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 lobbySeptember 1st, 2011
Sen. Rick Santorum held a Q&A at Penn State on Tuesday, where he entered into this exchange with a Penn State student about the social science showing that kids in families headed by gay parents have just as good outcomes as children in families headed by heterosexual parents.
Santorum: The interview was yesterday, but it’s going to be shown tomorrow night on CNN. I had Piers Morgan call me a bigot. Because I believe what the Catholic Church teaches with respect to homosexuality, I’m a bigot. So, now I’m a bigot because I believe what the Bible teaches. Now, 2000 years of teaching and moral theology is now bigoted. And, of course, we don’t elect bigots to office, we don’t give them professional licenses, we don’t give them preferential tax treatment! If you’re a preacher and you preach bigoted things, you think you’re going to be allow to have a 501(c)3 as a church? Of course not.
This has profound consequence to the entire moral ecology of America. It will undermine the family. It will destroy faith in America. And does anybody go out there and make the argument as to why this is a good thing because it will happen. Make the argument why this is right. I don’t hear those arguments. I don’t hear them making….
Student: There is plenty of social science…
Santorum. What’s the social science?
Student: I’m not going to attempt to say that there is this one and this one and this one. But it is extremely unfair for you to say that there are no social science reports that suggest that children are okay in a same-sex relationship. There are plenty of statistical studies that they are just as happy and successful and everything else as long as they have two parents supporting them.
Santorum: I see. And so you…
Student: The American Psychological Association…
Santorum: But wait! But isn’t … I mean you’re a lawyer. [unintelligible]…
Student: The American Psychological Association has enumerated – in 1974, that gay marriage does not prohibit [unintelligible]…
Santorum: I understand that, but the American Psychological Association is made up of people who agree with the American Psychological Association, just like the AMA… A lot of psychologists don’t belong to the American Psychological Association. A lot of doctors don’t belong to the American Medical Association. All these associations prove is that they have a point of view and the people who join them agree with that point of view
Student: You just asked for evidence and you got evidence…
Santorum: That’s not evidence! An organization supporting a position is not evidence of a benefit to society.
Student: Are you a psychiatrist? Are you a medical doctor?
Santorum: My dad was. I’m not but that’s not the point, lawyer! Okay? Let’s be a lawyer here.
Student: Well wait, if we’re going to be a lawyer here…
Santorum: Time out! Time out. Time out. [Crosstalk] Time out, I’ve given you a chance … Time out! Time out! Time out. The American Psychological Association is not proof of anything. Okay? It’s proof that a group of people agree with you. That’s all it’s proof of. Okay?
That’s the way they use science these days, isn’t it. They’re only looking for proof among people who agree with you. Unfortunately, the only way to come up with that proof is the misrepresent the science that’s already out there.
September 1st, 2011
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Civil Partnerships Go Into Effect: Liechtenstein. Last June, voters in the alpine principality between Switzerland and Austria voted overwhelmingly to allow civil partnerships for same-sex couples. The new law stops short of marriage equality — registered same-sex unions are still barred from adopting children and from access to reproductive services through the country’s health plan — but it does provide for inheritance, social security, pensions, immigration and naturalization, and tax law recognition for same-sex couples on par with married heterosexual couples. That law goes into effect beginning today.
Federal DADT Court Case Resumes: Pasadena, CA. Lawyers for Log Cabin Republicans return to court today to present oral arguments in the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell case before three judges of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The argument is over whether the federal law banning gay men and women from serving openly in the military is (or was) unconstitutional. A lower court said it wasn’t, but the Justice Department appealed. DADT is slated to officially become history on September 20, and so you might wonder why they are still fighting in court. The problem is that while Congress has repealed the law, the repeal did not include an anti-discrimination provision preventing a future president from re-imposing the ban via Executive Order. And with most of the GOP line-up contending for the party’s nomination for 2012 promising to “repeal the repeal,” DADT’s demise may end up being a mere hiatus. Oral arguments begin this morning at 9:00 a.m. PDT at the 9th Circuit Court House in Pasadena.
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Atlanta, Ga (Black Pride); Calgary, AB; Cardiff, Wales; Duluth, MN; Essex, UK; Québec City, QC; Leicester, UK; Oakland, CA; Reading, UK and Scarborough, UK.
Also This Weekend: Burning Man, Black Rock Desert, NV and Southern Decadence, New Orleans, LA.
TODAY’S AGENDA (THEIRS):
North Carolina Awake!: Gastonia, NC. The Liberty Counsel is continuing its series of “Awake!” conferences with a meeting this evening at Bethlehem Church in Gastonia, NC because, of course, “There’s a war waging:”
Christianity is under attack in our schools, workplaces, and governments. Silence is a decision to stand with the enemy. Inaction is a deathblow to the God-honoring principles our country was created to allow each citizen to enjoy.
Speaking at tonight’s conference will be Liberty Counsel head Mat Staver, along with Rick Green, who is a member of fake-historian David Barton’s WallBuilders. The North Carolina legislature is expected to take up a constitutional amendment to ban marriage equality in this session.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Lily Tomlin: 1939. She began her comedy career as a stand-up comedian in the 1960s when she quickly landed a spot on NBC’s Laugh-In. Her many memorable characters quickly became the stuff of pop culture: Earnestine, the nasal, nosy, and obnoxious telephone operator who epitomized the bureaucratic condescension of the old Ma Bell monopoly (“We don’t care, we don’t have to…we’re the phone company.”); Edith Ann, the five year old girl sitting in an oversized rocker with her observations of the crazy crap the adults around her were pulling (and always ending her monologues with “…and that’s the truth. Phhhht!”); And Mrs. Judith Beasley, the prim and proper “tasteful lady.” In 1977, she became the first woman to appear solo on Broadway with Appearing Nitely, and in 1985, she starred in another one-woman Broadway show, The Search For Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, written by her long-time partner, writer-producer Jane Wagner. In 1980, Tomlin appeared in the hit movie Nine to Five, with Jane Fonda, Dolly Parton, and Dabney Coleman, and she hit movie pay dirt again in All of Me with Steve Martin.
Tomlin and Wagner have been together since 1971, and while their relationship was never much of a secret, the press remained pretty mum. When Tomlin officially came out in 2001, it hardly seemed necessary. “Everybody in the industry was certainly aware of my sexuality and of Jane… In interviews I always reference Jane and talk about Jane, but they don’t always write about it.”
If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. PLEASE, don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).
August 31st, 2011
Warren Throckmorton answers that question as he dives deep into the different flavors of Dominionism and comes up with many different answers, none of them good. Some are, as he puts it, “squeamish about ‘severe sanctions’ like death.” But others, not so much. It’s an excellent breakdown. You will want to keep this link handy.
August 31st, 2011
Equality Florida has published comments from students of Jerry Buell, a Lake County teacher and adviser for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes at Mount Dora High School, who was suspended two weeks ago over anti-gay remarks posted on his Facebook page. Buell returned to the classroom last week, but the controversy hasn’t died down.
A growing number of students have come forward to describe Mr. Buell’s homophobic behavior in the classroom. Brian Blaise, an honors student who graduated in 2003, described the day Mr. Buell offered his disturbing take on the issue of gays serving in the military:
“I looked up when he said he supported gays in the military, stunned by the answer. He immediately followed that comment with the statement that we should then put them on the front lines, and pull back,” Blaise said.
Another of his students recounted Mr. Buell invoking the quote “A pig in a tuxedo is still a pig” to declare his disdain for recognizing gay relationships.
Equality Florida is asking supporters to email the Lake County School Board to demand they expand the district’s anti-bullying and non-discrimination policies to include sexual orientation and gender identity.
Two weeks ago, Buell was suspended for a week after reportedly posting on Facebook, “‘I’m watching the news, eating dinner, when the story about New York okaying same sex unions came on and I almost threw up.” Since then, it was revealed that on Buell’s web page hosted on the high school’s web site, he wrote, “I try to teach and lead my students as if Lake Co. Schools had hired Jesus Christ himself.” And on his syllabus, he wrote:
I am a man of God and I try to be like Jesus every day. I teach God’s truth, I make very few compromises. If you believe you may have a problem with that, get your schedule changed, ’cause I ain’t changing!
Buell’s statement on his school-hosted web page was removed and he was ordered to remove the references comparing himself to Jesus from his syllabus.
August 31st, 2011
There is a fundraising group called the Charity Give Back Group (CGBG), whose innocuous sounding name hides its political activities. When customers shop with major name-brand companies through their virtual shopping mall, proceeds go to CGBG affiliated groups including the Family “Research” Council, Focus On the Family, Liberty Counsel and others. LGBT activists have pressured companies to cut ties with CGBG, and so far Apple, Microsoft, Delta Airlines and Wells Fargo are among the big names that have withdrawn from the program.
Anti-gay groups are now crying foul over “homo-fascist” tactics, despite their own well-established pattern of boycotting companies who don’t fall lockstep into their program of anti-gay politics. Liberty Counsel’s Matt Barber calls the pressure against companies participating in CGBG “economic terrorism” with the ultimate goal of putting conservative Christians behind bars:
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it right now. The sexual anarchist lobby, this radical, militant lobby, wants three things in this order: they want to see those of us who hold traditional values and have a biblical view of sexual behavior and sexual morality; they want to see us behind bars. Absent that, if that doesn’t work, they want to see us discredited, our licenses, my law licenses revoked, unable to teach in schools and so forth. They want us completely discredited and marginalized to the fringes of society. Finally and included in that is the inability, they want to see people like us not able to make a living. And that’s why they’re going after these organizations and they’re using economic terrorism, for lack of a better phrase.
He might want to try to come up with a better phrase. In 2008, Barber joined with Peter “Porno Pete” LaBarbera and others for a bit of “economic terrorism” of their own when they announced a boycott of McDonalds and rallied in front of their headquarters. The American Family Association regularly launches acts of “economic terrorism” against such big name companies as Home Depot and Pepsi. And by the way, their jihad against Home Depot is on again, in case you’ve had difficulty keeping track.
And speaking of wanting to put people behind bars, AFA’s spokesman Bryan Fischer yesterday pined for the days when homosexuality was a felony in all fifty states and says, “There is no reason why it cannot be a criminal offense once again. Absolutely none.”
August 31st, 2011
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Atlanta, Ga (Black Pride); Calgary, AB; Cardiff, Wales; Duluth, MN; Essex, UK; Québec City, QC; Leicester, UK; Reading, UK and Scarborough, UK.
Also This Weekend: Burning Man, Black Rock Desert, NV and Southern Decadence, New Orleans, LA.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Del Marquis: 1977. Jake Sheers had already formed Scissor Sisters when they were looking for a guitarist, and the guy Jake was dating had a friend who was looking for the gig. Derek Gruen answered the call, adopted the stage name of Del Marquis, and the rest of history. Scissor Sisters went on to fame on the strength of their cover of Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb,” followed by their own string of hits in 2004 which did well mainly on the British charts, but their popularity in the U.S. was blunted by Wal-Mart’s refusal to stock their eponymous debut album. They objected to the single “Tits On the Radio” a “snarling, swaggering attack on conservatism.” The band refused to record a “clean” version. Since 2008, Del Marquis began releasing his own solo material, which you can hear on his web site. Meanwhile, Scissor Sisters released their latest album, Night Work, in 2010, and they are currently on tour.
If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. PLEASE, don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).
August 30th, 2011
Ex-gay extremist and former Brownsville Revival leader Michael Brown protested last Saturday’s Pride celebration in Charlotte, North Carolina, and he did not like what he saw:
How many other community groups feature prominent performances by drag queens at their events? Can you imagine crowds at an Hispanic Pride event, or Black Pride event, or Asian Pride event — just to name a few — being entertained by men wearing dresses (or less), hot pink wigs, and matching knee-high boots? And this is part of the LGBT’s strategy “to promote acceptance”? How telling. And how telling that, unmentioned by the Observer, there was a large truck stationed next to the festival offering “Free HIV Testing.” Yes, just another typical community event.
. . . It is also a bit disconcerting to watch young men greet each other with exclamations of “Hey girl!” before exchanging pecks on the cheek. (Does your average child find it confusing to hear men call each other “girls”?).
Alvin McEwen doubts Brown’s veracity:
Lastly that comment about young men greeting each other with exclamations of “Hey Girl” before kissing each other on the cheeks simply cannot be true. He forgot to mention that after we kiss each other on the cheek, we finger snap in Z-formations.
By the way, they had free HIV testing at the NAACP’s national convention last month in Los Angeles. “How telling,” as they say.
August 30th, 2011
Remember, it’s all in the spirit of love-the-sinner-but-hate-the sin:
The main newspaper in El Paso, Texas, published a full-page ad Saturday from a right-wing priest who calls gays “immoral,””putrid,” and “depraved.”
The paid advertisement in the El Paso Times, titled “True Pastoral Care for Homosexuals,” is from Friar Michael Rodriguez of El Paso’s San Juan Bautista Catholic Church. The virulently antigay and antichoice Rodriguez first writes about showing compassion for gay people before explaining how gays are destructive sinners.
“Engaging in depraved and unnatural sexual acts will lead directly to the ruin of both the homosexual’s body and soul,” Rodriguez writes. “Our very anatomy cries out against the lie that homosexual acts are ‘ok.'”
Earlier this year, Rodriguez penned an op-ed opposing that city council’s attempt to provide non-discrimination protections for its city charter. Rodriguez blasted it as “a deliberate attempt on the part of our local government to initiate the legalization of same-sex unions.” He wrote:
In summary, the maleficent agenda which lurks behind the actions of City Council and has given rise to the group “El Pasoans for Equality” is an affront to God, our Catholic religion, human reason, marriage and the family.
This homosexual agenda is in direct violation of: (1) the Sixth and Ninth Commandments, (2) the infallible moral teachings of the Catholic Church (Catechism #2357), (3) natural law and the most rudimentary moral code, (4) recent pronouncements by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (Dec. 29, 1975; Oct. 1, 1986; July 23, 1992; June 3, 2003), and (5) the 2009 pastoral letter on marriage by our nation’s Catholic bishops.
…Holy Mother Church has a great, wondrous and tender love for all her children, regardless of “sexual orientation.” She is committed to treating all persons with love, dignity, and respect. … If any person is engaging in sinful sexual activity, we Catholics are called to practice love and compassion, above all, by leading the person to the truth, and helping the sinner to renounce sinful behavior.
Written with love, of course.
The Advocate reports that last weekend’s ad has been removed from the El Paso Times’s electronic edition. Does anyone in El Paso want to scan me a copy?
Update: Thanks to a BTB reader, you can see the entire ad as it appeared in El Paso Times here (PDF: 376KB/1 page).
August 30th, 2011
Gay-friendly Bisbee, Arizona
TODAY’S AGENDA:
I don’t have anything on the calendar for today. Instead, I’ll point you to a story that appeared in Tucson’s local paper last Friday. The Arizona Daily Star reported on the local angle of the William’s Institute’s latest study of the gayest cities in America, as measured according to the number of same-sex households counted by the U.S. Census in 2010. The top city in Arizona by that measure was not Phoenix, nor Tucson nor Flagstaff, nor Sedona. The gay friendliest city in Arizona is tiny Bisbee (pop. 6,000). According to the Williams Institute, 20.9 for every 1,000 households there was made up of same-sex couples:
So why Bisbee?
“It’s kind of a little bit of a liberal spot in a conservative oasis,” said Kathy Sowden. She and her partner, Deborah Grier, own and operate Finders Keepers, an antique and jewelry shop on Main Street in Old Bisbee.
How liberal?
“I’m always surprised to see a Republican bumper sticker here,” she said.
The couple, who moved to Arizona six years ago from California, also said there’s a kind of live-and-let-live attitude in the community. Sowden said part of that is strictly economics.
“It’s a lot of people trying to make a living in a small tourist town,” she said. “A lot of times the mutual goal kind of erases any cultural differences, especially now with the economy the way it is.”
Old Post Office and Library in Downtown Bisbee
Bisbee is only ninety miles from Tucson, a distance which counts as “local” in the Southwest. And so whenever we have out of town guests, we always figure out how to make a trip to Bisbee for an afternoon. It’s one of my favorite places to hang out in Arizona on the weekends.
Bisbee began life as a very wild and rough copper mining camp in 1880. The “streets,” such as they were, were haphazard and were better suited for drainage down Tombstone Canyon in the craggy Mule Mountains than they were for traffic. Over the next few years, simple miners’ cabins and businesses eventually replaced the tents, paved streets replaced the muddy paths, and something resembling law and order finally, over the course of twenty years or so, replaced the prostitution, gambling and gunfights in Bisbee’s many saloons along Brewery Gulch. Bisbee’s reputation was never as bad as it’s northern neighbor Tombstone though, and so in 1929, the citizens of Cochise County voted to move the county seat 23 miles to the south and place it in a brand new art deco courthouse north of downtown. The Copper Queen Hotel provided first class lodgings for businessmen and tourists, and the Copper Queen Hospital provided medical care for Bisbee’s denizens.
Miners' homes on the hillsides behind Brewery Gulch
Prohibition calmed things down considerably, but the mines kept the town busy. But the switch from subterranean mining to one massive open pit meant the loss of thousands of jobs. But by 1975, even the Lavender Pit Mine was no longer economically viable, and the Phelps Dodge Corporation shut it down for good. That decision very nearly spelled the end of the town. It looked like Bisbee was about to become yet another of the many ghost towns tucked into the mountains in the southwest.
But just housing prices collapsed, hippie refugees and artists quickly discovered that they could afford to purchase a tiny minor’s cabin for the price of the grocery tab. By the 1980’s Bisbee became known for the live-and-let-live attitudes these new residents brought to the community. By the 1990’s hip retirees discovered that they could afford to indulge their passions for glass art and painting while living off of their Social Security checks whether they ever sold anything or not. And by the turn of the millennium, gay couples looking to flee the ghettos of L.A. and San Francisco found Bisbee to be a more affordable, less pretentious, friendlier, and much more walkable retirement destination than Palm Springs. (In fact, because much of Bisbee is built on the sides of the canyons, many homes can’t be reached by car; thousands of concrete stairs over several dozen stairways serve as replacements for streets and sidewalks.)
One way to get around town.
Bisbee (unofficial motto: “Keep Bisbee freaky”) is home to several fine restaurants, coffee roasters, dive bars, art galleries and antique stores (at least one of which, based on my experience, is generous with “family” discounts). It is also home to the stately and restored Copper Queen Hotel, along with several other historic hotels and B&B’s. If you want to stay somewhere funkier, you can book a night in a restored 1950s’ travel trailer at the Shade Dell. And if you happen to be there in mid-June, you can check out Bisbee’s Gay Pride celebration, complete with a lingerie pub crawl, a drag race and bull run up Brewery Gulch, and a Miners and Madames Street Dance. In 2007, Out magazine listed it among the top five rural Pride events in the country. Or you can come in mid-October for Great Bisbee Stair Climb, which is a run up one of Bisbee’s 1,000-step staircases.
If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. PLEASE, don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).
Finally an ex-gay documentary that's not simply a collection of interviews about the past, but one that's centered around a compelling event and story as it's unfolding.
August 29th, 2011
In 2005, 16 year old Zach Stark was sent by his parents, against his will, to the residential ex-gay program Love In Action. Protests and nationwide attention ensued. It was probably the biggest ex-gay news story since Exodus board member/spokesman John Paulk was caught in a Washington DC gay bar.
Local filmmaker Morgan Jon Fox was there from the start of the protests, capturing it all and has spent the last six years creating his finished product of This Is What Love In Action Looks Like, a new independent film currently on the festival circuit.
I’ve spent years writing for various websites that track and monitor ex-gay issues, and in that time I’ve reviewed a number of films about the ex-gay experience. Too often documentaries consist mainly of head-and-shoulder interviewees talking about their time in ex-gay programs years, if not decades, in the past. This Is What Love In Action Looks Like is different, filmmaker Fox was there shooting events as they unfolded and shooting interviews with key players while memories and feelings are still fresh. The finished product is stitched together to tell the story with a logical flow and progression which will allow the general public, unknowledgeable of ex-gay issues, to follow the story.
Head-and-shoulders interviews, a necessary evil, are used sparingly and effectively. Those scenes are well composed and often set in locations more far dynamic than a subject’s living room sofa. Keystone interviews are even shot with multiple cameras allowing Fox to cut to tight zooms at appropriately intense moments.
Fox scored some rather crucial interviews, Zach Stark (the 16 year old sent to the program) as well as John Smid (ran Love In Action while Zach was there and has since stepped down). Since the controversy in 2005 Smid’s views have changed (I won’t reveal how) and shows incredible courage for making himself as open, honest and vulnerable as he does during his interviews. However I must criticize Fox for not asking Smid challenging questions. In fact the only person Fox challenges is an anti-gay Alliance Defense Fund lawyer during a sidewalk press conference. There are a lot of difficult questions interviewers can ask of the ex-gay movement, and Fox fails in this respect.
Zach’s father (who sent him to the program) and Alan Chambers (president of Exodus, a national gay group) declined interviews and so their stories are told with extensive incorporation of broadcast TV footage. The other footage that most contributes to the uniqueness of the film are some very raw feeling shots of the actual street protests outside Love In Action’s facility in 2005.
The film opens with a satisfyingly long interview of Zach talking about coming out to his parents and preparing to be sent off to the program. As the story and protests unfolded Zach’s life inside the program remained a total mystery to the gay community outside protesting. Fox smartly replicates this feeling by focusing on other details and choosing only to show Zach with long-lens and grainy footage, as if we the film viewer are with protesters on the sidewalk seeing Zach from afar, wondering what is happening to the young man in the program.
My biggest gripe is that when the film is concluding Zach’s “after” interview is frustratingly short. Zach comes across as having grown into a beautiful, vibrant young man. After becoming invested in the activists who held a daily vigil outside Love In Action protesting for Zach I don’t feel enough emotional payoff in Fox’s interview with Zach. I would strongly encourage Fox to revisit his source footage and include more meaningful and satisfying moments in that final interview. (Author’s note: Fox was kind enough to respond to this issue after my review was first posted, see his quote at the bottom of the post)
My remaining criticisms of the film are somewhat minor so I’ll list them here at the end:
But the above listed criticism have no effect on my recommendation to see the film, they are more for Fox’s benefit should the movie hopefully be picked up by a distributor and is re-cut for distribution as independent films regularly are. The novelness of this film sets it apart from every ex-gay documentary done before it. When this screens in your city I strongly suggest you go and support it.
—
Filmmaker Fox addressed my criticism of Zach’s seemingly brief interview segment via email the afternoon my review was posted:
When we approached Zach about the interview he made it clear that he was willing to tell his story about what happened during the months that he was in Refuge and during the media firestorm, mostly to lend his account of that, and leave it to rest.
[Fox continued…] So when he requested that his current life not be pried into or pondered over or talked about, I completely understood. He wants his privacy now. Zach is a private person who quite accidentally fell into a huge spotlight and I mostly wanted to document the events of 2005 and how friends of his felt it necessary to stand up and try and make a difference, attempt to help one of their peers. I never felt it was my job to pry to pull things from Zach story and I think it took a lot of courage for him to speak out at all and I’m very grateful he lent his version of the events of that Summer of 2005.
August 29th, 2011
GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann campaigned in Florida over the weekend. The St. Petersburg Times reports that Dominionist theologian Peter E. Waldron — they don’t exist, you know — is helping to organize her Florida campaign. Maybe that explains her latest outburst:
“I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, ‘Are you going to start listening to me here?’
A campaign spokesperson later said, “Obviously she was saying it in jest.” Actually, given her views it’s really not that obvious.
August 29th, 2011
Weight watcher
Puerto Rican Senator Roberto Arango resigned this weekend after nude photos of him were found on the gay smartphone hook-up app Grindr. Arango had voted for Resolution 99, which would have blocked same-sex marriages, and he helped to block a measure banning discrimination and allowing for adoption rights for gays. In 2004. Arango served as the committee chairman for Puerto Rico for the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign, and played leadership roles for the Republican Party in Puerto Rico. Arango neither confirmed nor denied the photos were his, but said that he had taken a few photos of himself because he had been “losing weight.”
August 29th, 2011
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Federal Court To Hear Arguments Over Release of Prop 8 Trial Tapes: San Francisco, CA. The American Foundation for Equal Rights, which is sponsoring the federal Constitutional challenge to California’s Proposition 8, will appear before Federal District Judge James Ware today to argue for releasing the video recordings of the Prop 8 trial which led to another judge declaring it unconstitutional. Attorneys Ted Olson and Ted Boutrous will argue that the public has a First Amendment right to know what happened in open court, especially since the full trial transcript is already part of the public record. As Ted Olson put it,
“The hearing is whether or not the American public will be able to see with their own eyes and listen with their own ears to the testimony that happened in a trial that effects the constitutional rights of hundreds of thousands of Californians and millions of Americans and people throughout the world. The proponents of Proposition 8 did not want a trial, they did not want testimony of witnesses under oath, they did not want experts testifying about the damage that’s done by discrimination against gay and lesbian individuals, they did not want evidence about the value of marriage and the importance of marriage as a fundamental right in this country, they did not want the public to see the truth. They did not want—and they do not want—the public to see a trial that took place a year and a half ago. They want to keep that in the dark. They want to influence public opinion about these issues through their advertising.
Ironically, Judge Ware has already announced that today’s hearing will not be recorded. It turns out the Yes on 8 people who don’t want you see the debacle that was the original trial also don’t want you to see this hearing either.
Dan Choi’s White House Protest Trial: Washington, D.C. On November 15, 2010, thirteen activists protested at the White House demanding more action in the face of slow progress in repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” All thirteen were arrested for refusing to follow a lawful order the the National Park Service police. The others opted to plead guilty to a “failure to move” charge and pay a fine. Choi instead decided to plead not guilty and demand a court trial. That trial begins today at 9:30 a.m.
Edward Carpenter and George Merrill
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Edward Carpenter: 1844. Britain would be a very different place without him, and so would the LGBT world. Carpenter was a very influential poet, philosopher, anthologist, nudist, feminist, pacifist, and early gay activist. He was as leading proponent of socialism, and helped to found Britain’s Labour Party. Reading Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass in the 1860’s was a huge revelation for him, with Whitman’s dreams of “a brotherhood of manly love.” Carpenter’s 1889 book Civilisation, Its Cause and Cure
If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. PLEASE, don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).
August 28th, 2011
The Ugandan government-aligned New Vision newspaper reports today that Uganda’s new Ethics and Integrity Minister, Fr. Simon Lokodo, is no long a Catholic priest. According to New Vision, Lokodo violated Roman Catholic canon law which forbids priests from holding political office.
The Vatican’s action was slow in coming. Lokodo had long been a parish priest when in 2006 he became a member of Parliament for Dodoth County after his predecessor had passed away. The Ugandan Catholic hierarchy had already criticized his participation in politics, and he was reportedly suspended from his pastoral duties during the election over “a parish administrative glitch.” From 2009 to May, 2011, he served as State Minister for Industry and Technology, and was appointed Ethics Minister after James Nsaba Buturo, an ardent supporter of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, resigned after losing his seat in chaotic party primaries held in late 2010.
August 28th, 2011
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations Today: Boulder, CO; Chico, CA; Foyle, Northern Ireland; Manchester, UK; Ottawa, ON and Ventura County, CA.
Also Today: Big Bear Adventure Weekend, Big Bear Lake, CA and SHOUT Film Festival, Birmingham, AL.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs: 1825. If anyone can claim the mantle of being the very first gay rights advocate of the modern age, that title would likely go to the native of the Kingdom of Hanover, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs. When he was very little, he remembered wanting to be a girl and preferring to play with girls, but as often happens when a very young boy like him hits puberty, his leanings moved toward homosexuality. He went on to study law and theology at Göttingen University and history at Berlin University. He became a legal adviser for a district court in Hanover, but was dismissed when his homosexuality became known. That led him to declare himself an Urning. A word he coined in the 1860’s, he described the Urning as a “male-bodied person with a female psyche” who is sexually attracted to men and not women. He also coined Urningin for a “female-bodied person with a male psyche,” and Urningthum came to mean homosexuality itself.
Ulrichs devised an entire system of classification based on different combinations of attractions and gender roles, and more importantly, he set about to develop a robust argument for the legalization of homosexuality. Between 1864 and 1880, he published a series of twelve tracts which he collectively called, Research on the Riddle of Man-Manly Love
The Urning, too, is a person. He, too, therefore, has inalienable rights. His sexual orientation is a right established by nature. Legislators have no right to veto nature; no right to persecute nature in the course of its work; no right to torture living creatures who are subject to those drives nature gave them.
The Urning is also a citizen. He, too, has civil rights; and according to these rights, the state has certain duties to fulfill as well. The state does not have the right to act on whimsy or for the sheer love of persecution. The state is not authorized, as in the past, to treat Urnings as outside the pale of the law.
…. Uranian love is in any instance no real crime. All indications of such are lacking. It is not even shameful, decadent or wicked, simply because it is the fulfillment of a law of nature. It is reckoned as one of the many imagined crimes that have defaced Europe’s law books to the shame of civilized people. To criminalize it appears, therefore, to be an injustice officially perpetrated. Just because Urnings are unfortunate enough to be a small minority, no damage can be done to their inalienable rights and to their civil rights. The law of liberty in the constitutional state also has to consider its minorities.
By 1879, Ulrichs decided that he had done all he could do in Germany and went into self-imposed exile in Italy. He later wrote, “Until my dying day I will look back with pride that I found the courage to come face to face in battle against the spectre which for time immemorial has been injecting poison into me and into men of my nature. Many have been driven to suicide because all their happiness in life was tainted. Indeed, I am proud that I found the courage to deal the initial blow to the hydra of public contempt.”
Nancy Kulp: 1921. Her name is not exactly a household name today, but her character from The Beverly Hillbillies, Miss Jane Hathaway, lives on in re-runs. She began life as a journalist for the Miami Beach Tropics, writing celebrity profiles while studying English and French at the University of Miami. In 1944, she left he academic life to enlist in the U.S. Naval Reserves, and served in World War II as a member of the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), where she was highly decorated. She married relatively late for her time (at the age of thirty) and divorced ten years later.
Shortly after she married, she moved to Hollywood and began her career as an actress, appearing in several movies including Shane, A Star Is Born, The Three Faces of Eve, and The Parent Trap. Her characters were what we today would call a geek. On television, she inevitably played the spinster. One reviewer called her the homeliest girl in television and said she had the “face of a shriveled balloon, the figure of a string of spaghetti and the voice of a bullfrog in mating season.” But her straitlaced approach to comedy made her an ideal “straight man,” so to speak, for the other zanier characters around her.
In 1984, she went home to Port Royal, Pennsylvania and ran for Congress as a Democrat. To her great dismay, her opponent, Bud Shuster, picked up the endorsement of Beverly Hillbillies costar Buddy Ebsen, who recorded a radio commercial denouncing her as “too liberal.” Kulp lost, picking up only a third of the vote.
In a 1989 interview, Kulp finally came out as a lesbian in an interview: “As long as you reproduce my reply word for word, and the question, you may use it… I’d appreciate it if you’d let me phrase the question. There is more than one way. Here’s how I would ask it: ‘Do you think that opposites attract?’ My own reply would be that I’m the other sort – I find that birds of a feather flock together. That answers your question.” She died in 1991 of cancer.
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