Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyJanuary 18th, 2012
Something called Guyism, a webzine for straight guys, lists 7 Reasons why Gay Marriage is Good for Straight Men. for example,
6 Gay Weddings Will be Good Places to Hook Up
Weddings are good places to hook up and gay weddings mean more weddings. And if the guest list is split evenly between men and women, and many of the men are gay, a gay wedding takes your already-good odds and improves them.
It may seem irreverent to treat such a serious injustice in such a silly way, but sometimes this approach can be far more effective subconsciously than an oh so very sincere intellectual argument.
So lighten up, dude. Us hip modern people all support gay marriage anyway. I mean, you are a cool guy so of course you are pro-equality, right? Right?
January 18th, 2012
Last Friday, Perezi K. Kamunanwire, Uganda’s ambassador to the U.S. suddenly withdrew as keynote speaker for a Martin Luther King Day event sponsored by the United Negro College Fund on Monday after the UNCF expressed concern over the Anti-Homosexuality Bill which had been revived in Uganda’s Parliament. UNCF president and CEO Michael Lomax wrote the Ambassador a letter expressing alarm over what he described as the bill’s “draconian penalties” and called on the ambassador to “address this issue when you speak at the King Day and take questions at the conclusion of your remarks.” The ambassador chose instead to withdraw from the event rather than face the uncomfortable questioning.
There has been an increasing aggressiveness in Uganda’s government and media against stepped up worldwide condemnation of countries which criminalize gay relationships. In recent weeks, we’ve even seen a stepped up hostility coming from what had been until now a very well-balanced independent newspaper, Daily Monitor. (More on that momentarily.) Ambassador Kamunanwire is playing his role in that push back. Yesterday, he blasted the UNCF for sending him an “incendiary” letter and claimed that the Uganda Parliament was not reconsidering the bill, despite numerous local reports to the contrary.
The aggressive push back has been joined by others in Uganda’s diplomatic staff. Yesterday evening, we received an email from a BTB reader in the Washington D.C. who was attending a talk by Rev. Mark Kiyimba, pastor of the New Life Kampala Unitarian Universalist Church, who was speaking at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Silver Spring, MD. Rev. Kiyimba has been a vocal opponent of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill. According to the emailer, Dickson Ogwang, Minister Counselor at the Uganda Embassy in Washington, DC, rose during the Q&A session to give “the familiar government spin”, including misdirection about the brutal murder of Ugandan LGBT advocate David Kato. According to our reader, “Rev. Kiyimba responded well, but clearly was put in the difficult spot of being challenged to call a government minister a liar.” Our reader also observed:
“Mr. Ogwang looked mighty pleased to snap a digital photo of Rev. Kiyimba shaking hands with MD State Senator (and local LGBT rights champion) Jamie Raskin. My inner cynic wonders whether the photo will emerge in Ugandan press as “proof” that Ugandan gay rights advocates are merely tools of the West.”
There is certainly precedent for that. Daily Monitor, Uganda’s largest independent newspaper and an until-now largely reliable source of information about developments over the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, carried a lengthy, incendiary article in its Sunday Magazine on January 8. The article by Bernard Sabiti, an aspiring born-again politician and journalist, featured a large photo of LGBT advocate Frank Mugisha receiving the Rafto Foundation’s award for human rights in Bergen, Norway. The caption under the photo however reads, “Mr Mugisha receives one of his many awards for ‘bashing’ his motherland over gay rights.” Referencing Frank’s recent op-ed in the New York Times, the rest of the article goes downhill from there:
In a December 22 high-profile New York Times Op-ed titled “Gay and Vilified in Uganda”, Mr Mugisha repeats the same over-recycled allegations against his own country, in which he adds some even more absurd statements that are not true at all. In the article, for example, he writes that: “More benignly, if people are still single by the time they reach their early 20s, what Ugandans call a “marriage age,” others will begin to suspect that they are gay.”
This is hogwash. With more Ugandans spending more time at school and tightening economic conditions, who doesn’t know that marrying in late 20s and 30s is a very normal thing in Uganda these days?
Even after the Uganda Police concluded investigations which failed to link David Kato’s killers to homophobia and court appropriately sentencing them, in the article, Mr Mugisha still insinuates that “…because of this work, David was bludgeoned to death at his home, with a hammer.”
The matter of the Rolling Stone newspaper that published a list of homosexuals which is the basis of the western gay propaganda alleging that “the press” in from page 21
Uganda promotes murdering homosexuals is even too absurd to comment about. These people know nothing about Uganda’s culture, let alone that of the tabloid, where many journalism students try many stunts to come up with a publication that can sell in a tough media market and a poor reading culture.
Even “credible” newspapers here struggle yet they have been in the market far too long to stage competition against them. But many People here also love sensationalism and gossip and some enjoy nudity. That was what Giles Mahame, the Rolling Stone publisher, was tapping into.
If not, given the shrewdness of Ugandans, it wouldn’t be farfetched to say that the Rolling Stone stunt could have as well been a stunt by the homosexuals themselves to elicit international sympathy and the cash that no doubt followed it. [Emphasis added.]
The article has had its chilling effect. Frank told Michelangelo Signorile last weekend that he now fears for his life:
“Just two days ago there was a very big piece of news about me,” said Frank Mugisha, executive director of Sexual Minorities Uganda, in an interview by phone from Kampala on my radio program on SiriusXM OutQ yesterday, referring to an article he says was written in a local newspaper, attacking him for writing the New York Times op-ed.
“It said that everything we are saying is not true. That we are just trying to get sympathy in the Western world. They put my picture in the newspaper with all these hate words and of course I got a lot of bad emails, bad phones, a lot of harassment against me.”
…”Every day of my life here in Uganda I have to be careful of what I do,” Mugisha said in the radio interview yesterday. “It has reached the point that where I even have to be careful when I’m going to get food in a restaurant, to be sure that the food I’m getting, that I trust the restaurant, because I’m scared I could get poisoned. Even when I want to go shopping I have to call a friend and say can you come with me because my face has been in the newspapers, my face has been in the media. Just two days ago when my face was put in the newspapers I received harassment already. Now it is my fear of stepping out my house. If I want to go and buy food, because I have to eat, what is going to happen to me today?”
Whether Rev. Kiyimba’s photo snapped last night will be deployed for a similarly sinister purpose remains to be seen. Clearly Uganda, along with many other African nations, are on the defensive over recent British and American announcements that the manner in which LGBT people are treated in their home countries are a matter of international concern. The predictable backlash is brewing. That’s not to say that the British and American positions are wrong or misguided. But we are seeing increasing fallout over the spotlight they have cast on Uganda and elsewhere. And it means that we need to follow those statements with greater vigilance, and we must demand that Uganda and other nations take positive actions to ensure the safety of all LGBT people, including their advocates and leaders.
January 18th, 2012
Meanwhile Columbia, S.C. native Molotov Mitchell, an evangelical Christian video artist whose YouTube political commentaries against Newt Gingrich’s infidelities hit hundreds of thousands of Iowa cell phones via text message and went viral with over 33,000 views prior to the Iowa Caucuses, re-released a pro-Santorum punk-rock video that deals with one of Santorum’s harshest critics, Chicago sex columnist Dan Savage. Savage, a gay rights activist, is the originator of Santorum’s “Google problem,” an effort to redefine the conservative’s name as an obscenity. Mitchell said, “Mitt Romney is kind of like the RINO country club hetero version of Dan Savage, and in his own vacuous way, far more dangerous to hetero-traditionalism. I hope Santorum makes a big splash on Romney’s empty suit this Saturday.”
Mitchell was one of a handful of American Evangelicals who defended Uganda’s “Kill-the-Gays” bill in 2010. I don’t think this will help Santorum’s Google problem at all.
January 18th, 2012
There are reports out that Republican leaders in the New Hampshire House has delayed the vote to repeal the state’s marriage equality law. The vote has been postponed until February, according to House Majority leader D.J. Bettencourt. Many in the House expected the vote to occur today even though the issue was not on the House calendar. Democratic Gov. John Lynch vowed to veto the repeal if it reached his desk. The delay is seen as a sign that the House does not have a veto-proof majority to pass the legislation.
January 18th, 2012
TODAY’S AGENDA:
SOPA/PIPA Protests: Online. Today, thousands of web sites, including Reddit and Wikipedia, will go black in protest of two bills that are now before Congress. The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA, in the House) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA, in the Senate) were proposed to tackle the problem of internet copyright infringement. The bills originally required US Internet service providers to block access to foreign web sites found guilty of “piracy”, but that provision has been removed from the House version following outcry among opponents likening it to tactics used by China and Iran to block access to sites their governments don’t like. But at last report, it remains in the Senate version, which the Senate is expected to vote on next week. Both bills would also require search engines to block those web sites from search results, and would prohibit advertiser networks, payment processors and ISPs from doing business with the alleged copyright infringers.
Here at BTB, we take seriously the problem of copyright protections. We have acted against web sites that have copied posts from BTB without permission. However I find this action to be deeply concerning. These bills mark the first step toward the U.S. government dictating to internet users, providers, and publishers what they can and cannot publish. First steps like these often carry with them a host of unintended consequences. But the most worrisome aspect of the bill in terms of immediate impact is a provision granting copyright holders the right to seek a court order to shut down any web site which “enables or facilitates” piracy by merely linking to a suspect site, even if the linking site is unaware that the site being linked to contains pirated material.
Opponents say that the bills make it too easy to shut down web sites without sufficient due process. Herein lies the danger. BTB links to thousands of web sites. It would be impossible for us to examine an entire web site to determine if it met muster and was safe to link to. For example, we link to a lot of sites carrying Associated Press articles. How can we know if a site we link to is not paying for AP content?
As we have already seen with the Righthaven controversy, the extent to which laws like this can be abused are unpredictable, but what is predictable is that this law will be exploited to its maximum potential. Of that there can be no doubt, particularly in the murky, ill-defined area of “fair use,” which is an important aspect to all online reporting and blogging. We’ve already seen plenty of examples where allegations of “copyright infringement” against web sites who are operating in good faith under “fair use” have resulted in expensive lawsuits.
A number of web sites are joining a blackout protest. While I fully support the goals of the protest, we will not be conducting a blackout ourselves. Part of the reason is technical; bringing the site down and back up in a safe manner without inadvertently losing content is more risk than I’m willing to take. But there is something that I would ask you to do. Call your Congressional representative and both Senators, and register your opposition to these two bills. The Capitol switchboard is 202-224-3121.
Tennessee Subcommittee to Consider “Don’t Say Gay” Bill: Nashville, TN. The “Don’t Say Gay” bill (HB0229/SB0049) will be discussed this afternoon by the General Assembly’s Education Subcommittee. The bill, if passed, “prohibits the teaching of or furnishing of materials on human sexuality other than heterosexuality in public school grades.” LGBT advocates fear it would close the door on effective anti-bullying efforts and prevent the formation of GSA’s in junior high schools. The Tennessee Equality Project is organizing a protest at the hearing, asking people to attend the meeting while wearing purple. “The very existence of this bill sends a bad message about Tennessee at a time when we should look at constructive proposals to make schools safe, welcoming places for all students,” TEP Nashville Committee Chair Chris Sanders told Out and About. “The fact that this is the one of the first bills debated this year makes the citizens of Tennessee wonder how serious our Legislature is about improving our schools.”
For more information, visit the event’s Facebook page. The online petition against the “Don’t Say Gay” bill can be found here.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
Transgender Man In the News: 1894. The following item appeared in the Badger State Banner, published in Black River Falls, Wisconsin. It’s interesting that what would have been a normal news item about a larceny case instead focused on the nature of the defendant and his wife.
Anna Morris Given One Year
Anna Morris, alias Frank Blunt, the woman who has tried to be a man for the last fifteen years, was sentenced to the penitentiary for one year by Judge Gibson at Fond du Lac. She was arrested several months ago in Milwaukee charged with stealing $175 in Fond du Lac. It was then discovered that the prisoner was a woman, although she had worn masculine attire nearly all her life. A jury convict her of larceny and a motion for a new trial was overruled. After the sentenced had been passed Gertrude Field, a woman who claimed to have been married to the prisoner in Eau Claire, fell upon the neck of the prison and wept for half an hour. This woman had furnished all the money for Blunt’s defense, and now proposes to carry the case to the Supreme Court.
[From Jonathan Katz’s, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1976): pp 231-232.]
A Simple Home Device for Aversion Therapy: 1964. On this date, the British Medical Journal published this article by R.J. McGuire and M. Vallance:
Click to enlarge
Aversion Therapy by Electric Shock: a Simple Technique
Aversion therapy has been used for many years in the treatment of alcoholism. Apomorphine and emetine are the usual drugs used as the unconditioned stimuli for nausea and vomiting, with alcohol as the conditioned stimulus. More recently the same procedure has been used in the treatment of sexual perversions — for example, fetishism, transvestism and homosexuality.There are several disadvantages to the use of drugs in conditioning procedures. The time between the stimulus being presented and the nausea being produced is uncertain. The patient may not even feel nausea; and, further, the cerebral depressant effect of the drug may interfere with the patient’s ability to form conditioned responses. In addition, the treatment may have to be terminated prematurely because of its dangerous side-effects.
Alternative unpleasant responses can be used to produce aversion. In experimental psychology electric shock has been widely used both in animals and in humans. In clinical treatment, however, it has been less often used. The technique is simpler, more accurately controlled, and more certain in producing an unpleasant effect than drugs. This article describes a simple apparatus designed by one of us (R. J. McG.) and its use in the aversive treatment of sexual perversions, alcoholism, smoking, and neurotic symptoms.
Apparatus. — The components are cheap (under £1) and fit into a box approximately 6 in. (15 cm.) square and 2 in. (5 cm.) deep (Figs. 1 and 2). It is powered by a 9-volt battery and is therefore completely portable. The shock is administered through electrodes on a cuff around the patient’s forearm. To construct the apparatus requires no special skill, and the technical details are given at the end of the article.
…After initial instruction he can treat himself and may take the apparatus home to continue the treatment there. Besides saving the therapist’s time and making frequent treatment possible, this arrangement is to be preferred when the symptom is one usually indulged in alone-for example, masturbation to perverse fantasies. While the patient can use the apparatus whenever he is tempted to masturbate, he should also each day deliberately carry out the treatment at a time when the desire to masturbate is not strong.
This isn’t the first time a device for administering electric shock has been described in the medical literature for treating homosexuality. Electric Shock Aversion Therapy has been discussed since at least 1935 (see Sep 6). But as modern science entered the space age, a few therapists got the idea that there was a demand for an inexpensive home version.
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?
January 17th, 2012
The Southern Poverty Law Center has long since earned its reputation as an honest monitor of racially based hate groups. At some point they expanded their scope to include hate groups which exist to instigate animus towards gay people as well.
It isn’t easy to get on the SPLC’s Hate Group listing. This isn’t the Maggie Gallagher and Dr. James Dobson and Southern Baptist preacher crowd. Ignorance, prejudice, callous disregard and presumptions of superiority are not nearly enough to quality.
To qualify as a Hate Group, one must engage in active defamation. In other words, a hate group must intentionally spread vicious lies which they must know – or certainly should know – to be untrue for the purpose of stirring up animus against gay people. These are the folks who manufacture fake studies, distort research, make totally fabricated claims, and do so under the presence of telling the real truth that the AMA, the APA, and everyone else with an education and credible reputation are conspiring to keep secret.
In total only 16 groups currently make the cut:
Being called a “hate group” is infuriating to those who identify as Christians. (For a year now I’ve been intending to address hate and love from the perspective of Christian theology, what qualifies as each, where boundaries lie and the difficulty of being human while aspiring to spiritual goals. Frankly, I’ve put it off because to do it justice is a daunting task, but I really do think it may be time to attack the job.)
In the past, those listed have mostly ignored the SPLC. As they didn’t run in circles in which advocating for the cessation of racism was highly admired, they didn’t much care what the “liberal activist group” thought of them. But with the addition of some more vocal and politically connected organizations, attention has been given to the SPLC’s listing. And, naturally, rather than ponder whether their behavior was hateful and should change, a decision was made to discredit the Southern Poverty Law Center.
So today a collection of Hate Groups protested at SPLC headquarters. It was the rather sad souls that we have become accustomed to seeing: Peter LaBarbera, who organized the event, and his best buddy Matt Barber, the Associate Dean of Liberty University School of Law. Also showing up to represent the “Nazis were gay” viewpoint was Rachel Connor of Scott Lively’s Abiding Truth Ministries.
But in hopes of embarrassing this institution know for is advocacy for racial equality, this cluster of unhappy clowns was beefed up by including some African American preachers, some particularly nasty hate-filled African American preachers.
DL Foster I’ve dealt with before. He’s perhaps the most mean spirited, personally vile, directly hateful individual I’ve encountered (with Robert Gagnon as his competitor). He’s the type of guy who blames the suicide of bullied kids on “homosexual activists”. He’s the sort of fellow who thinks that the beatings and murders of gay people in Jamaica are godly. Oh yeah, and DL is ex-gay.
Tim Johnson, founder of the Fredrick Douglass Foundation, doesn’t have a high profile for anti-gay activism. He is, however, a convicted domestic violence felon. On Christmas Day 1995 he beat his wife because “that’s the only way I can get her attention.” She was hospitalized with a broken nose and toes.
Then included was a collection of ministers from Church of God in Christ, DL Foster’s denomination: Pastor Glen Sawyer, New Mt. Zion Church of God in Christ, Elizabeth City, NC; Pastor Wil Nichols, Victorious Praise Fellowship COGIC, Durham, NC; Pastor Jon Robinson, Kingdom C.O.M.E. Ministries, Clairton, PA; and Pastor Kenneth Jefferson, Greater Harvest COGIC. The Church of God in Christ is a Pentecostal Holiness black church and it is HUGE, with about five million members and 12,000 congregations in the US alone. By comparison, the largest non racially specific pentecostal church, the Assemblies of God, has about three million US members.
But perhaps no participant in LaBarbera’s little “we got Blaa People too” charade is quite such an example of the type of Blaa People that are so blinded by their evil imagination and their hatred of gay people that they would seek to discredit a respected civil rights organization as Dr. Patrick Wooden, pastor of Upper Room Church of God in Christ. Right Wing Watch caught this particular doozy from an interview with The Peter of just a few days ago (via Joe Jervis):
My belief is that if the medical community would just step forward and just would share with the American people what happens to the male anus, what the problems that homosexuals have with their rectums, the damage that is done, the operations that are needed to sew up their bodies, if you will. And how many of the men don’t even give the stitches time to heal, before they’re back, they’re out there, practicing that wicked behavior. Some are “bleeders”, men who are not turned off by ingesting the feces of other men. If the truth was told, people would literally gag. And no one would want to be in a lifestyle like that. Who wants to practice anything that is ultimately going to lead a grown man to – by the time he’s in his 40’s or 50’s or whatnot – having to wear a diaper or a “butt-plug” just to be able to contain their bowels?
Who indeed? Certainly no one I’ve ever met, encountered, read about, or who ever existed outside the disturbed imagination of Dr. Wooden. If he keeps that sort of nonsense up, the Southern Poverty Law Center may find itself in the unenviable and ironic position of having to add an African American church to its list of Hate Groups.
January 17th, 2012
You would think that after touting the endorsement of one Christian reconstructionist who favors executing gays – and being called on it – you’d be careful before you starting talking about another. Unless, I guess, you agree with them.
But today there’s another preacher, Voddie Baucham, Pastor at Grace Family Baptist Church, who is one the front page of Ron Paul’s website singing Ron’s praises:
While I am not looking for a “Pastor-in-Chief,” it is important to me that the man for whom I cast my vote be a Christian, if at all possible… I also want to know that the foundational ideology motivating a man’s decisions is biblical. I know it will not always mirror my own, but I trust God’s word, and appreciate those who look to it for aid in making decisions. To that end, I support Dr. Paul because he is not just a conservative, but a Christian Conservative.
Unlike, I guess, the Mormon and the Catholic options.
Now some of what Baucham says makes sense. He, like me, has no desire to elect a Pastor in Chief. And he notes that when you send a guy to change the moral standards to be to your liking, then the next guy is free to change them to his liking and “How’s that workin’ for ya?”
But what isn’t mentioned is Baucham’s other writings, like – for example – this response to President Obama’s 2009 statement of support for LGBT Pride Month that Dr. Warren Throckmorton found:
As I have noted elsewhere, President Obama is committed to a radical pro-homosexual agenda. Since day one of his administration, he has made no secret of his intent to move the ball forward on the full acceptance of homosexuality and the criminalization of all disapproval thereof. Just this week he appointed the founder of GLSEN to a post in the Department of Education. Then, in another brazen act, the Obama administration took another bold step forward as he declared June LGBT Pride Month. In a statement on the White House website he wrote:
LGBT Americans have made, and continue to make, great and lasting contributions that continue to strengthen the fabric of American society. There are many well-respected LGBT leaders in all professional fields, including the arts and business communities. LGBT Americans also mobilized the Nation to respond to the domestic HIV/AIDS epidemic and have played a vital role in broadening this country’s response to the HIV pandemic.
Hence, sodomites, who who are in large part responsible for the introduction and spread of the HIV/AIDS epidemic are praised for responding to this plague in an attempt to avoid annihilation (by the way, I know you don’t have to engage in sodomy to get HIV, but that doesn’t change the facts… see the book, And the Band Played On for an honest look at this issue). This is revisionism at its worst.
The President goes on to celebrate the fact that this abomination (Lev 18:22) worthy of the death penalty (Lev 20:13) is now being celebrated in the open. He writes, “Due in no small part to the determination and dedication of the LGBT rights movement, more LGBT Americans are living their lives openly today than ever before.” This is a clear sign of the devolution of culture. As Paul writes in Romans, “Though they know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.” (Rom 1:32 ESV)
So what’s going on here, Ron Paul? Why is it that you keep talking up the endorsements you get from people who want to execute me?
Once is an error. Twice… well, twice means that you need to start explaining in terms that leave no doubt.
January 17th, 2012
A few weeks ago, GOP presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul sought to defend himself in the controversy over the newsletters which he promoted and published under his name for nearly a decade. In his latest defense, he said that he only acted as publisher of the newsletters, and said that there were only “a total of about eight or ten sentences” of “bad stuff.”
The New Republic, which released the original newsletters, has responded to that last statement by releasing several dozen more — far more than the “eight or ten sentences” of “bad stuff.” The latest dumpcovers much of the same ground as before: blatant racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, praise for tax evaders, defense of anti-government militias, and whacked-out conspiracy theories. Under the anti-gay/AIDS-hysteria banner, TNR released the following (all links PDFs):
That, combined with previous releases, is way, way more than the “eight or ten sentences” of “bad stuff — just counting the anti-gay/AIDS-hysteria pieces alone. And the AIDS-hysteria pieces are especially troubling given that Paul is a medical doctor. Surely, he knew better, didn’t he?
We still have no explanation from him about how these newsletters came to be and why he promoted them so strongly under his name, evengoing so far as to give the impression that he wrote them when he was selling them. Maybe he really was just a “publisher.” Maybe he really didn’t write this stuff. But the fact that he allowed it to go out for eight years under his name, I believe, disqualifies him for any serious public office. If he’s willing to show such an appalling carelessness with his own good name, how can we be assured he would be any better with America’s?
January 17th, 2012
rings *
One of the Republican Party’s rising stars is New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. So much so that in the introductory episode of her new show, Oprah Winfrey interviews Christie to ask why he has not yet run for President. And, as such, Christie’s name is always in the mix when the talking heads on Fox ponder who will be Mitt Romney’s running mate.
This possibility is something that should be remembered as we go into the legislative year. Democratic leadership in the State have introduced a marriage bill and have mostly asserted that the votes are present to win equality this year. And the ongoing assumption is that Christie would veto such a bill. But the governor has played an unexpected card by being coy about his response to such a bill, should it reach his desk.
This is not a politician known for his subtleties or lack of direct response, so this is remarkably uncharacteristic. And I wonder if his non-committal statement has any basis in a desire to be on the ticket.
At this point, I feel fairly confident in predicting that Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee. And with the party in disarray, he will need to select a running mate who balances out the team and appeals to the “conservative base”. Further, he will have to announce this running mate fairly soon and not wait until the national convention at the end of August if he has any hope of building momentum in the “anyone but that Mormon” states.
Christie would be an interesting choice. While he does have a reputation as “a conservative”, on gay issues he is significantly more moderate than most prominent Republicans. He doesn’t “favor” marriage, but his opposition is expressed more in terms of what he does support (civil unions with all of the rights, benefits and obligations of marriage) than in terms of why gay people are a “threat” or how marriage should be “protected”.
But the open question is what such a Veep selection might mean to the marriage bill.
Would it be advantageous to position Christie as more supportive on equality issues than Romney in the same way that Cheney was to Bush? Or would a veto of the marriage bill fire up and energize the base? But would a veto and the public reaction reinforce the image of the Republican Party as homophobic and hostile to the will of the people – especially with young voters – and cost the party more than it could gain? Or is the issue too volatile to keep Christie in consideration?
These are all questions that Republican strategists will consider.
But there are also secondary scenarios to consider. One possibility is that Christie would accept the vice president run and would resign as governor so as to avoid his state administration from impacting his candidacy. While this is not a requirement of a seeker of higher office, a Democrat controlled legislature could create embarrassing situations designed to weaken his public image.
Stepping into his place would be Kim Guadagno, the state’s Lieutenant Governor. In 2009, Guadagno stated that she was in agreement with Christie:
Guadagno said she and Christie “agree on virtually every issue,” mentioning same-sex marriage, where they both want to maintain the current civil-union structure but do not want to extend the term “marriage” to gay couples.
But times change, polls change, positions change, and perhaps Guadagno is open to such change. She has been known to attend gay events and it is not unusual for Republican women to be supportive on marriage.
Another – albeit remote – possibility could be the temporary assumption of gubernatorial duties by Guadagno while Christie is out of the state. Although it would be an absurd notion that a Lieutenant Governor would sign a bill that was staunchly opposed by a Governor of the same party while he was temporarily away, it could be presented as such and political ‘reality’ has room for nonsensical assertions.
It still remains most likely that the legislature will pass the bill and that Governor Christie will promptly veto it as the choreography of this particular dance has been written, but we should keep our eyes open for other possibilities and argue our case should any chance – however peculiar – arise.
(* – an earlier version of this commentary included a pic that I “borrowed”. The source will remain unidentified other than their initials being RCC and that they are obnoxiously and arrogantly anti-equality. However, the pic was just two perfect – two identical wedding bands of the same size and when you looked at it you realized that they unintentionally were both for men. This replacement pic is compiled from a ring I saw on Gemvara.com. I have no idea who they are, but they use language that feels very inclusive (e.g. “two souls”, “your union”) and they had some items that were reasonably priced without looking cheap.)
January 17th, 2012
TODAY IN HISTORY:
Texas AIDS Quarantine Proposal Withdrawn: 1986. Texas Health Commissioner Robert Bernstein announced that he was withdrawing the proposal to impose a quarantine on “incorrigible” people with AIDS. The announcement came three days after twenty witnesses testified in a public hearing against the proposal, saying it would do little to stem the spread of the disease. The spector of a possible misuse of a quarantine, AIDS and other health advocates said, would prevent a lot of people with HIV/AIDS from getting tested or seeking services. Gov. Mark White also weighed in, saying that the proposed quarantine was “not an appropriate solution.”
In a news conference in Austin announcing the about-face, Bernstien said that he decided that because of the “furor and the emotion” the proposal generated, the relationship between public health officials and the gay community “would suffer out of all proportion to the value gained.” But he hadn’t yet given up on coming up with some method for isolating people with AIDS. “We’re not dropping it,” he said. “We are just going to go about it in a less tumultuous way.” Gay leaders in Texas hailed the turnaround and promised to help a newly expanded task force identify effective ways for dealing with the disease.
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?
January 16th, 2012
Bernice King, the daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., has had a difficult relationship with the gay community. In 2004, she led a march with disgraced Atlanta anti-gay preacher Eddie Long to support a constitutional amendment banning marriage equality in Georgia. Before an audience of conservative Christians in 2004, she denounced equality for gay people, saying “I know deep down in my sanctified soul that he (Dr. King) did not take a bullet for same-sex marriage.” This position contrasted sharply with those of Coretta Scott King, Bernice’s mother and Dr. King’s wife, who appealed to “everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream, to make room at the table of brotherhood and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.”
Today, it looks like Bernice King has enjoyed something of an epiphany. Speaking at Atlanta’s annual Martin Luther King, Jr., rally, she addressed the LGBT community in her remarks. According to the GA Voice:
In a passionate, sermon-like speech about building unity, King said she didn’t care if people were Hindu, Buddhist, Islamist, were from the North side or the South side, were black or white, were “heterosexual or homosexual, or gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender” — that all people were needed to create unity.
LGBT advocates in the crowd were surprised and delighted by the inclusion. Witnesses agree that she began by talking about the need to unite all people, “heterosexual or homosexual,” before backing up to replace the word “homosexual” with “gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender.”
Paulina Helm-Hernandez, LGBT honorary grand marshal for the march and rally, said, “I thought it was great. First time I’ve ever heard her say lesbian, gay, bi and trans out loud. She said homosexual at first and then corrected herself. It takes a lot of grace to do something like that when you’re on a roll.”
January 16th, 2012
Arrogance can be blinding. And the arrogance that the Roman Catholic Bishops hold in their perception of their role in society often leads them to make statements that only make sense to those who share their presumptions, prejudices and undying belief that the Catholic Church dictates what is real simply by declaring it so.
And in their blinding arrogance, Bishops in the State of Washington have released a letter that is so disdainful of gay parents, adoptive parents, and those who require help with fertility that I believe it will only serve to further illustrate how ignorant and out-of-touch the Catholic Church has become. Perhaps staying within the realm of religious doctrine their words could be given some respect, but posed as declarations about objective reality and public policy, their advice on the proposed marriage bill is laughable … and disgusting.
Married couples who bring children into the world make particular sacrifices and take on unique risks and obligations for the good of society. For this reason the state has long understood that it has a compelling interest in recognizing and supporting these mothers and fathers through a distinct category of laws. Were the definition of marriage to change, there would be no special laws to support and recognize the irreplaceable contribution that these married couples make to society and to the common good by bringing to life the next generation.
Upholding the present definition of marriage does not depend on anyone’s religious beliefs. Washington State’s present law defining marriage as “a civil contract between a male and a female” is grounded not in faith, but in reason and the experience of society. It recognizes the value of marriage as a bond of personal relationships, but also in terms of the unique and irreplaceable potential of a man and woman to conceive and nurture new life, thus contributing to the continuation of the human race. A change in legislation would mean that the state would no longer recognize the unique sacrifices and contributions made by these couples, thereby adding to the forces already undermining family life today.
You see, heterosexuals make “sacrifices and contributions” that are “unique and irreplaceable”. The rest of you are just slackers.
Those same-sex couples who adopt kids who are past the preferred adoption age – slackers. Those same-sex couples who adopt kids who are born addicted to heroin – slackers. Those same-sex couples who adopt kids who are mixed-race and hard to place – slackers. Those same-sex couples who adopt kids who are infected with HIV or have other special needs – slackers. These same-sex couples who carefully plan to have a family and wait until they can afford to do so without being a burden to anyone else – slackers. Those same-sex couples who step in when heterosexuals abuse and rape and torture their own offspring and who give endless hours of love and attention – there’s no sacrifice or contribution to society there. Nope, just slackers.
And you can ask anyone in adoption services – anyone in child protection – anyone in foster care administration who they turn to when no one else is willing to take a kid. It isn’t the Catholic Church; they care so little for children that they’d close adoption services rather than be seen treating their gay neighbors like themselves. And it’s not just a meme or a stereotype or PR, it’s a simple fact – gay couples take the kids that no one else will take. The damn slackers.
But when little Mary Catherine McPlaidskirt and Michael Joseph Illpullout have their backseat tryst and then rush into a Holy Union before they pop out the 6,988,281,769th human – and immediately get on public assistance – they are making “particular sacrifices” and taking on “unique risks and obligations for the good of society”.
Fortunately, this is not only offensive to gay couples, it’s offensive to those who have friends who are gay or infertile or adopted or who have ever been in a position where they were unable to provide for a child and took the responsible step of seeking a better home. Frankly, it’s insulting to anyone with even a modicum of mental capability.
Keep it up, Catholic Church. You may just reach the place where your opposition is so absurd and spiteful that it is all that is needed to ensure success.
January 16th, 2012
Rick Santorum doesn’t hate gay people. Why, some of Rick’s friends’ neighbor’s cousin’s relatives are gay. So of course he doesn’t hate gay people and his wife can tell you so.
When a mother asked what to tell her son, Mrs. Santorum told her to blame her son. (Examiner)
Karen Santorum, Rick’s wife, answered first. “I think it’s very sad what the gay activists have done out there; they vilify him, and it’s so wrong,” she said. “Rick does not hate anyone.” Mrs. Santorum noted that opponents “can’t even find one example” of her husband hating gay people.
Rick Santorum cast his opposition gay marriage as a “public policy difference,” lamenting that “some see that public policy difference as a personal assault.”
Santorum then chimed in with some fascinating statements:
“There’s all sorts of other relationships that people have, and they are valuable relationships — whether they are amorous relationships or friendship relationships or familial relationships — they’re all important, they all have value they all should be affirmed,” Santorum added. “But that does not mean that we should change the laws to order — to create an atmosphere where children and families are not being promoted.”
The Box of Rocks vehemently disagrees with Rick Santorum on this issue. The Rocks do NOT think all relationships have value or should be affirmed.
For example, the Box of Rocks will never affirm ‘man on child’ relationships, which Santorum is on record as equating to same-sex relationships. The spokesman for the Box of Rocks noted, “That Rick Santorum is a pretty sick puppy. And I don’t mean in the ‘man on dog’ way.”
January 16th, 2012
National Organization for [Catholic] Marriage’s Maggie Gallagher has endorse Pope Rick, as was anticipated. In doing so, she had far less to say about his policies or qualifications than she did about the meanies who are mocking the candidate:
They will go after him not just to defeat Rick Santorum, but to smear his good name, to associate it with their own muck, to take a decent and honorable man and try literally to make his name mean mud.
Oh, Maggie, no one is trying to literally make his name mean mud! Even a box of rocks knows that.
The box of rocks is very familiar with mud and considers mud to be a good friend. But it tries to keep a garden hose handy if there is any chance of coming in contact with santorum.
January 16th, 2012
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has been presumed to be opposed to the marriage bill being proposed by Democrats. In fact, I suspect that it is the presumption of his veto that is a selling point to some hesitating votes who might see a Christie veto as a win-win; they get to vote for it but it doesn’t really happen.
But the Star-Ledger is reporting that Christie is being non-committal about a veto.
When forced to make a decision, if forced to make a decision on it, I’ll make a decision.
This is an interesting response. It may well be a positioning in which the Governor can ask for specific religious exemptions or other provisions and thereby make the Democrats be the “difficult” ones. Or it may reflect his recognition of the popularity of equality in his state. And no little part of the equation is whether Christie will be considered as a Vice President nominee choice.
But whatever the motivation, when a Republican governor indicates the possibility of signing a marriage bill (or letting it become law without signature), you know that it’s a very different world than it was just a decade ago.
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