Box Turtle Bulletin

As a service to the anti-gays

I know it is unfair of me to insist that anti-gays boycott every business that supports equality without at least offering them some other opportunities. So I have taken it upon myself to make some inquiries. And, assuming that I receive appropriate responses, I’ll be certain to let the anti-gays know of just which companies can be a suitable alternatives.

To Smith Corona

Hello,

A number of conservative organizations are currently upset that significant manufacturers of computers and operating systems – including Microsoft and Apple – have taken public positions in favor of allowing same-sex couples to marry. They are seeking to boycott, but are having difficulty finding alternatives.

I would like to recommend that they use the manual typewriter as an option for their word processing, but before I do so I want to make certain that there are typewriter manufacturers who have not expressed support for same-sex marriage.

I understand that you no longer manufacture typewriters but do provide supplies. But before I offer this option, can you please let me know whether or not your company has taken a position on the matter.

To Crosley Appliances

Hello,

A number of conservative organizations are currently upset that significant communications providers – including Google and Apple – have taken public positions in favor of allowing same-sex couples to marry. They are seeking to boycott, but are having difficulty finding alternatives.

I would like to recommend that they use the rotary telephone as an option for their communication needs, but before I do so I want to make certain that there are rotary telephone manufacturers who have not expressed support for same-sex marriage.

I know that you manufacture the Crosley Desk Phone (CR 58-IV). But before I offer this option, can you please let me know whether or not your company has taken a position on the matter.

To Central Tools

Hello,

A number of conservative organizations are currently upset that significant manufacturers of computers and operating systems – including Microsoft and Apple – have taken public positions in favor of allowing same-sex couples to marry. They are seeking to boycott, but are having difficulty finding alternatives.

I would like to recommend that they use the slide rule as an option for their calculating, but before I do so I want to make certain that there are slide rule manufacturers who have not expressed support for same-sex marriage.

I know that you manufacture the Central Tools 65060 Caliper Slide Rule. But before I offer this option, can you please let me know whether or not your company has taken a position on the matter.

Washington senate vote streamed live

Here starting at 6:00 p.m.

I expect that there will be:

• amendments seeking to protect the rights of butchers and bakers and candlestick makers from having to treat gay customers like other customers.*
• much speechifying from Democrats who have been our allies for decades. Yes it will be boring. Yes we will love it anyway.
• at least one unexpected heart-string tugging speech from a Republican who decided at the last minute to support equality (and yes, it will go viral)
• absolute silence about how Teh Gheys are evil and a threat to society. Most Republicans will be completely silent and hope that the lighting is bad.

* – meanwhile real butchers and bakers and candlestick makers will be calling their niece and saying, “You know about The Gays, right? Whadya think, should we make some pink candles?”

Minor amendment may get two more GOP Senate votes in Washington

Josh Feit at PubliCola is reporting that two more Washington State Republican Senators may vote for marriage equality tonight if they can amend the proposed bill slightly.

Sens. Fain and Hill will vote for the marriage bill if a couple of friendly amendments are passed to clarify that clergy and religious institutions do not have to recognize gay marriage for things such as premarital counsel.

I have no problem with that. They already can refuse the perform the service, not allow their sanctuary, or meeting hall. I can’t see any problem with saying, “Okay, Rev. Joe, you don’t have to give gay couples premarital counseling if its against your religion.” I can’t imagine why anyone would want premarital counseling from someone who is going to counsel you not to marry.

UPDATE: Fain Both Fain and Hill joined Republican Senators Litzow and Pflug and 25 24 Democrats to pass this bill with a healthy bipartisan majority of 28 -21.

Maryland state of the state

Governor O’Malley had some comments in his State of the State tonight.

The very reason our State was founded was for religious freedom – and at the heart of religious freedom is respect for the freedom of individual conscience.

The way forward, the way to sustain and enhance our common life together, is equal respect for the freedom of all. We all want the same thing for our children; we want our children to live in a loving, caring, committed, and stable home protected equally under the law.

It is not right or just that the children of gay couples should have lesser protections than the children of other families in our State. Nor would it be right to force religious institutions to conduct marriages that conflict with their own religious beliefs and teachings.

In Maryland, we already recognize civil marriages performed in other states and just over our border in the District of Columbia. It is time to join with clergy, faith-based organizations, civil rights organizations, community leaders, and individuals across our State to pass a civil marriage law that protects religious freedom and civil marriage rights equally.

Now Amazon

Now that anti-gays cannot go to Macy’s or even JC Penny’s to buy a shirt, can’t drink coffee or dine out in Seattle, and can’t use Windows write their screeds, their options for social survival were slim. But they still could use some smartphones to buy things online. Now even that is tougher.

“Amazon is joining other Pacific Northwest companies, including Microsoft, Starbucks and Nike, in support of Washington state’s marriage equality bills,” Amazon said in a statement released by spokeswoman Mary Osako. “The spirit of these bills is consistent with our longstanding employment practices.”

I think that if those anti-gays really believe in the sanctity of special privileges for themselves, then they have a moral obligation to personally boycott every single company that supports equality. Forever. And no weaning off, or making threats; live up to your convictions starting right now. God is watching.

If it helps, I think Chick-fil-a if you stock up for the week.

NOM’s Latest Fundraising Lie

What do you call someone who gets money from people by telling them lies?

You wouldn’t call him a thief, exactly. How about this, though:

• Con man
• Swindler
• Cheat
• Charlatan
• Bilker
• Crook

I just got a fundraising email (complete with “Donate Now” button) from Brian Brown at NOM. He writes:

Last April, the Navy issued new “sensitivity training” guidelines that required Navy chaplains to perform same-sex marriages. Thanks to leadership from Congressmen Tim Huelskamp and Todd Akin, the Navy backed down and rescinded the guidelines.

See that verb? The one Brown italicized? And bolded?

It’s a lie.

Here’s what those (now-rescinded) guidelines said:

Regarding chaplain participation, consistent with the tenets of his or her religious organization, a chaplain may officiate a same-sex, civil marriage:  if it is conducted in accordance with the laws of a state which permits same-sex marriage; and if the chaplain is, according to applicable state and local laws, otherwise fully certified to officiate that state’s marriages.

No chaplain was required to do anything involving same-sex marriage. It took me five minutes to confirm that. It’s Brian Brown’s job to know that.

I don’t know why this makes me so angry. It certainly isn’t NOM’s first lie. I’m starting to think that NOM’s biggest victims aren’t gays and lesbians — we’ll win this eventually, no matter what NOM does. No, NOM’s biggest victims are its own supporters, who are being bilked out of their money.

This falsehood is now up on NOM’s blog, where I’m banned from commenting. I invite you — ask you, beg you, beseech you — to go there and point out the truth to NOM’s readers. They won’t believe it (they might not even get to see it!), but that doesn’t matter: there’s something to be said for telling the truth just for the sake of telling the truth.

Something Brian Brown will never understand.

From James to Tyler

After Tyler Clementi was humiliated at school and after he stepped off the side of the George Washington Bridge, his story was everywhere. But it wasn’t really Tyler’s story, just a few moments at its end.

We didn’t really get to know Tyler. But now his older brother – his older gay brother – fills in the picture a little.

Out Magazine has published some of James’ thoughts composed as letters to Tyler.

(yes, Regan, you will need tissues)

AFA’s One Million Mom’s demonstrate real bigotry

You know how anti-gay activists like to tell the world that they aren’t opposed to gay people, just to gay behavior, or rights, or social acceptance of homosexuality or fill in the blank. They’re lying. We know it, you know it, they know it.

So I guess they decided to just be upfront with their latest whine. The American Family Association’s amusingly named One Million Moms don’t want Ellen DeGeneres to be the spokesperson for JC Penny’s for one reason: she’s gay.

Recently JC Penney announced that comedian Ellen Degeneres will be the company’s new spokesperson. Funny that JC Penney thinks hiring an open homosexual spokesperson will help their business when most of their customers are traditional families. More sales will be lost than gained unless they replace their spokesperson quickly.

Seriously, there’s not a single reference to “lifestyle” or “agenda” or anything Ellen has said or supported. Nope, she’s gay and thus “the majority of JC Penney shoppers will be offended and choose to no longer shop there.”

Wow. That’s just plain ol’ blatant bigotry.

Fortunately, the handful of moms who hate gay people so much that they wouldn’t go to JC Penny (or use Cover Girl cosmetics) are increasingly few and really showing themselves to be far outside the mainstream.

9th announces Prop 8 videotape ruling tomorrow

Tomorrow at 10 a.m. the Ninth Circuit will release its ruling on whether the videotapes of the Proposition 8 case (Perry v. Schwarzenegger) can be released.

While we hope for full public disclosure, this ruling will tell us little about the court’s position on the case itself.

Scotland predicts equality

From Pink News

The Scottish government, led by the Scottish National Party, concluded public consultation on equal marriage on 9 December. It was the government’s largest ever public consultation, with over 50,000 responses.

It will now analyse the feedback and publish their response in spring along with a draft bill, which will be open for expert consultation and voting by mid-2013, expected to pass as law by the end of 2013.

And why not? The Scots want it.

Opinion polls suggest a majority of Scots support equal marriage, including the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey 2010 which indicated 61% support versus 19% opposition. This included a majority of respondents following all the major faiths and political parties in Scotland.

Marriage is good for business

It must be frustrating to be an anti-gay activist these days.

One of the claims that conservatives love to make is that they are pro-business, interested in the economy, wanting to do what makes businesses grow and to get government out of the way and let American business compete. But business has been increasingly clear about just what government can do to let them compete: give their gay employees equality. What’s a pro-business conservative to do?

And the anti-gay collective is nearly beside itself trying to force business into reversing pro-equality positions, threatening to boycott. For a while now, under the belief that “homosexual ‘marriage'” is the scariest thing on the planet, they tied themselves into pretzels to equate even the mildest employee policies into “supports homosexual ‘marriage'”.

For example, The American Family Association has been railing against Home Depot under the convoluted equation that because Home Depot supports their gay employees and because those employees march in gay pride events and because gay pride events reflect the views of gay people and because gay people want equality then therefore Home Depot is not “remaining neutral in the culture wars” and is “promoting the homosexual agenda”. And since “every homosexual organization Home Depot supports has as their top priority the legalization of homosexual marriage”, the AFA has initiated a boycott of Home Depot.

And desperate to demonstrate their power, they sent out an email on January 13th declaring that “it appears that Home Depot, in response to AFA’s boycott, is silently dropping public support for the homosexual agenda”. But Home Depot quickly corrected their assumption.

“We have never changed our commitment to diversity and inclusion of all people, and we have no intention of doing so. Nor have we changed our apron policy or the guidelines for our charitable giving.”

Oh dratty-drats, how very dare they?

Mostly because the climate has changed. Businesses don’t fear being labeled “pro-homosexual”, having discovered that this label really doesn’t drive away anyone and actually improves their image among people who value diversity, respect, equality, and decency.

Companies are not afraid to slap their logo on equality and smile. And AFA really need not look for six degrees of Home Depot marriage support; businesses are making it easy, declaring their unequivocal support for equality. Publicly. In the newspapers. Supporting real legislation being voted on today. And proud of it.

Like, for example, the January 19th statement made by a collection of six corporations headquartered in Washington and led by Microsoft:

As other states recognize marriage equality, Washington’s employers are at a disadvantage if we cannot offer a similar, inclusive environment to our talented employees, our top recruits and their families. Employers in the technology sector face an unprecedented national and global competition for top talent. Despite progress made in recent years with domestic partnership rights, same-sex couples in Washington still hold a different status from their neighbors. Marriage equality in Washington would put employers here on an equal footing with employers in the six other states that already recognize the committed relationships of same-sex couples – Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Vermont. This in turn will help us continue to compete for talent.

Now surely the AFA has heard of Microsoft. But for some reason they decided to act as though Microsoft (and Concur, Group Health, Nike, RealNetworks and Vulcan Inc.) had said nothing at all. Which, considering that Microsoft’s competitors are also on record supporting equality, may be a simply a matter of recognizing futility. After all, if you are reading this, the odds are really high that you are doing so by means of a company that supports equality.

But shortly after this announcement came another, one which anti-gays thought they could latch onto.

This important legislation is aligned with Starbucks business practices and upholds our belief in the equal treatment of partners. It is core to who we are and what we value as a company.

Oh but Starbucks has competitors. And coffee is not an essential (unless you’re an accountant). So woo-hoo, someone new to boycott.

And so some nobody named Pastor Steven Andrew, speaking for “80% Christian majority in the USA” is going to set the coffee giant on its ear.

“Why is Starbucks against our Founding Fathers and God’s liberty?” he asks. George Washington, John Adams and John Jay made the Christian laws that Starbucks wants to make non-Christian.

(Pastor Andrew may have failed to note that Jay was Episcopalian (a denomination that favors legal equality) and that Jay’s famous quote about Christian government actually starts with the words, “Real Christians will abstain from violating the rights of others…”.)

Joining the Starbucks whine is National Organization for Marriage’s Brian Brown.

“Americans should be able to drink a peaceful cup of coffee without worrying that a portion of the company’s profits is going to be used to push gay marriage without a vote from the people,” said Brown.

I have no idea why Brown thinks that “the people” should vote on how Starbucks allocates its corporate profits. I suspect he just is so accustomed to speaking using catch phrases that he no longer has a clue what he is saying and is entirely incapable of making sense.

But I don’t worry about Brown’s peaceful cup of coffee or Pastor Andrew’s lisping call for Christians to forgo their caramel frappuccino. The battle for corporate approval is over and they lost. Badly.

Because while announcements of support for marriage bills is important – it is – and declarations of corporations valuing their employees are good to hear, sometimes the most telling evidence doesn’t even get a simple press release. It’s when support is just a matter of regular, un-spectacular, not at all noteworthy business. Like this ad for Macy’s which encourages customers to sign up in their wedding registry to get special savings.

Yeah, those are two guys on the top of that cake.

So let the anti-gays not shop at Macy’s. Or drink Starbucks (or Thom’s Hand Brewed Coffee). Or use a computer. Or eat in a restaurant in Seattle.

Because business has spoken. And it has said that marriage is good for business. So if you really are pro-business, you’ll support equality.

NOM reporting requirement upheld

The first marriage news of the day is a good start.

The 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston has upheld the decision that the National Organization for [Catholic] Marriage must follow campaign reporting requirements. This is no surprise but it is welcome.

Of course they will not do so. And so it’s off to the Supreme Court.

What Did Christie Apologize For?

Last week, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie really stepped in it when he announced that he would veto any legislation granting marriage equality that reaches his desk. The serious controversy arose when he added, about African-American’s civil rights, “The fact of the matter is, I think people would have been happy to have a referendum on civil rights rather than fighting and dying in the streets in the South.” Right. As if that would have worked out. As one of our commenters pointed out, when Alabamans had the opportunity to remove segregationist language from their state constitution, they rejected the idea. In 2004! The lunacy of Christie’s idea should be self-evident to anyone with a glancing familiarity with history.

Last night, Christie sought to put the controversy to bed during an appearance on talk radio with an apology that looks like this:

“Anybody who was offended by what I said, if you’re listening out there tonight, I apologize for that,” he said on New Jersey 101.5’s monthly radio call-in show. “I didn’t mean to offend anybody, and if I did I’m sorry.”

According to Politico, he explained:

“I also recognize that my job, one of my jobs as Governor, is to clearly communicate to people what I’m thinking, every time I open my mouth. And I try to be very good about being very direct about what I say so that there’s no ambiguity but obviously when I was talking last week at the town hall meeting about the civil rights movement in the South, I wasn’t clear enough. I just wasn’t.

“And what I did was, by saying those things, I left them open to misinterpretation and obviously there are some folks out there whose feelings I hurt or sensibilities I offended. And I apologize for that, because that’s my job. My job is to clearly communicate all the time. And so to those folks out there who were somehow offended or concerned about the ambiguity in my statement, I apologize for that because very clearly what I was trying to say, I said yesterday at the press conference about 5 or 6 times.”

I’ve read this several times, and for the life of me I can’t figure out what Christie’s actually apologizing for. Near as I can tell, he’s only apologizing if anyone who was offended. He apologized for being “misinterpreted” and for “sensibilities I offended.” It’s like he stomped on someone’s foot and apologized that they were hurt by it. What I don’t see is any sense that he recognizes the sheer folly of putting a reviled and stigmatized minority’s rights up for a vote and expecting that minority’s rights to be magnanimously granted. The history of that actually happening is sadly sparse, as sparse in the new millennium as it was in the last. I don’t see any recognition in Christie’s words that he understands that. It looks like, at most, he’s apologizing for opening his big mouth, but not for the beliefs that we now know he holds.

Kenya’s Chief Justice: “Gay Rights Are Human Rights”

A video appeared on YouTube yesterday showing Kenya’s Chief Justice Willy Mutunga declaring that “gay rights are human rights.” The remarks were delivered on September 8, 2011 at a groundbreaking ceremony for FIDA Uganda, a Ugandan organization of Women Lawyers. FIDA Uganda was among the organizations which denounced the Anti-Homosexuality Bill.

The Chief Justice’s speech in Uganda is interesting for three reasons. First, his call for recognizing that “gay rights are human rights” actually pre-dates an identical declaration from US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by two full months. Secondly, the woman wearing lavender you see seating herself at the beginning of the video is Uganda’s Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga, who played an important role in reviving the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in October. And finally, Uganda and Kenya close neighbors, sharing a common history as part of Britian’s East African colonies, and they maintain extensive political and economic ties. Much of Uganda’s imports and exports flow through the Kenyan port of Mombasa, and the two countries are part of a larger emerging common market, the East African Community. The situation for LGBT people in Kenya is generally much better than in Uganda, although there have been instances of mob violence against suspected gay people in recent years.

Mutunga has an interesting history. In the early 1980s as a student, he was politically active against Kenyan president/dictator Daniel Arap Moi, which led to his detention and exile to Canada. When Kenya turned to multi-party elections in 1991, he returned home and became part of Kenya’s “Young Turks, advocating for human rights in the country. He continued to work in human rights positions throughout most of the next two decades. After Kenya reorganized under a new constitution following the disputed 2007 which broke down into nationwide violence, Mutunga was named to the country’s new High Court in 2011.

Here is the video and transcript of a portion of Justice Mutunga’s remarks:

We have fought and succeeded in demanding our rights of movement and association  although we can’t take them for granted. We should see less of the workshopping in hotels, less of the flipcharts and the [?], as we now move to the countrysides and make sure our people own and protect the human rights and social justice messages.

The other frontier of marginalization is the gay rights movement. Gay rights are human rights. Here I’m simply confining my statement to the context of human rights and social justice paradigm, and avoiding the controversy that exists in our constitutions and various legislation. As far as I know, human rights principles that we work on, do not allow us to implement human rights selectively. We need clarity on this issue within the human rights movement in East Africa, if we are to face the challenges that are spearheaded by powerful political and religious forces in our midst. I find the arguments made by some of our human rights activists, the so-called “moral arguments” simply rationalizations for using human rights principles opportunistically and selectively. We need to bring together the opposing viewpoints in the movement of this issue for final and conclusive debate.

I thank the FIDA movement, membership, leadership, and its national, regional and global network for the honor bestowed on me. I’m very proud of this honor and I will never take it for granted.

A big day

Today will be a big day in marriage history so be patient with us turtle rasslers as we try to bring you the news as it happens and share our perspectives on what it means. And, of course, we’ll want your feedback as well.