Box Turtle Bulletin

Kristy McNichol comes out

I was under the impression that Kristy McNichol, child actress star of Family and Empty Nest, came out decades ago. Guess I was wrong, because she just made it official. (People)

McNichol, 49, who has lived with her partner Martie Allen, also 49, for the past two decades, decided to make a statement about her sexuality and share this photo because she is “approaching 50” and wants to “be open about who I am.”

She “is very sad about kids being bullied,” her publicist Jeff Ballard tells PEOPLE. “She hopes that coming out can help kids who need support. She would like to help others who feel different.”

Kristy certainly went through her own period in which she desperately needed support and even after two decades of self-exile, there’s a certain sincerity to the announcement. Let’s hope that informing the last 15 people who weren’t aware of her orientation will not only serve to bring closure to Kristy but will encourage some teen out there who has the faintest clue who she is.

Welcome out, Kristy.

Bulgarian Culture Minister’s unique perspective

The Bulgarian Culture Minister, Vezhdi Rashidov, has demeaned the gay community in comments to a magazine. Well, actually, he pretty much demeaned everyone and with a flair that leaves American homophobes looking dowdy and uncreative. (novinite.com)

“I find the gays to be the most unpleasant community, since they combine the worst qualities of women and the most despicable qualities of men,” Rashidov has told Biograph.

Rashidov’s revelation came after he was asked whether he behaves in an authoritative manner towards women.

“I am not a domineering person, but I have a strong personality. I love it when women have a womanly nature…I can’t stand it when a woman looks like a transvestite,” the Culture Minister also said.

Rashidov, a prominent sculptor, remarked that he was the only contemporary Bulgarian artist whose work has never included the female body.

“I have always been attracted to drastic things,” he admitted.

The Minister revealed that he draws portraits of people he loves in his spare time, including Al Pacino, John Lennon and Hristo Stoichkov.

I have no idea what to say. But I am getting a mental image of a closet door festooned with pink lights and rhinestones.

Nice Work If You Can Get It

How’s this for a plan:

1.  Send people letters and email, pleading for money to fight a terrible (yet non-existent) danger.

2.  Use that money to finance another round of dishonest pleas for money.

3.  Repeat steps 1 and 2, month after month, year after year, while taking a “management fee” for my efforts.

Nice, huh? Actually, I didn’t invent it. I’m trying to figure out if that’s what anti-gay activist Eugene Delgaudio is doing.

Eugene Delgaudio

Delgaudio is kind of a joke, known for extreme, over-the-top, even messianic fundraising appeals. On the other hand, he’s an actual elected official, and pulls in well over a million dollars a year in donations. He’s also in the news right now, because he rented the Weekly Standard‘s email list to send out an anti-gay fundraising request so appalling that the conservative magazine has actually issued a statement of regret.

For some reason, I’m on the mailing list for Delgaudio’s organization (“Public Advocate of the United States”). Last month he asked for money with a novel and ballsy approach. He was about to file his 990 with the IRS (a financial disclosure form) and he was short of his 2011 fundraising goal. This would devastate the nation:

If I fail to raise $46,359.17 by December 31st, I’ll be forced to broadcast our weakness and vulnerability to the Homosexual Lobby…

…if they see Public Advocate’s treasury depleted they will see an opening to ram through the Gay Bill of Special Rights, the Homosexual Classrooms Act and the repeal of DOMA…

No wonder they’ll be pouring over my finance report like demented hyenas cackling as they stalk their prey, ready to rip it to shreds…

Robert, that’s why your emergency gift of $50, $100 or $200 is so important.

Without it, the Homosexual Lobby will be able to show Public Advocate’s 990s to moderate politicians as proof there is no effective opposition to their agenda.

His chutzpah is breathtaking, as he pretends NOM, AFA, TVC, FRC and a host of anti-gay groups don’t exist. But that’s not even the ballsy part: Delgaudio is openly asking for money just for the sake of having money!

He’s not even saying what he plans to do with it. But that’s not important — all that matters is making sure everyone knows Eugene Delgaudio has your money. Literally, that’s his pitch.

Delgaudio’s been sending me junk for months, but it never occurred to me “scour” his 990s until he brought them up. Then I figured, Why not? What does he do with all this cash? I’m no accountant, but I can read a 990. Let me walk you through what I found. And I’ll try not to cackle like a demented hyena stalking its prey. Read the rest of this entry »

Kudos to Santa Barbara police

I’ve been pretty critical of police forces who seem to see citizens – particularly gay citizens – as their enemies. But I am delighted to take the opposite approach today.

The following is from Gay Girl/Straight World relating to a gay bashing in Santa Barbara, CA:

At the beginning of 2011, PPF instigated sensitivity training with the Santa Barbara Police Department. The organization partnered with another nonprofit, Just Communities, to create the LGBT Sensitivity and Awareness Trainings. In fall 2011, the entire SBPD underwent the orientation.

One of the detectives assigned to the hate crime case approached PPF’s Executive Director David Selberg at the recent press conference. The detective explained that, as a result of the sensitivity training, he better understood the nuances of working with a gay couple involved in an assault. By acknowledging the need to be prepared in the event of hate-induced crime, Selberg facilitated the ability to be prepared. Santa Barbara may be a community that doesn’t tolerate hate, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be prepared in the event it crops up.

Kudos to a police officer who chose not to feel resentment over sensitivity training but instead used it as a tool to be a better cop. Kudos to a police department that cultivated his attitude.

Santorum’s New Hampshire Catholic problem

New Hampshire is about 35% Catholic and when you consider those who vote in the Republican primary, I suspect the percentage is higher. Which is really bad news for Rick Santorum, the candidate running to bring US law into conformity with Vatican dictates.

Because “Catholic” in New Hampshire isn’t the same thing as Catholic in the Santorum household (Wall Street Journal)

An October poll by the University of New Hampshire found that state voters overall opposed the repeal bill two-to-one. Among likely GOP primary voters, 47% opposed repeal versus 39% in favor, the poll found.

Pirozzi Monier, a Goffstown, N.H., retiree who was at a town hall held by candidate Rick Santorum Thursday night, says she has “deeply rooted Roman Catholic” beliefs, but said, “Would I be opposed to friends getting married who are gay? No.”

In what she described as a typical New Hampshire attitude, she said she believes in staying out of her friends and neighbors’ business. “I’m old Yankee stock,” she said. ‘Good fences make good neighbors.”

Another Man’s Wife

Sigh:

Stahl: So you’re pro-choice?

Diana Cantor: I am.

Stahl: Gay marriage? What does that mean?

Diana Cantor: I don’t-

Stahl: You disagree with him?

Diana Cantor: I do disagree. There’s really that respect. If I expect him to respect my views that could be different, I certainly need to respect his.

Here we go again. Yet another wife of an anti-gay politician supports gay marriage. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s wife Diana Cantor joins Cindy McCain and Laura Bush as being gay supportive in ways that contrast with their political husbands. It’s a long if not necessarily a well-trod tradition; Nancy Reagan fretted over the health of her Hollywood friends while her husband’s administration stonewalled on AIDS.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad Mrs. Cantor holds those positions and is willing to speak up about them. More wives should. But more to the point, more wives — or more particularly, more Republican women — should speak up, become more active in their party, and even run for office.  Remember, we wouldn’t have DADT repeal today if it weren’t for Sen. Susan Collins refusing to let it die on the Senate floor. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen has signed on as cosponsor for the Respect for Marriage Act, which would repeal DOMA. So, please excuse me if I’m appreciative but not entirely thrilled to my toes over learning that another anti-gay politician’s wife supports us. What am I supposed to do with it? Congratulate Rep. Cantor for choosing such a plucky little lady?

The Daily Agenda for Friday, January 6

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Addressing “A Horror of Everything Related to the Homosexual Tendency”: 1899. In 1897, British sexologist Havelock Ellis published the first installment of his six-volume Studies in the Psychology of Sex. Volume 1 was subtitled Sexual Inversion, as homosexuality was more often called in the English language at that time. Two years later, his book was still making waves. In the January 1899 edition of the International Journal of Ethics, reviewer H. Sturt reviewed Ellis’s book, calling it “a solid and valuable contribution to psychology” and commending Ellis as “give(ing) the impression that he is a genuine scientific man doing his best to illustrate an obscure… province of human nature.” Sexual Inversion was revolutionary, being the first scientific book to discuss homosexuality in a humane and nonjudgmental way. Ellis argued against the contemprary attitudes about homosexuality being abnormal, criminal, or immoral, and presented it instead as a variation in a broad spectrum of sexual expressions. Ellis concluded that it was useless to try to change sexual orientation, and he advocated for the abolishment of Britain’s anti-gay laws like the “gross indecency” law under which Oscar Wilde was prosecuted in 1895.

Most books about homosexuality at the turn of the century were severely restricted in their distribution. Sexual Inversion was first published in German in 1896 because Ellis feared it would be censored in England. Since several other books on sexuality had already been published there, German had become the lingua franca, so to speak, of sexuality research. When the first English edition was published in London in 1897, its distribution was restricted to the professional trade. Sturt, in his review of Sexual Inversion, argued that this was a misguided policy:

There are some who would raise the general question whether a subject like the present can fitly be made the matter of a published treatise. Many excellent persons have a horror of everything related to the homosexual tendency. Their feelings commands our respect, and yet it seems better to have the subject brought out publicly. That all sorts of immature and half-educated people should read Mr. Ellis’s book is, of course, most undesirable. But in view of the prevalence of sexual inversion it is necessary that every schoolmaster, every criminal lawyer, we had almost said every head of a family, should be acquainted with its phenomena. Were the subject better understood, mistakes would be avoided that have ruined thousands of lives.

[In Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac: A New Documentary (New York: Harper & Row, 1983): pp 296-297.]

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?

Nice try, USA today

Civil Unions are very very valuable to couples who are able to protect and provide for their family through such institutions. However, as a distinction from marriage they are both silly and pointless.

To gay couples, it is offensive to offer a lower status. To anti-gay activists, any social recognition of same sex couples is anathema. And everyone else just gets confused.

Take, for example, USA Today’s coverage of Hawaii’s Civil Unions law which just came into effect on January 1, 2012. No doubt Nancy Trejos meant well, and the coverage caught the spirit of the story but, well, you’ll see:

The new year could bring Hawaii hotels a wave of same-sex marriage civil union ceremonies.

At least, that’s what they’re hoping.

Many hotels in Maui especially, where there were 5,900 non-residential marriages in 2010, are specifically targeting same-sex couples now that a law went into effect Jan. 1 legalizing civil unions.

The Grand Wailea, for instance, is offering free iPads to the first 10 couples who sign up for civil union packages, according to The Maui News.

A recent University of California-Los Angeles, study found that Iowa’s legalization of gay marriage in 2009 resulted in as much as $12 million additional tourism dollars, The Maui News pointed out.

Maui Hotel & Lodging Association Executive Director Carol Reimann told Hotel Check-in that Maui has the most number of visitor marriages of any of the Hawaiian islands, and expects to see more same-sex marriages civil unions.

“We want to service all segments of the community, and we welcome everyone,” she told Hotel Check-in.

That said, she pointed out that same-sex marriages civil unions in Hawaii won’t be recognized in home states that don’t have the same civil union law. “But I think a lot of people appreciate the fact that Hawaii recognizes it,” she said.

That hasn’t stopped hotels in New York from also catering to same-sex couples since civil unions marriage became legal there in July.

At The Muse Hotel, for instance, concierge Marc Camacho got ordained as a minister shortly after the civil union marriage law went into place. It took him about a week of studies, which the company supported by giving him time during the work day.

“It feels good knowing this is one of the things we can offer” guests, he said.

On Dec. 23, he performed his first civil union marriage ceremony when two California residents checked into The Muse. They had had a ceremony planned in California before Proposition 8 was overturned passed, no longer making same-sex unions legal reverting California back from recognition of marriage to domestic partnerships. They went ahead with the ceremony but wanted to make it legal in New York.

Camacho arranged all the details, re-creating their July California ceremony, down to the same German chocolate cake and cocktails.

Camacho said the hotel is getting more calls and e-mails from other same-sex couples looking to have their weddings or receptions there.

“This is getting us more excited to go down that route,” he said.

Like I said, clearly she meant well. But why don’t we be done with the confusing nomenclature and just celebrate the marriage for everyone, already?

In case you’re exposed to santorum

Now that Rick Santorum has received some attention in Iowa, it is likely that there will be an uptick in his funding and perhaps an increased expanse in his electioneering. Now I would never dream of telling you to protest Mr. Santorum’s events or even consider hinting to you about of what might be an effective way to make a silent protest… but I think if I were to be exposed to santorum, I’d want some flushable moist wipes with me.

Jamaica’s New PM on Gay Rights

Homosexuality became a surprising topic in Jamaica’s elections last December in which members of Jamaica’s ruling Labor Party charged that the opposition was funded by gays. That tactic didn’t stave off their electoral loss however. Labor lost to the opposition People’s National Party in a landslide and PNP leader Portia Simpson Miller was sworn in as Prime Minister.

Here is Simpson Miller addressing the issue of gays serving in government during a December televised debate. Her remarks stood in stark contrast to the lengthy non-answers delivered by Labor leader Andrew Holness.

How’s The Catholic Church’s Celibacy Solution Working Out?

If you’re gay, the Catholic Church has one answer for you: stay celibate for the rest of your life. The Hartford (CT) Archdiocese has sponsored a chapter of the Catholic ex-gay program Courage to help gays experience all the joys of celibacy:

The Hartford Archdiocese wants gays and lesbians to practice abstinence in the new year.

On Tuesday, the archdiocese announced it was launching a local chapter of a national ministry called Courage “to support men and women who struggle with homosexual tendencies and to motivate them to live chaste and fruitful lives in accordance with Catholic Church teachings.”

…Gay attraction is not the sin, the ministry preaches — only when one acts on those feelings is it immoral. “Through support and spiritual intervention, we can help people with same-sex attraction lead moral and fulfilling lives,” Pallotti said. “These people are hurting and so are their families. Doing nothing would be a lack of compassion.”

The article explained that the Archdiocese had some difficulty establishing the chapter over the objections of area deacons who thought Courage didn’t condemn gay people enough. But after attending some workshops, they decided that Courage wasn’t as lib’ral as they feared. Local LGBT leaders saw through the charade:

True Colors Executive Director Robin McHaelen argued Tuesday that the Catholic Church is “trying to have it both ways — keeping the same hostile interpretation of a small number of biblical passages while pretending they are not homophobic.”

“I can’t tell you how many kids I work with who have been spiritually wounded by this and similar religious perspectives,” McHaelen said. True Colors, a nonprofit agency based in Hartford, offers help to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender teens, some of whom have been kicked out of religious households.

“In my opinion, that’s the abomination,” McHaelen said.

Unlike most other ex-gay organizations, neither Courage nor the Catholic Church promises change in sexual orientation per se. Instead, they promote “the gift of celibacy” for anyone who remains outside a one-man-one-woman marriage.

And speaking of celibacy:

Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Gabino Zavala, 60, resigned Wednesday under the code of canon law that lets bishops step down earlier than the normal retirement age of 75 if they’re sick or for some other reason that makes them unfit for office.

In a letter to the faithful, Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez said Zavala had told him in December that he had two children who lived with their mother in a different state. Zavala subsequently submitted his resignation to the pope.

The Other Contest Tuesday Night

The Iowa caucuses grabbed all the attention, but there was another matchup taking place on Tuesday night that flew in under the radar: Celebrity Wife Swap, in which Ted and Gayle Haggard swapped wives with Gary Busey and his fiancee Steffanie Sampson. I didn’t see it, but it looks like it went pretty well for everyone.

The Daily Agenda for Thursday, January 5

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Kinsey’s “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” Released: 1948. The dry, scientific, statistics-laden Sexual Behavior in the Human Male was published by W.B. Saunders, a respected publisher of medical textbooks and journals who had no idea what they were getting into when they agreed to publish this book. Their experience was with a limited customer base where a run of 5,000 copies was considered a huge success. W.B. Saunders ended up publishing a quarter of a million copies during that first year instead.

The only person who wasn’t surprised by the runaway success of what became known simply as “The Kinsey Report” was Alfred Kinsey himself. He and his colleagues had spent the previous nine years interviewing nearly 12,000 people across the country, asking them questions covering more than five hundred details of their intimate, sexual lives. When the book was finally published, America was emerging from the frugality that marked the Great Depression and World War II, full of economic and cultural vitality and itching to settle down in their Levittown houses and start making thousands of babies. The Kinsey Reports quickly entered popular culture along with Tiki-chic, bachelor pads, and a huge post-war baby boom. Sex was breaking out all over, and “Kinsey” became a popular code-word for anything risque. It also introduced millions of Americans to the notion that gay people — and a lot of other people as well — have gay sex. Now more than sixty years later, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (and its companion volume, 1953’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Female) are still the books that everyone loves — especially those who have never read them. They are also the books that social conservatives love to hate, blaming them for sparking the sexual revolution of the 1960’s. For more information about the book’s impact, you can check out our report, “According To The Kinsey Reports,” which was written on the occasion of the book’s sixtieth anniversary.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Alvin Ailey, Jr.: 1931. It can be said that Alvin Ailey singlehandedly elevated African-American dance from popular steps to modern art. It’s hard to imagine African-American modern dance with without his Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, even though he was always proud of the fact that his dance company was integrated. Ailey combined modern dance with classical styles, bringing together a long, unbroken leg line (“a ballet bottom”) and a dramatically expressive upper torso (“a modern top”). “What I like is the line and technical range that classical ballet gives to the body. But I still want to project to the audience the expressiveness that only modern dance offers, especially for the inner kinds of things,” he once explained. His signature work, Revelations, drew on his memories of his early childhood in Texas, combining elements of blues, spirituals, and gospel music with a thoroughly modern choreography. His 1970 American Ballet Theatre commission, The River, had the ABT’s ballet company employing classical dance styles with the music of Duke Ellington.

Ailey was openly gay, a fact which caused tensions between him and his mother. When he was dying of AIDS in 1989, he asked his doctor to announce that he had died of a blood disorder to spare his mother the social stigma of dying from AIDS. Considering the many barriers that Ailey smashed to smithereens during the course of his career in dance, his final act stands as a sad anomaly. And yet his work endures. His dance troupe carries on his legacy through performances, commissions and in providing higher education to dance students through The Ailey School.

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?

Washington Governor endorses marriage equality

The State of Washington has been on a slow and steady path towards fully marriage equality for several years.

In 2006, the state Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that its Defense of Marriage Act did not violate the state constitution. However, they also indicated that there is nothing within the constitution which prohibited the state from offering equal protection to all of its citizens. In April 10, 2007, the state began the process of doing just that, by passing a bill authorizing the creation of a registry for parters which granted eleven specific rights. The following year, on March 4, 2008, the legislature beefed up the registry with an additional 170 rights and on May 18, 2009 Governor Christine Gregoire signed a bill which finalized the registry evolution by making Registered Partnerships to be the legal equivalent of marriage, with all of its rights, duties, and obligations.

Anti-gay activists countered by activating a clause in the Washington State Constitution which allows bills to be presented to the electorate for approval or veto. They began gathering signatures to place the decision of the legislature up to a public referendum. After a nail-biting verification process, the opponents of partner rights eked out the required 137,689 120,577 valid signatures with only about a thousand 1430 to spare.

This proved to be a Pyhrric victory, however, as on November 3, the voters in the state approved the law by 53% to 47%. This was particularly important because for the first time, “the people” had voted to increase rights, thus dispelling the ‘liberal legislators kowtowing to special interest groups’ meme.

Much of the campaign by those opposed to equality was based on portraying a vote for the enhanced partnerships as being a vote for gay marriage, hoping that such a comparison would result in a rejection of the law. This proved to be a strategy with one significant flaw; when the bill passed with such a significant margin, gay groups were able to then portray the election as a mandate for marriage itself.

However, any hope for full equality has been held up by one roadblock. Governor Gregoire has indicated an unwillingness to sign legislation granting gay couples the same language and process as heterosexual couples, saying that Washington was not yet ready for such a change. And lacking the votes to override a veto, the legislators have recognized the futility of that effort.

Until now. (Spokesman-Review)

Washington must end discrimination against same-sex couples, an emotional Gov. Chris Gregoire said this morning. She urged the Legislature to pass a bill that would allow gay and lesbian couples to marry in the state without requiring churches to perform the service if their religious denomination objects.

We commend Gov. Gregoire on her evolution on this issue and welcome her support.

The Outrageous Immorality of the Anti-gay Movement

I’m a dope, a patsy, a dupe. Or at least tragically naive: Somehow, it seems, I’m once again surprised by the unabashed dishonesty of our worst anti-gay opponents.

This time it’s Dr. Rick Fitzgibbons of NARTH, writing a long piece about same-sex adoption. It has a small section titled, “The children do suffer,” with this opening:

There are strong indications that children raised by same sex couples fare less well than children raised in stable homes with a mother and a father.

He brings up two studies to support this, one of them by Seton Hall professor Dr. Theodora Sirota, and then regretfully tells us:

Not surprisingly, there are scholars who oppose this weighty evidence.

I know something that might surprise Fitzgibbons:  One of those opposing scholars is — have you guessed? — Seton Hall professor Dr. Theodora Sirota, the source of his weighty evidence.

Actually, I take that back. Fitzgibbons won’t be surprised at all, because Sirota has already written to him, complaining that he has “mis-reported and misrepresented the results of my 2009 research in this blog.” Not surprisingly, Fitzgibbons has yet to correct his article.

I know this because Dr. Sirota (whom I’ve never met) contacted me herself yesterday, asking for help in exposing what he’s done.

You can read the full text of Sirota’s message here, but let me put it in a nutshell. To support his denunciation of same-sex adoption, Fitzgibbons offers this summary of Sirota’s research:

Researchers interviewed 68 women with gay or bisexual fathers and 68 women with heterosexual fathers. The women (average age 29 in both groups) with gay or bisexual fathers had difficulty with adult attachment issues in three areas: they were less comfortable with closeness and intimacy; they were less able to trust and depend on others; and they experienced more anxiety in relationships compared to the women raised by heterosexual fathers.

The problem is not with what Fitzgibbons said; it’s what he left out: The gay and bisexual fathers in Sirota’s study were married to the mothers.

Dr. Sirota’s article is about the impact of a homosexual father raising a girl in a heterosexual marriage. It has nothing to do with same-sex couples, nothing to do with same-sex adoption at all.

You’d never know that from Fitzgibbon’s piece, and that makes his piece a lie. This kind of sin-by-omission is nothing new; we’ve seen it from far more reputable scholars than this NARTHer. Here, though, we have the original researcher explaining why this is an abuse of her research and asking us for help.

Dr. Sirota’s explanation is crucial. Her data suggest the daughters’ issues were related not so much to their fathers’ sexuality, but to factors like “divorce, maternal anger/bitterness, father absence, etc.” In other words (my words, not Sirota’s), pretty much the results you’d expect when a gay man tries to follow the anti-gay advice of “choosing” to be “straight.”

That’s a provocative finding. In fact, it’s the opposite of what Fitzgibbons is trying to establish. Our opponents claim their concern is all about the kids, but how do they reconcile that with these other things they tell us:

1. Bans on same-sex marriage don’t discriminate because gays can marry a member of the opposite sex, just like anyone else (recently heard from Michele Bachmann).
2. The purpose of marriage is procreation.

And yet kids are hurt when gay men live by this philosophy. Given our opponents’ pure and unselfish regard for children, I eagerly await their loud and public reversal of what they’ve pushed on us for long.

So let’s do a quick recap:

• Dr. Rick Fitzgibbons presents himself as a science-based mental-health professional.
• He distorts another scholar’s work to advance his agenda.
• This scholar points out the distortion.
• Fitzgibbons fails to correct the distortion.

Two points present themselves, one minor and one major.

First (and this is the minor one), every time our opponents unrepentantly twist someone’s research, they admit they have no honest case. Always point this out — always.

More important, though, is the outrageous immorality of Fitzgibbon’s work. And there’s plenty of outrage for plenty of people: For Dr. Sirota, whose research has been abused. For same-sex parents, who’ve been libeled by that abuse. And, most of all, for Fitzgibbons’ own loyal readers, who are counting on him for the truth.

This is a moral issue, and it’s becoming clear we can better advance our cause on the grounds of morality rather than tolerance. When Ted Olson and David Boies made their case against Prop 8, they did so on a moral basis: Same-sex relationships have the same potential for moral value as opposite-sex pairings, and it is a moral wrong to deny us full citizenship and equality. In this effort, Fitzgibbons becomes our ally, a case study in the moral bankruptcy of our extreme opposition.

Dr. Sirota has asked us to help expose this corruption of her work, and it’s the easiest exposure possible, requiring nothing but a simple declaration of truth. Please help her, either by sharing this, or (even better) by using her words to craft a message of your own.