in 1930, at the age of 17:

I enticed an “older” gentleman (he must have been at least 33 ) to “bring me out” by finagling his picking me up in Los Angeles’s notorious Pershing Square. Poor guy–he was appalled to discover, subsequently, that I was both a virgin and jailbait. Champ Simmons didn’t really turn me on, but he was a very decent human being; he was gentle and kind and taught me a great deal.

…Champ, the guy I seduced into picking me up and bringing me out into the gay world, had himself been brought out by a guy who was a member of that Chicago group. So I first heard about that group only a few years after its sad end. My impression was that the society was primarily a social thing. But just the idea of gay people getting together at all, in more than a daisy chain, was an eye-opener of an idea. Champ passed it on to me as if it were too dangerous; the failure of the Chicago group should be a direct warning to anybody trying to do anything like that again.

Hay wasn’t put off by dangerous ideas, a propensity which would always mark him as a controversial figure throughout his life. He joined the Communist Party in 1934, and remained a member until the early 1950s. He also became active in theater, where he briefly became the lover of actor Will Greer. In 1938, he married at the urging of his therapist and party members. He and his wife adopted two daughters, but the couple divorced in 1951.

In 1948, Hay went to a party at USC with several other gay men who supported the presidential campaign of Progressive Party candidate Henry Wallace. It was at that party that Hay conceived of organizing a gay activist group. His first efforts to found the “Bachelors for Wallace” failed, but Hay stuck with the idea of creating an organization specifically for gay people. Finally, on November 11, 1950, Hay and several others met at Hay’s home for the first meeting of “The Society of Fools”, which later became the Mattachine Society, named after the Medieval French secret societies of masked men whose anonymity allowed them to criticize the ruling monarchs. As the Mattachine Society got off the ground, Hay left the Communist Party, which didn’t allow gays to be members.

By 1953, the Society grew to over 2,000 members in Southern California. And also by 1953, Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s red and pink scares were in full swing. With homosexuality being equated with subversion and treason, many Mattachine members became concerned about the communist connections of some of the Mattachine’s founders, principally, Hay. When Hal Call and others Mattachine members from San Francisco sought to amend the Mattachine’s constitution to oppose “subversive elements” and to affirm that members were loyal to the U.S., Hay resigned, he said later, to save the Society from investigations related to the Red Scare. (In 1955, Hay would, in fact, be called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee.)

In the 1960s, Hay and his partner, John Bernside, became involved again with gay activism, helping to found the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations (NACHO), the Los Angeles chapter of the Gay Liberation Front, and, in 1979, a gay spirituality movement called the Radical Fairies. It was during this time when his opposition to assimilationist attitudes within the gay community really began to stand out:

“We pulled ugly green frog skin of heterosexual conformity over us, and that’s how we got through school with a full set of teeth,” Hay once explained. “We know how to live through their eyes. We can always play their games, but are we denying ourselves by doing this? If you’re going to carry the skin of conformity over you, you are going to suppress the beautiful prince or princess within you.”

Hay’s concept of homosexuality, it could be said, was more of a nineteenth century conception than a twentieth century one. He was enamored with the concepts of androgyny, with some of his ideas being similar to the nineteenth-century formulation of homosexuality being a “third sex.” He was influenced by Edward Carpenter, who wrote of gay people as a distinct, well-defined group with its own unique ideals that set if apart from society. Carpenter also wrote of “Greek love” and its pederastic ideals. This perhaps explains how Hay’s radical and anti-assimilationist politics could reach its most controversial limits when, in the early 1980s, he protested NAMBLA’s exclusion from LGBT organizations and activities. He was forcibly removed from the Los Angeles pride parade in 1986 when he showed up with a sign reading “NAMBLA walks with me.” Even some of Hay’s most dedicated supporters and closest friends couldn’t abide this stance. The majority of the gay community had grown, matured, and move in directions that Hays couldn’t accept.

This is perhaps the most difficult aspect of Hay’s legacy that we are left to grapple with. And yet, without Hay’s extremely radical idea — radical for 1950 — that gay people should come together from out of the shadows and begin to ask for simple things like the freedom to gather in bars or not to be arrested or not to have their newsletters and magazines confiscated by the post office, it’s hard to know how long the fruition of a far more radical idea would have been delayed — the extremely radical, impossible-to-fathom-in-1950 idea that gays and lesbians could assimilate, that they could become police officers, run businesses, publish newspapers, serve in the military, run for office, marry, raise children, join PTAs and churches and car pools and homeowners associations and march openly in parades down the middle of public streets in June, and do all of those things without hiding or retreating back into the closet. If Hay saw himself as the sworn enemy of assimilation, his pioneering efforts in 1950 were ultimately what made that assimilation possible. And for that, I think that perhaps the late Paul Varnell put it best:

Hay may have been wrong about almost everything. But in the end we do not insist that founders have the right answers, not even ask the right questions. We can honor them as founders and leave it at that.

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?

PBS Reports on Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill

PBS Newhour featured the above segment last night. It doesn’t cover much new ground for regular readers here at BTB (and special kudos to PBS for correctly stating this time that the Anti-Homosexuality Bill still carries the death penalty.) The more interesting story, by far, is this blog post by Fred de Sam Lazaro describing the difficulty of trying to get anyone in the government to go on camera to talk about the bill:

How Uganda’s legislation fares this time around is anyone’s guess. As journalists “parachuting in” to cover it, our recent experience may well serve as a proxy for how the legislation — or homosexuality in general — has become a third rail nobody wants to touch.

The bill’s author, David Bahati, agreed to an interview when finally reached on his cell phone. Perhaps he just wanted to get rid of the call. He neither showed up nor answered the phone after that. The U.S. Embassy declined our request for an interview. We were able to talk to Uganda’s most prominent gay rights activist, Frank Mugisha, but you’ll find no pictures in our report of any social congregation in Uganda’s LGBT community. We were told there are no usual hangouts or clubs any more in a country where the proposed legislation would penalize not just being homosexual but also a failure to report such individuals.

Our fixer was no help. For parachute journalists like my team (producer Nikki See and cameraman Tom Adair), fixers play a critical role. Usually experienced local journalists, fixers use their connections to set up a story before you arrive — pursuing all angles and finding alternatives; a different member of Parliament in place of Bahati, for instance. Unfortunately, we arrived in Uganda to few such arrangements and no back-ups.

NOM Needs A Bigger Mike

The National Organization for Marriage is upset over the New York Times editorial calling NOM out for its race-baiting tactics. Those tactics were revealed in a document dump resulting from  a court case in Maine in which NOM has been fighting to circumvent that state’s financial disclosure law. The Times labeled NOM’s tactics as a “poisonous political approach.” NOM’s Brian Brown responded with this fundraising plea to supporters:

I promise you this: Marriage is the cause that unites people of all faiths, races and political backgrounds. And nothing The New York Times or anyone else can say will stop us from coming together to defend marriage against these strategically timed attacks designed to distract us from the critical work we need to be doing this year.

One has to wonder at the level of self-delusion it must take to put out this kind of statement with a straight face. NOM’s own strategy documents talked about dividing gays from African-Americans, gays from Latinos, and even Latinos from other Americans as long as it means they’re anti-gay (NOM is actually plotting against Latino’s assimilation!). NOM;s strategy even calls for dividing children from their own gay parents. And NOM talks of uniting people? This is an organization which is, by its own admission, hell-bent on wedging and dividing everyone nine ways to Sunday.

Now Brian Brown followed that with this letter to the editor of the Washington Times, complaining that their critic’s “end game” is “(s)ilencing the voices of millions of Americans.” But wait. All we did was put the things they whisper to each other in front of a megaphone. It’s their own words that blew up in their faces. Silence them? Puhleeze! That’s the last thing we want to do.

FRC VP Warns of Third Party If GOP Embraces Marriage Equality

A recent Politico article argues that same-sex marriage has become a “dead issue” among many Republicans. I beg to differ, myself, although Politico says that House Republican leadership has “quietly worked behind the scenes to kill amendments that reaffirm opposition to same-sex unions.” Family “Research” Council’s vice president Tom McClusky isn’t having it, telling the Janet Mefferd Show:

Mefferd: If the GOP continues to go in a direction where they will not get on the side of traditional marriage and be willing to fight for it, what do Christians do?

McClusky: I think you will—there are always threats of a third party—I think if something like that were to happen you would see a third party. It would be made up of more than just disgruntled conservative Republicans. On the marriage issue there’s African Americans who normally vote Democratic, there’s Hispanics, and the same on the life issue, and there are a lot of good Democrats like say in the state legislature of New York who fought against same-sex marriage and Maryland who tried to, I think what you see is a lot of people drifting from both parties into a third party or some sort of independent party that is more pro-life and pro-marriage.

McClusky also said that “Societies that try to do away with marriage, they crumble, they fall apart.” Well, then. It’s a good thing we’re trying to expand marriage and not do away with it.

[via Right Wing Watch]

The Daily Agenda for Friday, April 6

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Celebrations This Weekend: Spring Diversity, Eureka Springs, AR; Mr. Gay World, Johannesburg, South Africa; White Party, Palm Springs CA

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Study of 100 Homosexuals: 1957. There had been a string of high profile arrests of very prominent and well-known men in Britain in the early 1950s, including Lord Montagu, his cousin, Maj. Michael Pitt-Rivers, and journalist Peter Wildeblood,  all of whom had been charged and convicted of homosexual offenses. Their arrests opened the debate over whether homosexual acts between consenting adults should remain criminalized. In 1954, the Home Secretary, David Maxwell-Fyfe, convened a committee to study the issue under the leadership of Lord John Wolfenden, and they would study the question for the next three years. The multi-disciplined committee, which included theologians, psychiatrists, educators, judges, lawyers, and several other leading figures, was tasked with reviewing the medical, legal, and moral aspects of homosexuality (along with prostitution, as laws forbidding it were also open for discussion.)

One of the psychiatrists on that committee was Dr. Desmond Curran of the Department of Psychiatry at St. George’s Hospital in London. Curran and fellow researcher Dr. Denis Parr, took on the task of preparing a study of 100 gay men, which appeared in the April 6, 1957 edition of the British Medical Journal titled “Homosexuality: An Analysis of 100 Male Cases Seen in Private Practice.”

The men described in this paper were referred to the authors for evaluation and treatment for the following reasons:

• Criminal charge or executive consequences thereof: 30
• Worry over homosexual propensities (for example, “Can I change?”) as the presenting complaint: 25
• Various psychological problems (for example, depression, excessive drinking) rather than direct worry over homosexuality as the presenting complaint: 22
• Pressure from friends or relatives: 12
• Marital difficulties, including impotence: 5
• Homosexual jealousy or deprivation reactions: 2
• Executive problems: 2
• Fear of scandal arising from homosexual acts: 2

The authors noted that homosexuality was a criminal offense in Britain in three very distinct ways. The crime of “buggery,” which was generally interpreted as penetrative anal intercourse, carried a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. The crimes of “indecent assault” and “gross indecency” provided maximum penalties of ten years and two years respectively. “Indecent assault” generally was used for sexual behavior with minors under the age of 16, while “gross indecency” was any contact or exposure of genitalia for sexual excitement.

One problem with the published research on gay men was that virtually all of it was based on clinical or criminal populations, which Curran and Parr acknowledged would not necessarily be representative of the general population of gay men. In their report, they acknowledged that their sample would likely exhibit higher rates of psychiatric problems or criminal recidivism. But when they looked into the files of these 100 men who had been referred to their practice, the authors observed:

…[I]n spite of the probability that any group of homosexuals referred to a psychiatrist might be expected to be heavily weighted in the direction of psychiatric abnormality, no fewer than 51 % were considered to be free from gross personality disorder, neurosis, or psychosis during their adult lives. Only one was certifiably defective and none certifiably insane. They included a number of important and talented individuals of high integrity, successful, efficient, and respected members of the community. Only two had been on any criminal charge other than homosexuality. Very few showed the traditional “pansy” picture of homosexuals; indeed, only 21 were noted to have at all obvious homosexual personality traits, only one of these being a paedophiliac.

As for the treatment programs the men underwent:

The objects of treatment can be arbitrarily divided under four main headings : (1) change in direction of the sex urge, (2) greater continence, (3) greater discretion, and (4) better adaptation to the sexual problem and to life in general.

The authors don’t go into much detail of what kind of treatment the men underwent, saying simply that “treatment consists in a mixture of physical, psychological, social, and environmental measures, in varying proportions according to the case.” In general, it appears to have been confined to psychotherapy or simple  counseling, although in some cases the “prescription of medications or environmental adjustments” were noted. As for the attempts at changing sexual orientation, the results weren’t very encouraging:

Of the 59 patients about whom sufficient information was available, 9 (or roughly 1 in 6) reported less intense homosexual feelings, or increased capacity for heterosexual arousal, 3 became more homosexual in preference than when first seen, and no change, even of a minor order, was found in the sexual orientations of the other 47. When a change was found it often amounted only to a slight alteration in the balance of masturbatory fantasies.

Eight of the nine who claimed a “slight alteration” toward heterosexuality were classified as bisexual or “predominately” homosexual (as distinct from “100% homosexual”). What isn’t stated in the article is how many of those who claimed to have experience a “slight alteration” were among the thirty men who faced criminal charges. This would be important; the authors noted elsewhere in their paper that those who were criminally charged had “come in the hope of establishing medical reasons for mitigating the rigours of the law.”

Since the prospect of “slight alteration” of homosexuality was minimal, the only other question remaining was whether there was anything intrinsically wrong with being gay. Curran and Parr found little evidence for it:

Only half the patients showed significant psychiatric abnormality other than their sexual deviation, and such associated abnormalities were often slight. Moreover, many of these abnormalities were explicable as a reaction to the difficulties of being homosexual. Symptomatic homosexuality was rare. If homosexuality is a disease (as has often been suggested), it is in a vast number of cases monosymptomatic, non-progressive, and compatible with subjective well-being and objective efficiency. In our series, both practising and non-practising homosexuals were on the whole successful and valuable members of society, quite unlike the popular conception of such persons as vicious, criminal, effete, or depraved. Only one-fifth were at all obviously ” pansy,” and we found no reason to regard most of the patients as physically, intellectually, or emotionally immature (unless the basic criterion for ” immaturity” is that of being homosexual-a circular argument).

This study, among others, would find its way into the Wolfenden Report later that year, which recommended that “homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in private should no longer be a criminal offence.” It would take Parliament another ten years to act on that recommendation.

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

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

The Daily Agenda for Thursday, April 5

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Celebrations This Weekend: Spring Diversity, Eureka Springs, AK; Mr. Gay World, Johannesburg, South Africa; White Party, Palm Springs CA

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Oscar Wilde Loses Criminal Libel Case: 1895. It had been a bad year for the acclaimed author, and the year was barely a quarter of the way through. In February, Wilde was dining at the Albermarle Club when the Marquess of Queensbury left a calling card with the porter. It read, “For Oscar Wilde posing as a somdomite.” The misspelling may have been the product of Queensbury’s rage over the relationship between His son Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas and Wilde. Lord Alfred refused to end it despite Queensbury’s arguments and threats, including the threat to publicly expose Wilde which he accomplished with that calling card. Friends urged Wilde to ignore it, but Wilde felt that such an insult required that he respond vigorously with a lawsuit against Queensbury for criminal libel. If he didn’t, he reasoned, it would be tantamount to admitting the truth, something that Wilde knew would be disastrous, not only to his reputation and career, but also to his very freedom. After all, homosexuality was a criminal offense.

Unfortunately, Wilde’s libel case collapsed on the second day of the sensational trial, when Wilde took the stand and Queensbury’s lawyer asked whether he had ever kissed a young man named Walter Grainger. Wilde replied, “Oh, dear no. He was a peculiarly plain boy. He was, unfortunately, extremely ugly. I pitied him for it.” Queesnbury’s lawyer pounced on Wilde’s reason: it wasn’t that Wilde didn’t like kissing men, but that he didn’t want to kiss this particular man because Wilde found him ugly. That was on April 4. The next day, Queensbury’s lawyer announced that he planned to call several male prostitutes to testify against Wilde. Wilde’s lawyer, after conferring with Wilde, asked the court to drop the charges and return a verdict of “not guilty” against Queensbury. But if Queensbury was not guilty of libel when he accused Wilde of “posing as a sodomite,” then that meant under English law that Queensbury’s statement, as the judge announced, “is true in fact and substance, and that the publication is for the public benefit.”

With that verdict as evidence, Wilde was arrested and charged with gross indecency the very next day, April 6. The first trial ended in a hung jury, but the second resulted in a guilty verdict and a sentence of two years at hard labor, the maximum sentence allowed by law.

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?

Tilting at homosexual agendas

At this point they came in sight of thirty forty windmills that there are on plain, and as soon as Don Quixote saw them he said to his squire, “Fortune is arranging matters for us better than we could have shaped our desires ourselves, for look there, friend Sancho Panza, where thirty or more monstrous giants present themselves, all of whom I mean to engage in battle and slay, and with whose spoils we shall begin to make our fortunes; for this is righteous warfare, and it is God’s good service to sweep so evil a breed from off the face of the earth.”

“What giants?” said Sancho Panza.

“Those thou seest there,” answered his master, “with the long arms, and some have them nearly two leagues long.”

“Look, your worship,” said Sancho; “what we see there are not giants but windmills, and what seem to be their arms are the sails that turned by the wind make the millstone go.”

“It is easy to see,” replied Don Quixote, “that thou art not used to this business of adventures; those are giants; and if thou art afraid, away with thee out of this and betake thyself to prayer while I engage them in fierce and unequal combat.”

The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, Miguel de Cervantes, 1605

Quixote’s impetus was the revival of a better age, a desire to resurrect chivalry and bring about decency and goodness. It was this aspiration that addled his thinking and blinded him, leaving him a fool that left chaos and harm in his wake.

But reclaiming the time past is a motivation that pales to that of fearing the time to come.

Fear is a awesome thing. It can impel feats of heroism to crush a threat or leave one frozen and whimpering. But it’s greatest power is in its ability to project itself atop reality and actualize what is at heart only a threatening possibility. If unchecked, a fear of rejection can block out any voices of acceptance, amidst the fear of failure even the greatest of accomplishments can’t be appreciated due to imperfections real or imagined.

Add hatred to the mix and you have a monstrous self-perpetuating recipe for delusion: inventing and actualizing all that you dread as the intentions and achievements of those whom you see as your enemy.

And SPLC Hate Group Mission America’s president, Linda Harvey, illustrates this beautifully in her latest article, 10 reasons to walk out on ‘Day of Silence’. There is little question that hatred is an emotion that drives Harvey and feeds her emotions. But it also provides an easy target for her fear.

Linda worries about a world in which what she holds dear is no longer valued or respected. She fears that her children, or theirs, may no longer find the structure of family (as Linda knows it), community, church, and society to be worth working for and that civilization will dissolve into chaos and cruelty. And Linda is downright scared about what it means that her deity who is all powerful and about whom she is absolutely certain suddenly seems either incapable or unwilling to unleash his power and illustrate that Linda is right, leaving her to make claims on his behalf without knowing whether he will back them up for her.

And so, needing some source for all this catastrophe, Linda turns to hate which provide The Homosexual Agenda. And in Linda’s fevered quaking brain, The Homosexuals Agenda is defined to be whatever she fears. Any relationship to reality is inconsequential and any who suggest that she may be seeing windmills instead of giants are clearly ignorant about what homosexuals are really like, or afraid to go up against their powerful lobby.

We can learn a lot about what Linda fears from what she attributes to our community. For example, Linda fears that her views may not hold up well if they are inspected for kindness and consideration. She knows that the founder of her faith demands that she love her neighbor and she is terrified at taking an honest assessment of her character and lashes out against anything that might encourage her to do so.

7. There are legitimate lessons students should learn about prejudice and bias. But Day of Silence promoters deceptively link moral objections about homosexuality to racial discrimination or anti-Semitism in an attempt to legitimize the pro-homosexual agenda and portray homosexuals as perennial victims, while disguising the harmfulness and risk.

She is frightened that society has not only rejected her values as damaging – not just about homosexuality, but on a wide range of issues – but now is starting to question the motives and intent of those who espouse them. If the community sees her as lacking credibility or authority, then her ability to pass her values on to the next generation is much more difficult.

4. The Day of Silence encourages students to nurture prejudiced, hostile and bigoted attitudes against Christians and others with traditional moral beliefs, and to spread inaccurate and harmful information.

And she is scared that this diminishing respect will reach the place where she – and those who share her views – are seen not only as lacking authority but as an immoral and detrimental influence to perhaps be tolerated but to be watched and warned about. She fears that her views may put her in the same camp as neo-nazis, the Phelps Family, and the KKK.

And if this happens, she will have no ability to preach and evangelize her faith. If her faith is seen as a force for evil, then all of the work for the past 2,000 years has been undone.

10. The DOS message inhibits Christians from witnessing to their peers caught up in homosexuality or gender confusion. There is salvation through Jesus Christ and the hope of leaving this sin behind. Calling homosexuality a sin on the Day of Silence would be considered “hateful,” when it is actually God-honoring and respectful to the hearer.

I pity Linda. Her fears are going to come to pass. No, society will not crumble, values and morality will not be toss in the trash heap, and Christianity will not come to an end (though it’s going to go through a painful reevaluation). But the actual things she lists above are going to happen and Linda is going to be very very unhappy.

Before the end of her life, those who bitterly rail against The Homosexual Agenda are going to be mocked and reviled and preached against in pulpits across the nation by many of the same people who listen to her today and fear what she fears. Society will call her “bigot”, people will use her as an example for their children of what not to be, and her treasured Christianity – even many of those who are very conservative – will eventually find anti-gay animus untenable and abandon it, and Linda.

But she does provide a service – because by knowing what Linda fears, we can approach those who share her worry with words of comfort and assurance. We can let them know that we will not silence them, that we value family and don’t want to destroy it, that we don’t wish to silence or punish those whose theology does not support us, that we are good citizens, and that as they get to know us they’ll see that we are not a threat.

And many – those who are not motivated by hate – will happily find assurance and comfort. And though some may never fully include us, they will find peaceful coexistence to be painless.

It may be annoying to repeat for the umteen millionth time that we support free speech or that we aren’t trying to make any churches conduct any sacraments that they don’t want to do. Say it anyway. Because fear can block our voices and amplify hers and it will take patience to break through.

And it may be tempting to write those who fear off as “hateful bigots” and not make the effort. Make it anyway. Allaying fears is the decent thing to do – even to those who are lashing out in confusion and hurting us in the process.

Yes a few really are, like Linda, motivated by hatred and a heart filled with darkness, and incapable of listening. But most just need to hear the truth long enough until they are ready to accept it. Remember, in the 80’s Jerry Falwell was the nation’s foremost opponent of gay rights. But enough debates with enough people finally caused Jerry to rethink some positions and before he died he had reached the point where he accepted and supported pro-gay non-discrimination policies for work and housing.

Maybe… just maybe even Linda can be reached. No. That’s not likely. As her world crumbles and her image lies in disrepute, I predict she’ll take the Anita Bryant route and devolve into a pool of bitterness.

But we’ll share the truth with her anyway. It’s the right thing to do.

Federal Appeals Court Hears Arguments on DOMA’s Constitutionality

“Historic” is the word being tossed around as the First Circuit Court of Appeals hears oral arguments today in Boston on the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, the first time the question of DOMA’s constitutionality has been brought to the Appeals Court level.

The case before the First Circuit Court is actually the appeals of two cases which were combined at the trial court level, where DOMA was declared unconstitutional. The first case, Gill v. Office of Personnel Management, was brought on behalf of several same-sex married couples who are denied specific benefits which are routinely granted to opposite-sex married couples. The second case, Commonwealth of Massachusetts v US Dept. of Health and Human Services, was brought by the state of Massachusetts which argued that because of DOMA, the state was caught in a bind between discriminating against legally married same-sex couples or forfeiting federal funding for programs and benefits that married couples are otherwise entitled to.

Because oral arguments before the court involved two cases, and because the Obama administration announced that the Justice Department would not defend DOMA under heightened scrutiny, there were actually four sets of lawyers:

• Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders lawyer Mary Bonauto, representing the plaintiffs in the Gill case.
• Massachusetts Attorney General Civil Rights Division chief Maura Healey, representing Massachusetts in the Commonwealth case.
• Paul Clement, representing the House Republican leadership-controlled Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group which picked up the task of defending DOMA when the Justice Department announced that they would no longer do so.
• Acting Assistant Attorney General Stuart Delery, on behalf of the U.S. Justice Department.

Metro Weekly’s Chris Geidner attended the hearing and describes a surprise move from the Justice Department:

In a somewhat surprising move, the Department of Justice went a step further than it has in the past when Acting Assistant Attorney General Stuart Delery told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit today that DOJ would not be defending the constitutionality of the 1996 law regardless of the level of scrutiny the court found appropriate for reviewing a law like DOMA that classifies people based on sexual orientation. [Emphasis added]

When the Justice Department made their announcement in 2011, they argued that DOMA should be evaluated under heightened scrutiny, and under that standard, DOMA was indefensible because it discriminates against gay people. Now they are saying it is indefensible regardless of the level of scrutiny the court wishes to apply.

On Clement’s part, he made a rather startling argument before the court:

Although DOJ, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and GLAD argues that DOMA was motivated by anti-gay sentiment — “animus,” in court lingo — Clement argued that the impact of DOMA was not all bad.

“In some cases,” he said, “it’s a net financial benefit to the same-sex couple; in some, it’s not.”

Is he actually arguing that DOMA, in some cases, is in the best interests of same-sex couples? Because if he is, he’s taking a rather paternalistic stance. The issue is quite simple: that if straight couples have the option of deciding for themselves whether marriage is in their best interests, that same option should be applied to same-sex couples as well. Clement appears to have argued that only Congress can decide that for same-sex couples, while opposite-sex couples are granted the autonomy for making that decision themselves — even if it is to decide to enter a marriage only lasting 55-hours.

Washington Blade’s Chris Johnson, who also attended today’s hearing, added this observation about Clement’s arguments:

Clement offered for many reasons for why DOMA should be upheld — among them was saying the opposite-sex marriages advance governmental interests because they can produce “unplanned offspring” unlike same-sex couples.

…But Delery blasted the notion that procreation is a necessary component for any marriage — whether the union is opposite-sex or same-sex — saying straight couples can marry even if they don’t want and can’t have children.

“On the flip side, there are many children — hundreds of thousands, I think is the best estimate — who are being raised by same-sex parents in this country, and DOMA has the effect of denying those children the stability and protection that many of the federal benefits that we’re talking about in these cases would provide,” Delery said.

Those were just three of the issues argued today that really jumped out at me as significant. Chris Geidner’s write-up along with Chris Johnson’s both are worth reading to get the full measure of today’s oral arguments.

The Daily Agenda for Wednesday, April 4

TODAY’S AGENDA:
First Circuit Court of Appeals Hears Oral Arguments in DOMA Challenges: Boston, MA. Two cases will be argued today before a three-judge panel of the First Circuit Court of Appeals. The first case, Gill v. the Office of Personnel Management, was brought by several same-sex couples married in Massachusetts arguing that Section 3 of DOMA, which bars the Federal government from recognizing their marriage, violated their equal protection rights under the US Constitution. That case was combined with a second case, Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. United States Department of Health and Human Services, in which the state of Massachusetts sued the US government alleging that the state was placed in a position of either discriminating against a group of married residents on one hand or losing federal funding for programs in which the federal government dictates who is legally married on the other. On July 8, 2010, Federal District Judge Joseph Tauro ruled in both cases that section three of DOMA was unconstitutional. The Justice department then filed appeals to those decisions, but that was before President Barack Obama determined in 2011 that Section 3 of DOMA was unconstitutional and stopped defending the law in court. The House Republican leadership, with their 3-2 majority on the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG), decided to take up DOMA’s defense instead.

Participating in today’s oral arguments will be BLAG’s attorney, Paul Clement, who will try to defend DOMA’s constitutionality on behalf of Congress. Also participating will be the Justice Department’s Civil Division’s acting chief Stuart Delery, who will support the Justice Department’s finding that DOMA is unconstitutional under heightened scrutiny. Gay & Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) Civil Rights Project Director Mary Bonauto will argue on behalf of the Gill v OPM plaintiffs, and Massachusetts Attorney General’s Civil Rights section head Maura Healy will represent the commonwealth in their case. Oral arguments get underway at 10:00 a.m. before a three judge panel consisting of Chief Judge Sandra Lynch (a Clinton appointee), Judge Michael Boudin (appointed by George H.W. Bush) and Judge Juan Torruella (appointed by Ronald Reagan).

Celebrations This Weekend: Spring Diversity, Eureka Springs, AK; Mr. Gay World, Johannesburg, South Africa; White Party, Palm Springs CA

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Anita Bryant Endorses Imprisoning Gays For 20 Years: 1978. Newspapers across the country got a bit of a tease from Playboy, which released a few tantalizing tidbits from an interview with anti-gay activist Anita Bryant that would appear in the May 1978 edition. In a small preview released to the wire services, Bryant was quoted as suggesting that sending gays to prison for 20 years “might make them think twice, especially the young ones. Any time you water down the law, it just makes it easier for morality to be tolerated.” She went on: “Why make it easier for them? I think it only helps to condone it and make it easier for kids who wouldn’t be so concerned if it was a misdemeanor, whereas a felony might make them think twice, especially the younger ones.” When asked whether prison life might not be conducive to homosexuality, she answered, “They’ll have plenty of time to think. Just because prisons are corrupt and not doing the right thing in rehabilitation because they don’t have enough emphasis on spiritual emphasis doesn’t mean there should not be a strong punishment for that.”

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Anthony Perkins: 1932. Best known for his role as the sexually-ambiguous Norman Bates in the Alfred Hitchcock classic Psycho, Perkins’s own sexuality was the subject of rumors throughout his career. He shared a long-term relationship with fellow 1950s teen idol Tab Hunter (who discussed their time together in his 2005 memoir Tab Hunter Confidential) and another six-year relationship with dancer/choreographer Grover Dale before Perkins finally married Berry Berenson in 1973 in a bid to keep his name out of the scandal sheets. His gay friends though the marriage was bizarre, but Perkins seemed to have made the best of the situation, and by all accounts he was devoted to Berenson and their two children. But whether Perkins remained sexually faithful during the marriage, however, is doubtful. He died on September 12, 1992 from complications of AIDS with his wife by his side, two years after the National Enquirer outed him both as gay and as a person with AIDS. His public acknowledgment of his disease came posthumously in a statement dictated to his sons and released to the public. His private acknowledgement of his sexuality, he took with him to his grave. In a strange twist of fate, his widow died on September 11, 2001, on American Airlines flight 11 when it was hijacked and crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

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

Everybody's after me.

It wasn’t that long ago that the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) launched an online petition to have Public Advocate banned from the internet — banned from sending any emails at all. But now the Homosexual Lobby has upped the ante through their allies at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). According to the SPLC, Public Advocate is a hate group. They claim that our defense of true marriage and traditional morals is an act of hate and offensive to homosexuals. They have placed Public Advocate on its Watch List and announced to every radical homosexual and sympathizer that I have to be stopped at all cost.

With our looming victory in Tennessee and the growing fights for real marriage in Maryland, Washington and California — we have become Enemy #1. And now even silencing us is not safe enough for them. With the SPLC leading the charge, they want to destroy Public Advocate once and for all.

…With the SPLC’s declaration of war, the entire radical Liberal Lobby is taking aim at me. Big Media has taken SPLC’s side — repeating the same unfounded accusations and outright lies — while leaders in the Democrat Party have launched public smear campaigns against me personally. They want to destroy my credibility and my mission.

And so I have a personal request of you today Jim.

You get only one guess as to what that request is.

Are We There Yet?

I think this tweet from Andy Borowitz sums it up nicely:

Gov. Mitt Romney handily won all three Republican primaries this evening, including in Wisconsin, where Sen. Rick Santorum stood the best chance of pulling out a victory. The exit polls tell a familiar story: Santorum generally does better with the blue collar workers, rural voters, evangelicals, and those who believe that the most important quality in a candidate is being a “true conservative” and having a “strong moral character.” Everyone else, including those who just want the whole damn thing to be over already, went for Romney. One interesting item for pundits to ponder: in the Wisconsin exit poll, Santorum took the lion’s share of the vote among those who disapprove of Scott Walker as governor, who faces a recall election. Unfortunately for Santorum, they only made up 21% of the GOP primary voters.

Santorum was not on the D.C. ballot.

Meanwhile, a New York Times editorial today deplored the National Organization for Marriage’s “divide and discriminate” strategy, noting the document dump which revealed NOM’s secret strategy to drive wedges between African-Americans and gays, and between Latinos and gays. The Times went on:

Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich have publicly aligned themselves with the group and signed its pledge to work aggressively from the White House against same-sex marriage.

Now that the group’s poisonous political approach is out in the open, Mr. Romney and the others should be racing to make clear their disapproval.

We detect no stampede.

Liberian Leaflets Call for Vigilante Actions Against Gays

Liberia seems to be following a very familiar pattern. First, Liberia’s former first lady Sen. Jewel Howard Taylor (whose husband is being tried for war crimes in The Hague) introduced legislation making homosexuality a first degree felony, which reportedly could result in imprisonment of from ten years to life, or a death sentence at the discretion of the judge. Now fylers are being distributed in Monroeville, Liberia’s capital, by a group calling itself the Movement against Gays in Liberia (MOGAL), saying that those involved in gay rights “should not be given space to get a gulp of air“:

“Having conducted a comprehensive investigation, we are convinced that the below listed individuals are gays or supporters of the club who don’t mean well for our country,” the fliers read. “Therefore, we have agreed to go after them using all means in life.”

No individual members of MOGAL signed the flier. But Moses Tapleh, a 28-year-old resident of the main community where the flier was distributed, said he was affiliated with the group and stressed that its threats should be taken seriously.

“We will get to them one by one,” Tapleh said. “They want to spoil our country.”

Asked what specific action might be taken against those on the list, he said they could be subjected to “dangerous punishments” including “flogging and death.”

…The flier distributed in Liberia warned that the group would begin taking action shortly. “Let these individuals be aware that we are coming after them soon,” the flier reads. “We urge them to also begin saying their Lord’s prayers.”

Despite President Barack Obama’s announced policy stating that respecing the basic human rights of LGBT people will become a foreign policy focus, the AP reports that the Embassy in Monrovia has kept quiet, and is wary of being seen as “”seeking to impose Western values on more conservative African societies,” according to a spokesman in Washington.

It’s an almsot perfect déjà vu, isn’t it? First you introduce a bill calling for the potential death penalty for gay people, and then you orchestrate a vigilante campaign calling for public action to hunt gay people down and kill them. Liberia appears to be following a well-worn path.