Box Turtle Bulletin

Dutch Catholic Church allegedly castrated boys

Oh dear God.

BBC is reporting a story that is shocking beyond almost anything I can imagine hearing today:

Henk Hethuis, a pupil at a Catholic boarding school, was 18 when he told police in 1956 he was being abused by a Dutch monk. He was castrated on the instructions of Catholic priests, NRC Handelsblad said, and told this would “cure” him of his homosexuality.

The same happened to at least 10 of his schoolmates, the newspaper said.

If this is true, it goes beyond even the most heinous of crimes the Church has committed in the past century. To castrate the victims of their molestation illustrates a depravity that is nearly unfathomable. Truly, this is an evil act and if the Vatican knew of and sanctioned this act, it is an evil organization.

[okay, only 40% of NH Republican caucus voting to repeal marriage runs a close race in the “shocking” category. Wild day today]

NH is voting on marriage reversal

Unfortunately, I am not receiving the feed in a way that makes any intelligible understanding of the process possible. Adding to the difficulty, the New Hampshire legislature seems to vote on amendment numbers and on items on “page 246” which is fine for those voting but gives little information to us out here in the blogosphere.

So I cannot give any form of liveblog. Nor have i found anyone doing so.

Letting People Do Things They Used To Be Prohibited From Doing Is Just Like Slavery

Or something like that, according to NOM’s Brian Brown who likened his efforts to roll back marriage equality to those of abolitionists “in the late 1800s.”

NOM’s mininalist definition of victory

CNN’s Thomas Roberts (who is gay) interviewed Brian Brown, the National Organization for Marriage’s President, and Craig Stowell, the Republican co-chair of Stand Up for New Hampshire Families (our side), about the expected vote today in the New Hampshire House of Representatives.

Brown gave his usual posturing and nonsense.

(Segue alert: don’t you get tired of talking heads saying the same nonsense over and over regardless of the situation? I laughed out loud this week when Brooke on Dancing With the Has-Beens asked Martina Navratalova about her scores. Instead of the standard “we are really pleased, we went out and gave it our best and had a lot of fun, so we hope America votes for us” that every other contestant said, Navratalova said, “oh, it was the same score we got in rehearsals so I guess it is what it is.” Back to the topic.)

He laughably ranted about “special interest groups from out of state” (leaving the New Hampshirite the opportunity to point out that Brian isn’t a local boy) and claimed that 119 legislators were “booted out because they took it upon themselves to redefine marriage” (a notion scoffed at by the Republican leaders who ignored the issue for a year and a half because “we were elected to address the economy”).

But here’s the sentence you need to pay attention to.

“We’re looking forward to the vote today. I expect we’re going to have a majority here. I think it’s going to be historic to have a state vote and have a majority vote say, “this was wrong, we made a tragic mistake two years ago and we’re going to right that wrong” and I expect that we’re going to see a victory today.”

NOM’s definition of success is “a majority”. And, mind you, this for a bill that would simply revert to full civil union protections.

In terms of actual impact, if NOM eeks out “a majority”, we win. Governor Lynch will veto the bill (assuming it survives the Senate) and NOM will scramble to try and find enough votes to overturn the veto.

Keep in mind that Republicans have a veto-proof majority. If this is a party-line vote, then marriage equality would be reversed in that state. But Brown has conceded that NOM isn’t expecting a veto-proof majority. They aren’t expecting to win, they are just laying the framework to argue that a vote in which they lose all Democrats and a large number of Republicans and which will never become law is “historic”.

The vote has not yet happened. And in politics anything can happen. But NOM’s admission suggests that the vote today will be good news.

I can feel pity for Brian Brown. Surely it cuts at one’s sense of being to constantly spin and lie and pretend. When one goes into quiet contemplation, surely “winning” seems little consolation for giving up your integrity, and when you aren’t winning it must seem like an unfair trade. If you sell your soul, shouldn’t you at least get something for it?

As Thomas asked him,

Brian… what the National Organization of Marriage does to try and stand against the tide of equality, isn’t it exhausting?

Romney Wins It, Chicago Style

One of the most consistent trends in the GOP primaries has been Romney’s strength in urban areas. That matters in Illinois, where Chicago and its greater suburbs (the Illinois portion, at least) make up almost 9 million of Illinois’ 12.8 million statewide. This wasn’t an Illinois primary so much as it was a Chicago primary. In addition, there are another 1.5 million urban-and-suburbanites in Peoria, Champaign-Urbana, Springfield, and the the eastern metro area of St. Louis. With those kind of demographics, should come as no surprise that Romney did very well. Santorum dominated the rural areas, but when that is less than a fifth of the state’s population, that’s not much to draw on. This chart and map from CNN tells the story:

The exit polls also tell a story. First of all, 98% of the GOP electorate is white?

Okay. Delving deeper, Santorum continues to hold the blue-collar vote, winning among those who have no college education. Unfortunately for hom, they were only 16% of the GOP electorate. He also pulled in the votes from those earning less than $30,000 (only 10% of the GOP electorate). And he wins among those who are “very conservative” and who identify as white born-again Evangelicals, and again he lost among Catholics, including those who attend Mass weekly. And in heavily urban Illinois, all of those factors add up to a convincing win for Romney.

So it’s Romney’s night to celebrate, right? Well, okay, but he still needs to worry that his support is weak. Of the 42% of GOP voters who “have reservations” about their candidate, 54% of them ended up supporting Romney anyway. Another dark cloud: Voters in this exit poll were asked whether they prefer their candidate ultimately wins or the primary ends soon. Of the 66% who want their candidate to win no matter how long it takes, it was very nearly an easy split between Romney and Santorum, with a slight tilt to Romney. But of the 31% who just want it over now, 54% were Romney voters. In other words, those who want this over aren’t getting their wish.

The Daily Agenda for Wednesday, March 21

TODAY’S AGENDA:
New Hampshire House to Vote on Marriage Repeal: Concord, NH. The New Hampshire House of Representatives plan to vote today on a bill to repeal marriage equality. The vote is expected to pass the House, which the GOP holds with a veto-proof majority. The only question is whether they will have to votes to override a promised veto from Democratic Governor John Lynch.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Vadim Alekseevich Kozin: 1903. The great Russian tenor Vadim Alekseevich Kozin was celebrated throughout the Soviet Union in the 1920s for his recordings and concerts specializing in gypsy romances and love songs. He sang those songs, which he wrote himself, with such passion and tenderness that garnered him the title of the “Russian Orpheus.” He once gave a concert with American Paul Robeson and is said to have performed for Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin at the Tehran conference in 1943. But in those precarious days during Stalin’s rule, Kozin fell out of favor with the Kremlin and was arrested in 1944. He was sent to a prison camp near Magadan in the Russian Far East for five years for political offenses, “corruption of youth” and homosexuality. From that moment on, his songs disappeared from the radio and his public concerts came to an end.

After his release in 1950, Vadim resumed performing in local theaters in the Russian Far East and Siberia, but he was prohibited from performing in Moscow and Leningrad. It was during this period when Vadim began to keep a diary. “How I would like even just once,” he wrote of one unnamed man in 1956, “even for one instant, to look into the depth of those green eyes. Why does it happen like this? One person appears, and there is nothing else sacred in the world. He has filled it all himself. Who that person is, no one will ever find out.”

Kozin also used his diary to express his impatience with the official attitude toward homosexuality. “There is nothing unnatural in the life I want to live,” he wrote. “There is real, good friendship and complete mutual trust.” In another entry, he criticized actors with their “demonstration of fictional family values” and waving of party cards. “Do I have the moral right, with my defects, to see them that way? After torturous and long thought, I have realized that I do. They are much more rotten people.”

But Kozin worried that he risked further imprisonment. In another entry, he was alarmed by another actor while on tour. “His behavior will lead him to the camp. I must tell him that his sexual motives shouldn’t affect me at all. … I don’t want people to think about me like that again. I will try to suffer alone.”

Kozin’s fears were well-founded. He was arrested again in 1959 for homosexuality and was forced to write a humiliatingly detailed confession. Despite a brief revival in the 1980’s when his records were reissued, he was never officially rehabilitated. He died in Madagan in 1994 at the age of 91. Since his death, Vadim Kozin has become an icon in Russia’s gay community. One of his most famous songs is one called “Friendship” which, he later confided to a friend, was dedicated to another man:

“We are so close that words do not have to be repeated. Our tenderness and our friendship are stronger than passion and greater than love.”

Vadim Kozin with friends in Madagan in 1993:

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).

This your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?

The Catholic vote

Here’s a little factoid that missed my notice: (NYT: Bruni)

Exit polling suggests that [Santorum] lost the Catholic vote to Mitt Romney, a Mormon, by 7 percentage points in Michigan and by 13 in Ohio. These weren’t isolated cases. In primary after primary, more Catholics have gravitated to Romney than to Santorum (or, for that matter, to Newt Gingrich, a Catholic-come-lately who collaborated with his third wife to make a worshipful documentary about Pope John Paul II).

Seems the Catholics in America are just not all that fond of the idea of having the mandates of Rome dictated by a theocratic state. Probably because they are familiar with them.

The Baptist position on marriage

For the non-religious, this commentary may be meaningless. But those schooled in the minutia of denominational affiliation know that one of the pride points of being a Baptist is (or until recently has been) congregational independence.

Which makes Jimmy Carter’s position on civil marriage far more Baptist than that of the increasingly autocratic Southern Baptist Convention:

I personally think it is very fine for gay people to be married in civil ceremonies.

I draw the line, maybe arbitrarily, in requiring by law that churches must marry people. I’m a Baptist, and I believe that each congregation is autonomous and can govern its own affairs. So if a local Baptist church wants to accept gay members on an equal basis, which my church does by the way, then that is fine. If a church decides not to, then government laws shouldn’t require them to.

False promises at the Y

Like all of us, at some point Michael Keister has heard the following words of advice

It’s fun to stay at the Y.M.C.A
It’s fun to stay at the Y.M.C.A
They have everything for young men to enjoy
You can hang out with all the boys

It’s fun to stay at the Y.M.C.A.
It’s fun to stay at the Y.M.C.A.
You can get yourself clean you can have a good meal
You can do whatever you feel

And Keister took these words to heart. He also, it seems, believed that the YMCA is a “place that champions Christian values, such as decency, kindness, and fairness.” So Keister dragged his keister down to the local Y and signed up for gym membership and the associated shower, steam room, and sauna privileges.

But much to Keister’s dismay, he soon became subjected to unwanted attention. First there was one guy soaping up another in the open showers. And then there was the guy in the steamroom who showed Keister his erection and – apparently believing that he received some form of encouragement – proceeded to masturbate.

But the most disturbing incident is reported as follows: (Courthouse News)

“A short time later, after a workout, Keister entered the sauna. No one else was in the sauna when Keister entered.
“Soon, another man entered the sauna and sat down while Keister was reading a newspaper.
“Suddenly, and seemingly out of nowhere, the man reached over and firmly grabbed Keister’s penis, yanking on it, and would not let it go.
“Shocked, Keister grabbed the man’s arm, pried the man’s hand off his penis and yelled in disbelief.
“The man ran out of the sauna.
“Still in shock from what happened, Keister tried to collect himself and chase after the man. He went into the dressing area but could not locate him.”

The failure to locate the man must have been most disappointing.

And for Keister this was a turning point. He began to wonder whether it was safe to bring his 3-year-old son to the YMCA. (Let me briefly interject into this tale to offer some advice: If you are considering bringing a 3-year-old onto a gym floor, into a steam room, or into a sauna, DON’T! This is a serious health risk to children. Now back to our story.) He began to think that when he went to the Y, he should leave his family at home.

And when the next time Keister was at the gym some man propositioned him for a date on New Years Eve, he finally connected the pieces. And he’s so upset that he – and his wife, of course – are suing the Y.

It seems that Keister has realized that the ads which he read in Craigslist and the instructions in Cruising Gays are not just fictional erotica but that some men (most often those who are heterosexually married) actually hook up at such places. And Keister is (unknowingly) encouraging such men to approach him.

Fundamentally, members, such as plaintiffs, and their families cannot engage in routine lavatory behavior at YMCAs without ‘cruising’ men assuming they are signaling a desire for sex. Patrons are unknowingly answering ‘yes’ to solicitations for sexual interaction with strangers while being oblivious to the fact that the question is being posed to them. Its patrons thus are the unwitting targets and victims of sexual crimes, such as the ones suffered by plaintiff’s keister plaintiff Keister. [I apologize for the typo]

According to the news report, “the Keisters seek class certification, restitution, and compensatory and punitive damages for violations of the North Carolina Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act, breach of fiduciary duty and breach of contract.” It would seem that contrary to promise, Mr. Keister indeed did NOT have everything for young men to enjoy, hang out with all the boys, or do whatever you feel.

Santorum’s Pastor Problem

I don’t care what the liberals say, I don’t care what the naysayers say, this nation was founded as a Christian nation! The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, there’s only one God! There’s only one God, and his name is Jesus! I’m tired of people telling my I can’t say those words. I’m tired of people telling us that as Christians we can’t force or beliefs, or we can no longer pray in public. I’m — Listen to me! If you don’t like… love American and you don’t like the way we do things, I got one thing to say. GET OUT! We don’t worship Buddha, we don’t Mohammed, we don’t woship Allah, we worship God. We worship God’s son, Jesus Christ.

…I believe the church is to be the conscience of the nation. The church needs to be the conscience of our state and our local community. Listen closely. Now hold on for just a moment. As long as they continue to kill little babies in our mother’s womb, somebody’s got to take a stand and say it’s not right! God be merciful to us as a nation. As long as sexual perversion is becoming normalized, somebody needs to stand up and say God forgives us, God have mercy upon us! As long as they continue to tell our children they cannot pray in public schools or pray in open public places today, somebody’s got to take a stand and say God forgive us, God have mercy upon us! As long as they continue to tear down traditional marriage… Listen! God intended for marriage to be between a man and a woman, and as long as they continue to attack marriage, somebody needs to take a stand and say NO! NO! NO! NO!

…I’m telling you my friend I believe the Christians in American are the key to revival. I believe that Christians in America is (sic) the key to the economy to turn it around. I believe that Christians in America is (sic) the key to the jobless rate continue (sic) to go down. I believe its a spiritual thing. If we would put God back in America, put God back in our pulpits, put God back in our homes and in our statehouse and then in Washington, D.C., then we can have revival in America! And the Holy Spirit will show up and great and mighty things will happen for this country!

The video closes with the camera on Sen. Rich Santorum, standing and clapping, after Greenwell Springs Baptist Church pastor Dennis Terry’s fiery speech yesterday calling on anyone who does not adhere to his particular brand of Christianity to leave the country so that they can finally establish their talibanic regime in the White House. Terry made those comments at a rally in Louisiana, which is the home of Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins. To tighten that circle just a little, Terry is also Perkins’s pastor, who was also on hand at the event.

If anyone wonders at the collapse of the so-called “Catholic vote” (I, for one, believe that Catholics never voted as a block to begin with), one only has to watch this video. Despite Santorum’s identification as a conservative Catholic, despite his reportedly attending Mass daily, what you see here is as alien — and as disturbing — to the majority of Catholics as it is to any other (yes, I’ll say it) ordinary American. Catholics have acquired a long history of shunning the pronouncements of the hierarchy on issues of private morality, and they have a much longer history of fearing the interference of government in religious affairs. Co-mingling the two are anathema to most Catholics in the pews, even as the Bishops have become increasingly politically active. That partly explains how Romney has been picking up most of the Catholic vote in recent contests.

At the rally’s close, Terry prayed over Santorum and asked God to “have favor upon Rick Santorum,” as Perkins stood next to them. When Jeremaiah Wright “goddamned” American, Obama was nowhere in sight, but he got the blowback anyway. Terry laid his hands on Santorum and — more relevant to our point here — Santorum obediently bowed his head for Terry’s blessing, nodding in agreement.

When pressed by reporters afterward, Santorum tried to half-heartedly back away from Terry’s comments that American “heretics” — and let’s be clear: that’s who Terry’s talking about — need to leave America. But the sad truth is, Santorum fully owns Terry and all of the other dominionists who would turn this nation into a theocratic Ameristan as the first opportunity. And to those who say that dominionism is a myth, all I have to say is that we have video proof of it right there, right at the top of this post. And one of them is running for President.

The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, March 20

TODAY’S AGENDA:
March To Protest Anti-LGBT Violence: Washington, D.C. There has been a terrible spate of shootings of transgender and gay people in the nation’s capital over the past year. The most recent shooting was of a 31-year-old gay man at an IHOP in the Columbia Heights neighborhood on March 11. He suffered a bullet wound to the liver. In the same 24-hour period, another gay man and transgender woman were badly beaten in separate incidents. Both men are still in the hospital, while the woman was treated and released. A march has been called to protest the rise of anti-LGBT violence in the city. It will begin at 7:00 p.m. this evening outside the IHOP at 14th and Irving Streets, N.W., and will go east on Irving to Georgia Avenue, N.W., then to Morton Street, and then back to 14th St., where it will head south to R St, N.W. From there it will turn right on R St. and travel to 17th Street and end at the gay bar Cobalt. (I hope locals will understand all that.)

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Florida Supreme Court: Gays Can’t Be Barred From State Bar: 1978. In 1976, Robert F. Eimers, a recent graduate of the Hastings College of Law in San Francisco, had already been certified for admission to the Pennsylvania bar when he moved to Florida and took the exam for the Florida bar. He passed, but the Florida Board of Bar Examiners found that he might fail to meet the “good moral character” standard for admission because, in response to a question at a hearing, Eimers said that he was gay. The twelve member board deadlocked on whether to admit him and referred the matter to the Florida Supreme Court. On March 20, the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-1 decision that a “substantial connection” between private behavior and the ability to carry out professional responsibilities would be required to bar Eimers from practicing law, and his homosexuality did not rise to that level. “Otherwise, the bar will be virtually unfettered in its power to censor the private morals of Florida bar members, regardless of any nexus between the behavior and the ability to responsibly perform as an attorney.”

Well, that’s our gay history for the day, and usually this is where such stories end. But as I was looking around the web for more information on Eimers, I discovered that while Florida’s Supreme Court was correct in ruling that a gay man cannot be prohibited from practicing law because of his “private morals,” that same that same court court would wind up disbarring Eimers nine years later because of his public morals. In 1982 Eimers, his law partner (who was not licensed to practice law) and husband-and-wife clients Daniel and Sally Phelps, were the subjects of an undercover sting involving money laundering and prostitution. In November 1982, they were all charged with two counts of money laundering, and the Phelps’s, in addition, were charged with three counts associated with the prostitution ring. After their arrest and indictment, they were all released on bail. The Phelps and Eimers were tried and convicted in June, 1983, but Eimers’s conviction was in absentia due to his becoming a fugitive in March. Eimers was sentenced to ten years and fined $100,000. In 1987, the Florida Supreme Court officially disbarred him (PDF: 176KB/6 pages) because of his felony conviction and allegations that he had misappropriated funds from three of his clients. I can’t find any record of his having served his sentence, but in 1993 the Pennsylvania Supreme Court also ordered his disablement in that state as well. He apparently died in 1998 at the age of 51.

And that, as they say, is the rest of the story.

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).

This your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?

Harvey: stop allowing students not to speak

Linda Harvey has well deserved her designation as head of one of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (one-member) hate groups. Harvey hates Teh Ghey in all variations, forms, or iterations and she especially hates when Teh Ghey are allowed to be heard. Or be silent. It doesn’t really matter, she just wants the opposite of whatever Teh Ghey wants.

Which is what makes her annual rant about the Day of Silence so amusing. For just a moment, set aside the purpose of the Day of Silence and what it is intended to do. Take away the gay v. “pro-family” element and just look at what she says. The absurdity is delicious:

A coalition of pro-family groups is urging parents to keep their children home from school on the “Day of Silence,” if your school is allowing students to refuse to speak in class.

At least this year she’s dropped “disrupting the classroom” from her objections to silence.

Parents and Guardians: Call your children’s middle and high schools and ask if students and/or teachers will be permitted to refuse to speak during class on Friday, April 20, 2012.

I just have to laugh at this every time I read it. I can picture the school receptionist, “I’m sorry, Ma’am, but you’re upset that students will not talk in the classroom?”

When administrators refuse to listen to reason and when they allow the classroom to be exploited for political purposes, parents must take action. If they don’t, the politicization of the classroom and curricula will increase.

And she’s not trying to be ironic. Really. And finally we reach the pièce de résistance

It is unconscionable that conservative parents remain silent, acquiescent, fearful non-participants in our public schools while homosexuals and their ideological allies engage continuously in vociferous, vigorous, and bold action.

Ah yes. If students are allowed to be “vociferously” silent then conservative parents must NOT be silent in response.

New Hampshire GOP Tries Different Tack On Marriage Repeal

New Hampshire’s legislature is solidly in Republican hands with sufficient majorities to deliver veto-proof legislation to Democratic Gov. John Lynch. While many in the chamber want to repeal the marriage equality law which Gov. Lynch signed in 2009, it is believed that, so far, there have not been enough votes in the legislature to override an expected veto, leading repeal backers to try a different approach. Last week, Rep. David Bates, the sponsor of the repeal bill, proposed adding a new convoluted and confusing clause which would put before the voters in November this question:

Shall New Hampshire law allow civil unions for same-sex couples and define marriage as the union of one man and one woman?”

The question sets up a perfect trap: A yes vote bans same-sex marriage, but a no vote would … do what? It wouldn’t return same-sex marriage back into law, and may instead be used as justification for rescinding civil unions. Or it may do nothing no matter how New Hampshire residents vote, since the proposed referendum would be non-binding. But even as a non-binding referendum, it would still mean that LGBT people would still have to justify their families before New Hampshire voters.

A vote on the proposed bill is expected on Wednesday.

Exodus chooses their own change

Henry Ford once quipped that “Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black.” And behind that bit of snark is an important idea: life always gives you choices, but sometimes the choice is limited to how you choose to respond to inevitable circumstances. You can always change things, but sometimes the change is limited to changing your own perspective.

And after many years of prayer, effort, and contemplation, Exodus International, the umbrella organization for ex-gay ministries seems to have reached that realization. When in January at a panel presentation to the Gay Christian Network it’s president, Alan Chambers, said that 99.9% of ex-gays don’t change their orientation, it was to the first half or that reality that he was speaking.

But there is always room for change. And when it came time for each of us to recognize our orientation, we all went through change. And for young Christian youth growing up in a conservative family and church, change is necessary for survival. Without reconciling your sexuality and your faith, you will never be at peace.

Most of those reading chose to question the things we had been taught. We found a path that allows for relationships and sexual expression without seeing such as eternally damning. But the change one chooses is individual and there is no “correct” response. Some choose to apply to themselves and their lives the same conservative sexual code that they would apply to single heterosexuals. And that is their right.

And within that context, “change” becomes simply that: movement from one state of being to another. The effort to achieve goals and objectives measured not by how gay or straight one is, but by whether one lives according to their chosen life plan.

In February, Alan wrote a commentary in which he discusses change and what it means to him. At that time we were going through an almost daily shift in marriage law expectations across the states and our coverage of those stories would have drowned out this issue. And as we have for many years challenged Exodus to explain “change”, I want to give Alan’s explanation an opportunity to be heard.

I have SSA but that reality is only relevant to me personally and those with whom I am in deep relationship. I choose to be faithful to my relationship with Christ and the truth that my Heavenly Father’s creative intent for human sexual expression was for one man and one woman in the bonds of heterosexual marriage. For me, anything else falls short and is to be resisted. Because I experience some level of SSA I monitor what stimuli I receive. The same is true of my relationship with other things that have consumed me in the past from food to materialism.

When it comes to orientation, attractions, desires, feelings or whatever word you choose to use, I think very little about them. They are what they are. I know them. I understand them. I know how to live with them. I also know a lot of the things that cause them to manifest. SSA isn’t a greater struggle or more concerning to me than other things in my life. Again, they just are. I guess that is why I have no problem talking about them, admitting them and feeling really great about myself even though I have them. They do not define me.

Leslie isn’t threatened by my SSA, either. She knows how I feel about my relationship with Christ first and how I feel about her followed by our kids and so on. She isn’t a surrogate for sexual acting out. She is my treasure and the object of my deepest human longings.

Have I experienced change in my life? To be sure. And to be clear, the change is primarily a matter of seeking to live out what I value most. It is centered on who I am in Christ and flows outward in a way that is specific to me and doesn’t contradict what the Bible teaches. The same was true for me as a single, celibate Christian man.

The Daily Agenda for Monday, March 19

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Africans Identified As AIDS Risk Group: 1983. As we’ve mentioned before, by the time 1983 came around the panic surrounding the emerging HIV/AIDS crisis had already reached epic proportions, with anti-gay groups and individuals pinning everlasting blame on the gay community. When they had bothered to notice, some would acknowledge that Haitians, drug addicts and hemophiliacs were also at risk for AIDS. But it was the gay community which bore the brunt of the responsibility for the new “plague.”

If ignorance among many Americans was running a fevered pitch, things were very different in Europe, particularly in Belgium and France where doctors had been noticing a strange development for quite some time. For several years, they had been treating wealthy Africans from their former colonies who were suffering from diseases which were remarkably similar to those reported by AIDS patients in America. While AIDS was also showing up in gay communities in Europe, it was these African patients which signaled to European specialists that AIDs was neither a homosexual nor western disease. Finally on March 19, 1983, the rest of the world would learn what they have been noticing with the publication of this brief letter by Dr. NAthan Clumeck of the Université Libre de Bruxelles in the respected journal The Lancet:

Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome in Black Africans

SIR,-Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) has been described in homosexual or bisexual men, in drug addicts, in haemophiliacs, and in Haitian immigrants. To our knowledge there is no report of AIDS and opportunistic infections in previously healthy Black Africans with no history of homosexuality or drug abuse.

Tables I and II show the clinical and immunological data on five Black patients seen in Brussels and who were from Central Africa (Zaire and Chad). Three of them had been living in Belgium, for between 8 months and 3 years. All were of good socioeconomic status. They presented with prodromes of fever, weight loss, and generalised lymphadenopathy, and extensive investigations did not reveal any neoplasia. Patients A and E died; the three survivors are still ill.

Because the HIV virus had not been discovered yet, there was no test for it. Doctors had to rely on a process of elimination to determine whether the patient really had AIDS:

These patients fulfilled all the criteria of AIDS. Two of them had severe herpes simplex infections and to exclude the possible role of herpes virus in their immune deficiency we did lymphocyte subset analyses in a control group of eight patients with HSV-2 infections. None had OKT4+ deficiency and their OKT4/OKT8 ratios were between 0.99 and 2.52 (mean 1.80), so it is unlikely that HSV-2 alone was responsible for the AIDS in the African patients.

Responses to mitogen stimulation (phytohaemagglutinin, concanavalin A, pokeweed) were well below normal in all cases. In eleven healthy Black Africans reactions to intradermal tuberculin, candida, and streptodornase were >5 mm: all five patients were skin test negative to these antigens.

This preliminary report suggests that Black Africans, immigrants or not, may be another group predisposed to AIDS.

This small letter to the editor would later prove to be an important first indication of the horror that had been stalking the Congo river region for decades. Clumeck and his colleagues would follow up that letter with a larger study a year later published in the New England Journal of Medicine. That study presented detailed data on 23 Africans treated for AIDS as far back as May, 1979. That would be a full two years before the CDC reported on the five gay patients in Los Angeles (See June 5). Eighteen of the patients treated in Brussels were from Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), one from Chad, two from Rwanda, and two from Burundi. By then, ten had died. On further investigation, researchers found that the husband of one patient had died in 1976 in Belgium at the age of 27 from diseases “consistent with AIDS.”

In December 1984, Clumeck and associates published another paper in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences expanding their study to 40 patients who had undergone treatment in Belgium. Only two of them were gay male Belgians; the rest were Africans. By then, they had concluded, “It is likely that AIDS is endemic now in Central Africa, and that the cases seen in Belgium represent only the tip of the iceberg.”

[Sources: N. Clumek, F. Mascart-Lemone, J. de Maubeuge, D. Brenez, L. Marcelis. Letter to the editor: “Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome in Black Africans.” Lancet 1, no. 8325 (March 19, 1983): 624.

Nathan Clumeck, Jean Sonnet, Henri Taelman, et al. “Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome in African patients.” New England Journal of Medicine 310, no, 8 (February 23, 1984): 492-497.

Nathan Clumeck, Jean Sonnet, Henri Taelman, et al. “Acquired immune deficiency syndrome in Belgium and its relation to Central Africa.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 437 (December 1984): 264-269.]

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