Box Turtle Bulletin

Iowa’s Republicans not to reintroduce anti-marriage bills

The Iowa Senate Majority Leader, Mike Gronstal (D-Council Bluffs), has the power to stop any bills or provisions to amend the state constitution from being brought to the floor of the Senate. And he’s promised to use that power to stop any effort to remove marriage equality from the state.

But that certainly doesn’t have to stop the Republicans in the House of Representatives (where they have a majority) from trying to pressure Gronstal and make him appear to abuse power by bombarding him with bills from the House. And the House Republicans did pass a constitutional amendment bill in the last session.

However, they will not be doing so when the House reconvenes. (Trib)

House Speaker Kraig Paulsen, R-Hiawatha, said he has no plans to revisit volatile social issues like gay marriage and abortion when lawmakers convene Jan. 9. Republicans who control the House approved tough restrictions on abortion and a resolution calling for a statewide vote on banning gay marriage last time around, but the Senate’s Democratic leader blocked debate on both measures.

Senate Majority Leader Michael Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, has indicated he would do the same again, and given that, Paulsen said there’s little incentive to revisit the issues.

It seems hardly worth noting. Just a decision not to waste time. A choice not to grandstand. An option for statesmanship over partisan politics. And, to be sure, any praise due for this decision is of the weakest sort.

However, this is the sort of indicator that we often overlook. And sometimes the little things, the absence of an action tells us more than a headline grabber.

For example, we see that today, in Iowa, the public sentiment just isn’t anti-gay enough to pressure Gronstal. And while they’d happily vote away our rights, the issue isn’t important enough for Republican legislators to waste their own time. And, more importantly, “sending a message” by voting again in this session is being considered a waste of their time.

This little non-action tells us quite a bit, really. It’s an indication that time is on our side, that “the Republican base” just doesn’t have the influence it once had, and that – at least to some extent – anti-gay activism is now a luxury issue.

It Gets Worse: Nigeria’s New Bill Criminalizes Displays of Affection, LGBT Advocacy

The earlier report on Nigeria’s new proposed “anti-marriage” law barely scratched the surface in describing the increased penalties of the proposed legislation. The earlier report noted that “Under the measure, couples who marry could face up to 14 years in jail, and witnesses or anyone who helps couples marry could be sentenced to 10 years behind bars.” As bad as that is, a later report from the Associated Press shows that the measure is much worse than just that:

Other additions to the bill include making it illegal to register gay clubs or organizations, as well as criminalizing the “public show of same-sex amorous relationships directly or indirectly.” Those who violate those laws would face 10 years imprisonment as well.

…The bill also could target human rights and HIV-prevention programs run by the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Nigeria, which has the world’s third-largest population of people living with HIV and AIDS. A U.S. Embassy spokeswoman declined to immediately comment.

The bill, which cleared the Nigerian Senate yesterday, must still earn approval from the lower House of Representatives and be signed by President Goodluck Jonathan before becoming law. That now looks likely. The Guardian notes, “Among rights activists, it has become a grim joke that homophobia is a rare issue that unites the country’s bickering Muslim north and Christian south.”

 The Guardian also identified some of the likely repercussions if that happens:

The new laws will have repercussions well beyond the gay community, said Damian Ugwu, an activist with the Lagos-based Social Justice Advocacy Initiative. Migrants who shared accommodation for economic reasons would be particularly vulnerable, he said. “From what I know of the Nigerian police, they look for every opportunity to extort money. With this bill, they won’t go looking for gay couples in the Sheraton – they’ll go just go around rounding up people who are poor or don’t know their rights,” he said.

In the north, policemen had visited hotels at night to seek out unmarried couples sleeping together. They demanded bribes or threatened to turn them in to the Islamic courts, Ugwu said.

Homosexuality is already criminalized in Nigeria, with a penalty of fourteen years’ imprisonment upon conviction. In the half of the country where Sharia Law is in effect, the penalty is death by stoning.

Nigerian Senate Passes Anti-Gay Bill After Increasing Penalties

The Associated Press is reporting that the Nigerian Senate yesterday passed a bill to criminalize same-sex weddings after first increasing the penalties from the earlier draft. According to the AP:

Under the measure, couples who marry could face up to 14 years in jail, and witnesses or anyone who helps couples marry could be sentenced to 10 years behind bars. That’s an increase over the bill’s initial penalties.

The original draft provided a three year prison term for entering into a same-sex marriage. The penalty for witnessing/aiding/abetting a marriage was originally to be five years imprisonment or a fine of ₦2,000 (2,000 naria, or US$13 in a country where the average annual income is US$1,200.) If a group of persons witnessed/aided/abetted a marriage, the fine would have been ₦50,000. It was unclear under the original draft whether two people at a wedding would be considered two individuals or a group. An updated copy of the bill has not been posted on the Nigerian Senate’s web site. A companion bill has not yet been posted to the House of Representatives web site.

Oil-rich Nigeria is much less dependent on foreign assistance, giving western nations much less leverage in attempts to improve Nigeria’s human rights situation.

Homosexuality is already criminalized in Nigeria, with a penalty of fourteen years’ imprisonment upon conviction. In the half of the country where Sharia Law is in effect, the penalty is death.

The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, November 29

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Der Spiegel Reports On Arrests of 750 Gay Men: 1950. The Third Reich had been defeated five years earlier, but Germany’s notorious Paragraph 175 lived on to claim more victims. On this date in 1950, Germany’s news weekly Der Spiegel featured a surprisingly sympathetic report on the arrest of 750 gay men by the Frankfurt Criminal Police resulting in 140 criminal charges as of November 25. Magistrate Kurt Romini denied that an official campaign had been launched, saying he was only responding to complaints from “young persons.” But it turns out that Romini himself had been in charge of handling criminal cases against gay men as State Attorney during the Nazi regime. “During his work in the Third Reich,” Der Spiegel reported, “it was not in the interest of a defendant to admit to homosexuality.  As soon as he confessed, he was on the way to the concentration camp (with a pink triangle on his chest) and certain to eventually be castrated.”

Castration was no longer in vogue, but Der Spiegel discovered a new twist in this latest campaign. Police relied almost entirely on street hustlers to make arrests and build cases. “They (the hustlers) are driven, for example, through the city in unmarked cars.  Then they indicate which passers-by they recognize in the street traffic.  The auto stops, and the subject is arrested and interrogated.  Moreover, he is entered into the criminal records system.  That is, he is photographed; the picture is then shown to all hustlers in custody and informants until someone recognizes him. When someone admits that he visits bars frequented by homosexuals, then a detailed description of a sex act by a hustler is sufficient for a court to convict him. There are known cases where such relationships persons with homosexual tendencies with a certain hustler did not exist.  The ‘boys’ invented experiences, and a conviction resulted.”

One hustler, identified as 19-year-old Otto Blankenstein, had been the star witness (and often the only witness) in at least 40 cases. This was true even though “tangible symptoms of mental illness are apparent” in Blankenstein. Der Spiegel also reported that a number of the cases involved blackmail, where the men refused to pay a bribe to some of the street hustlers in exchange for not naming them to police. It’s likely that some of the men weren’t even gay. Their only “crime” was to respond to a few innocuous questions from a hustler at a train station, who then surreptitiously followed them as they walked home. On learning the man’s address, the hustler could then learn more about him; if he was unmarried, the hustler was extra-lucky and his mark would be easier for the inevitable blackmail demands. Refusal to pay resulted in being turned over to police.

If the victim was lucky and wasn’t convicted, his problems still weren’t over. “The citizen is recorded as a suspected homosexual, and a duplicate of his mug shot, which he had to let the police take, is now placed in the Frankfurt mug shot library, and will be shown to hustlers and other people in custody. They will point at it and say, ‘That one, that one, I saw him too in the Kleist Kasino (a popular gay bar), and he offered me DM10 for the night.'” At the peak of the campaign, Judge Romini, who was in charge of all Paragraph 175 casess, was presiding over four trials per day. At least six of the accused men committed suicide.

Update: On February 14, 1951, Der Spiegel carried a brief update revealing that Romini’s star witness, Otto Blankenstein, had been declared mentally ill, and Romini himself had been accused by his housekeepers of “severe night-time disorderly conduct and outburst in the presence of his professional colleagues.”

[Thanks to Rob in NYC for the translations]

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).

As always, please consider this your open thread for the day.

Nation’s 10-Year-Old Boys: “If You See Someone Raping Us, Please Call The Police”

That’s actually an Onion headline:

…”Many of you will no doubt be relieved to know the proper course of action is really quite simple: Just contact the police. Call 911, go to your local precinct, stop an officer on the street—the bottom line is, if you see one of us getting raped, notify the police, and do so as quickly as possible.”

“It doesn’t matter who the boy being raped is, and it doesn’t matter who is doing the raping, just please, please alert law enforcement,” Pearson added as the 10-year-old boys surrounding him nodded soberly. “And by the way, under no circumstances is it ever okay for an adult to rape a 10-year-old boy, so you really can’t go wrong by calling the police when something like that happens.”

Maybe it really does take satire to state the obvious.

Barney Frank: Gingrich Is Ideal Debate Opponent for “Sanctity of Marriage”

Barney Frank (D-MA) may be retiring, but he’s not leaving soon (his retirements commences when his current term ends in 2013) and — thank God! — he’s not leaving quietly:

Top Marine Says DADT Repeal Has Gone Smoothly

Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos says that Marines around the world have adapted very well to the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”:

I’m very pleased with how it has gone,” Amos said in an Associated Press interview during a week-long trip that included four days in Afghanistan, where he held more than a dozen town hall-style meetings with Marines of virtually every rank. He was asked about a wide range of issues, from his view of the Marine Corps’ future to more mundane matters such as why he recently decided to stop allowing Marines to wear their uniform with the sleeves rolled up. Not once was he asked in Afghanistan about the repeal of the gay ban.

Gen. Amos had broken ranks from the other military chiefs by openly lobbying against DADT’s repeal. Amos does not believe his earlier opposition to repeal was a mistake, saying that he was acting on a survey that he said showed DADT’s repeal would negatively impact unit cohesion. But once DADT was repealed, Amos appealed to the Marines’ commitment to honor and duty to facilitate a smooth implementation.

“No, Not THAT Phallus!”

When I reviewed David Reubens’ vile, best-selling character assassination of gay people recently, I did find myself laughing at one choice bit:

The homosexual must constantly search for the one man, the one penis, the one experience, that will satisfy him. Tragically there is no possibility of satisfaction because the formula is wrong. One penis plus one penis equals nothing. There is no substitute for heterosex—penis and vagina. Disappointed, stubborn, discouraged, defiant, the homosexual keeps trying. He is the sexual Diogenes, always looking for the penis that pleases.

That is the reason he must change partners endlessly. He tries each phallus in succession, then turns away remorsefully. “No, that’s not the one!” He is in a difficult position—condemned eternally to search after what does not exist—after what never existed.

I wanted to parody this, but I could never invent anything more ludicrous than the image of a man who “tries each phallus in succession, then turns away remorsefully. ‘No, that’s not the one!'”

(And even if I did, I’d still fall far, far short of the anti-gay commenter on a conservative blog who wrote that gays have lots of sex because gay sex so unsatisfying, while straight sex is so great that heteros go months without wanting it.)

Truthfully, I think Reubens is on to something, just not what he intended. Read the rest of this entry »

Barny Frank To Announce Retirement

The following release was sent from Barny Frank’s (D-MA) office moments ago:

Congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts 4th Congressional District, Ranking Member of the House of the House Financial Services Committee, will hold a press conference in Newton, MA today to formally announce and answer questions about his decision not to run for re-election in 2012.
 
The press conference will be held at Newton City Hall at 1:00 pm in the auditorium.

Frank, 71, has been serving in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1981.

LGBT People Aren’t the Only Ones Deprived of Human Rights In Uganda

Daily Monitor, Uganda’s largest independent newspaper, has a must-read story today asking, “Is Uganda as homophobic as they say?” They begin by setting up the question this way:

It can be traced to a whirlwind of events. One year after (M.P. David) Bahati’s (Anti-Homosexuality Bill), a fledgling tabloid ran a headline that called for homosexuals to be killed. Three months after that, in January this year, one of the men pictured under the Hang them headline, David Kato, was bludgeoned to death in his home. Amin himself couldn’t have written a better script.

The reference to the Idi Amin, the bloodthirsty dictator who ruled Uganda from 1971 to 1979, is a recurring one. Playwright Judith Adong invokes Amin’s name to show how the world’s views on Uganda’s human rights problems have shifted from a historical problem to a current one:

Before, when people heard that I’m from Uganda it used to be, ‘Oh, so you’re from Idi Amin’s country.’ Now it’s ‘You’re the people who want to kill homosexuals,'” she says.

Longtime LGBT advocate Val Kalende (she bravely appeared in a 2009 Daily Monitor profile at the height of the outcry surrounding the Anti-Homosexuality Bill) pulls on that thread further. Referencing Lonely Planet’s recommendation of Uganda as the world’s #1 best tourist destination, Val refocuses on the broader problems with human rights in Uganda:

Kalende believes the commenters on Lonely Planet are blowing things out of proportion. “What such people want to do is to place gay rights ahead of other human rights and they are the reason African countries are still overly homophobic. If people want Uganda to be boycotted because of homophobia then they should make the same noise when opposition leaders and journalists have their rights abused by the State.”

In this respect, Uganda is little different from the rest of the world: the gay community functions as the canary in the coalmine. How a society treats its gay community is a good predictor for how a society is capable of dealing with other groups who are either out of favor or out of power. President Yoweri Museveni’s regime has spent much of this year violently suppressing his political opponents. Against that backdrop, the world’s focused attention on the Anti-Homosexuality Bill while ignoring the broader problems with human rights strike ordinary Ugandans as elevating the gay community’s concern above everyone else’s. And naturally, if the world condemns official homophobia while ignoring the rest, it feeds the suspicion that LGBT Ugandans are seeking “special” rights and protections which ordinary Ugandans do not yet enjoy themselves.

Ugandan LGBT advocates say that this issue is just one of the barriers they face in trying to turn public opinion around on the Anti-Homosexuality Bill. When ordinary Ugandans see official harassment, arbitrary police actions, rampant corruption, and widespread abuses of power as endemic features of daily life, worldwide concerns over the country’s treatment of its LGBT citizens looks wildly myopic. Worse, LGBT advcocates say that single-minded focus confirms in the minds of ordinary Ugandans that the outside world is out of touch with what’s really going on there. And when Britain threatens developmental aid cuts based on treatment of sexual minorities, but not on violent governmental crackdowns on opposition groups, it only reinforces the widespread erroneous belief that homosexuality is a foreign import. On those points, it becomes hard to argue with them.

The Daily Agenda for Monday, November 28

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Dallas Judge Gives Light Sentence In Gay Man’s Murder: 1988. It was a common sport among Dallas-area high school students throughout the 1980s and well into the 1990s: to drive into the Oak Lawn gayborhood on a weekend night and spend the evening “gay bashing” — their term for it. (Full disclosure: one of my friends was stabbed in the chest and spent days in intensive care in one such attack while walking along Throckmorton St. His assailants were never found.) In one case, nine friends from North Mesquite High School drove to Oak Lawn one night in May to “pester the homosexuals.” According to the New York Times’s description of the event:

Witnesses who were in that group said the boys were standing on a street corner and shouting at passers-by, and then Tommy Lee Trimble, 34, and John Lloyd Griffin, 27, drove up and invited the boys into their car. Mr. Bednarski was said to have persuaded one more friend in his group to get in the car.After the car reached a secluded area of Reverchon Park, Mr. Bednarski is said to have ordered Mr. Trimble and Mr. Griffin to remove their clothes. On their refusal, a witness said, Mr. Bednarski drew a pistol and began firing. Mr. Trimble died immediately. Mr. Griffin died five days later.

Bednarksy was found guilty of murder, but Texas law allows the defendant to decide whether the judge or jury would determine the sentence. Bednarksy’s defense lawyer sensed that the judge was sympathetic and chose him. On November 19, Judge Jack Hampton announced that he considered, among other things, that Bednarski has no prior criminal record, was attending college, and was raised n a “good home” by a father who was a police officer, before deciding on the sentence: 30 years in prison instead of a life sentence. As he expained to the Dallas Times Herald two days later: “They two guys that got killed wouldn’t have been killed if they hadn’t been cruising the street picking up teenage boys. I don’t care for queers cruising the streets picking up teenage boys. I’ve got a teenage boy.”

Those remarks touched off a furror in the gay community. Paul Varnell of the Illinois Gay and Lesbian Task Force summed up the reaction and said, “It appears that we do have one law for heterosexuals and one law for homosexuals.” John Wile Prioce, the outspoken African-American activist and County Commissioner, said, “The only difference between the Ku Klux Kllan and Judge Hampton is that one wears a white robe and the other a black robe.” Hampton, who had been first elected judge in 1981 and would be up for re-election in 1990, remained unconcerned. “Just spell my name right. Nobody will remember by 1990 anyway.” He was right. He was re-elected in 1990, but lost his seat finally in 1992.

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).

As always, please consider this your open thread for the day.

The Daily Agenda for Sunday, November 27

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations Today: New Orleans, LA (Black Pride); Cologne, Germany (International Bear Pride).

Also Today: Hong Kong Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Hong Kong, China; Miami White Party, Miami, FL.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Pennsylvania Outlaws Sodomy: 1700. The Pennsylvania assembly passed a new sodomy law to replace the old one which had been abrogated in 1693. The new law read:

…whoever shall be legally convicted of sodomy or bestiality, shall suffer imprisonment during life, and be whipped at the discretion of the magistrates, once every three months during the first year after conviction. And if he be a married man, he shall also suffer castration, and the injured wife shall hae a divorce if required.

In keeping with the pacifist nature of the Quakers who dominated the political structures in Pennsylvania, the colony’s law against sodomy was quite lenient: it was the only colonial law which didn’t call for the death penalty. That relative pacifism however didn’t extend to those of African descent. Another law, “An Act for the Trial of Negroes,” added this:

…”if any negro or negroes within this government shall commit a rape or ravishment upon any white woman or maid, or shall commit murder, buggery or burglary, they shall be …. punished by death.”

[From Jonathan Ned Katz’s Gay/Lesbian Almanac, pages 122-123.]

Harvey Milk Assassinated: 1978. Harvey Milk finally succeeded in winning political office as a gay man for two reasons. One, he refused to hide who he was; and two, he made it his mission to build alliances with groups that other gay activists thought were impossible to reach. Among those alliances, initially, was with the most conservative member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Dan White. There couldn’t have been two politicians from more opposite ends of the political spectrum. White, a former cop, was a conservative Catholic representing a blue-collar neighborhood, while Milk, a gay Jew from New York, represented the growing gay districts surrounding the Castro. Milk and White made several media appearances in which they spoke warmly of each other, and Milk began telling friends that he thought White was “educable.” That began to change however when Milk changed his mind about White’s opposition to a proposed psychiatric treatment center in White’s district. Harvey initially supported White, which would have given White the 6-5 majority he needed to block the facility. But as Harvey learned more about the center, he discovered that San Francisco children would be sent instead far away to a state hospital where they would be cut off from their families. He concluded that “they’ve got to be next to somebody’s house,” and switched his vote.

The loss stunned White, and for several months he refused to speak to Milk or his aides. He also tried to retaliated by switching his vote on Harvey’s gay rights bill, but the bill passed anyway 10-1. White became increasingly disillusioned with politics, and abruptly resigned on November 10, 1978. He quickly regretted his decision, and asked Mayor George Moscone to re-appoint him as Supervisor. Instead of complying with the request immediately, Moscone said he would think it over and announce his decision on November 27.

The night before the scheduled announcement, White learned through a reporter that he would not get the reappointment. The next morning White went to City Hall with his loaded .38 Smith & Wesson. He went to Moscone’s office and asked for a meeting. Moscone agreed and invited him into the mayor’s office. There, White shot Moscone twice in the abdomen and twice in the head. He then went down the hall to Milk’s office. When Milk got up out of his seat to greet White, White shot him three times in the chest, once in the back, and twice more in the head.

On November 27, 1978, tens of thousands of stunned mourners gathered in the Castro for an impromptu candlelight march to City Hall. The sea of candles stretched ten city blocks long. At the steps of city hall, Joan Baez led the crowd in singing “Amazing Grace” and the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus sang a hymn by Felix Mendelssohn.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
John Aravosis: 1963. An attorney, Democratic political consultant, gay activist and blogger, Aravosis is the founder of Americablog. His first major success as a gay activist was when he defended U.S. sailor Timothy R. McVeigh (not to be confused with the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh), who was being kicked out of the Navy after he was outed when America Online released the identity behind McVeigh’s email account without a court order or warrent. McVeigh was days from being ousted when Aravosis took McVeigh’s case and embarked on a massive publicity campaign that caught the attention of ABC News, Time and Newsweek. McVeigh ended up winning his case against the military and was able to receive an honorable discharge along with a reportedly large settlement from AOL. Aravosis founded AmericaBlog in 2004. AmericaBlog first received widespread media attention in 2005 after it outed “Jeff Gannon” (real name: Jeff Guckert), a member of the White House press corps who had a reputation for fielding softball questions during news conferences.

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

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The Daily Agenda for Saturday, November 26

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: New Delhi, India; New Orleans, LA (Black Pride); Cologne, Germany (International Bear Pride).

Also This Weekend: Hong Kong Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Hong Kong, China; Miami White Party, Miami, FL.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Simon Tseko Nkoli: 1957. Born in Soweto, Nkoli became a youth activist against apartheid with the Congress of South African Students and with the United Democratic Front. He also became a gay rights activist when he joined the mainly white Gay Association of South African in 1983 and later formed the Saturday Group, the first black gay group in Africa. Nkoli’s anti-apartheid activism led to his arrest in 1984, when he faced the death penalty for treason with twenty-one others who became collectively known as the Delmas 22. While prisoner, he came out as gay. Fearing that the state would use his homosexuality against the entire group, the others of the Delmas 22 demanded a separate trial. But in the end he won them over and they stood trial together because, as they all realized, they were in the same struggle together. As Nkoli later wrote in the anthology, Defiant Desire: Gay and Lesbian Lives in South Africa, “If you are black in South Africa, the inhuman laws of apartheid closet you. If you are gay in South Africa, the homophobic customs and laws of this society closet you. If you are black and gay in South Africa, well, then it really is all the same closet, the same wardrobe. Inside is darkness and oppression. Outside is freedom. It is as simple as that.”

By coming out as gay while a prisoner against apartheid, he is credited with helping to change the attitude of the African National Congress toward gay rights. Patrick “Terror” Lekota, who later became chairman of the ANC, remarked, “all of us acknowledged that [Nkoli’s coming out] was an important learning experience . . . His presence made it possible for more information to be discussed, and it broadened our vision, helping us to see that society is composed of so many people whose orientations are not the same, and that one must be able to live with it.” And so, when it came to writing the Constitution, “how could we say that men and women like Simon, who had put their shoulders to the wheel to end apartheid, how could we say that they should now be discriminated against?”

After his acquittal and release from prison in 1988, he founded the Gay and Lesbian Organisation of the Witwatersrand (GLOW), which organized South Africa’s first Gay Pride march in 1990. He also was among the first African gay men to come out publicly as HIV-positive and founded Positive African Men in Johannesburg. He was among the first gay activists to meet with President Nelson Mandela in 1994, and he campaigned successfully for anti-discrimination measures on the Bill of Rights of the South African Constitution. Nkoli lived long enough to see South African repeal its sodomy law in 1998, shortly before he died on November 30.

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

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Australia: it’s time

Equality is a global struggle. This speaks to all of us.

The Daily Agenda for Friday, November 25

THE AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: New Delhi, India; New Orleans, LA (Black Pride); Cologne, Germany (International Bear Pride).

Also This Weekend: Hong Kong Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Hong Kong, China; Miami White Party, Miami, FL.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Judge Rules Utah Teacher’s Rights Were Violated: 1998. Wendy Weaver, who taught psychology and physical education at the high school in Spanish Fork, Utah, became embroiled in controversy when her ex-husband, Gary Weaver, told the district in 1997 that she was a lesbian. Rumors quickly began to swirl around Spanish Fork High School, and that summer students began asking her if she was gay. She answered truthfully, and a few of the girls dropped out of the girl’s volleyball team that she was coaching. On July 14, the school district removed her as volleyball coach and banned her mentioning her “lifestyle” or partner to students, parents or staff. If she mentioned a word about her sexuality to anyone, she would be fired. A letter to that effect was placed in her employee record.

When word got out, an overflow crowd showed up to denounce Weaver at a Nebo Board of Education meeting on November 14, 1997, with parents demanding the right to pull their children out of any class she taught. A group of parents formed Nebo Citizens for Moral and Legal Values and presented a petition signed by 2,700 parents demanding her removal. After Weaver filed suit in Federal Court alleging that her First Amendment Rights were being violated, the parents group filed a suit of their own demanding the revocation of Weaver’s teaching certification.

It all came to a head on November 25, 1998 when U.S. District Judge Bruce Jenkins issued a sweeping 25-page ruling finding that Weaver’s constitutional rights of free speech and equal protection were violated. The judge ordered the school district to remove its threat to fire her from their files, restore her to the girl’s volleyball coaching job, and to pay her $1,5000 in damages. He found the limits on Weaver’s speech to be overly broad. “Indeed,” wrote Judge Jenkins, ” these restrictions limit Ms. Weaver’s ability to speak on her sexuality outside of the school, as, for example, when meeting a parent of a student in the supermarket, or when speaking at dinner with a friend who may be a staff member at the school, or even when speaking with her own children, who are students in the school district.” All of this was a gross violation of Weaver’s constitutional rights. “Simple as it may sound, as a matter of fairness and evenhandedness, homosexuals should not be sanctioned or restricted for (speech) where heterosexuals are not likewise sanctioned or restricted.”

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).

As always, please consider this your open thread for the day.