Box Turtle Bulletin

Please tell me that this isn’t going to be OUR strategy

Today the anti-gays begin gathering signatures on their petition to overturn California’s law requiring inclusion of GLBT contributions in the education curriculum.

And also today I heard a radio advertisement warning that you shouldn’t sign petitions. Because then they have your address and you could be a victim of identity theft. “They even have my signature” says the newly incensed woman. And then they go for the real danger:

I read that the names and addresses on petitions were sent to other countries, including India! Who knows what they did with it!

This is, of course, nonsense. Without giving your social security number there is not much threat of identity theft. Even from those nefarious Indians.

A San Diego Union Tribune reporter followed up and discovered that “Californians Against Identity Theft” are a project of a construction workers labor union. There are several signature campaigns to limit the exposure to guaranteed pension benefits that can come from public funds and, in some cases, require public employees to contribute to their pensions.

But considering EQCA’s shift in identity away from a gay organization and towards a progressive coalition agenda, this doesn’t give me comfort. So please, will someone please tell me that this incredible stupid, fraudulent and xenophobic ad is not part of our strategy?

UPDATE:

Ugh. An email from EQCA was in my inbox.

We’ve seen these campaigns before.

So we know that our opponents are spreading lies and using the usual scare tactics to misrepresent the FAIR Education Act and collect signatures for their effort to overturn it at the ballot box next year.

Extremists are also pushing a broad anti-progressive agenda, including ballot measures for next year, that will harm our fight and the work of important coalition partners.

Working in close collaboration with our partners, including Service Employees International Union, we are fighting back.

So I guess that, yeah, EQCA is has aligned our community with this crap. I especially love the comment about “spreading lies and using the usual scare tactics.”

What, are they saying that the FAIR Act is sending their children to India? And who know what the Indians will do with them!!

Mitt Romney declares anti-gay litmus test for judicial appointments

NOTE: The header, which originally said “Mitt Romney declares anti-gay litmus test for Supreme Court nominees”, was revised for accuracy.

The National Organization for Marriage is bragging that Republican presidential candidates Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and Mitt Romney have signed their pledge:

I, ______________, pledge to the American people that if elected President, I will:

One, support sending a federal constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman to the states for ratification.

Two, nominate to the U.S. Supreme Court and federal bench judges who are committed to restraint and to applying the original meaning of the Constitution, appoint an attorney general similarly committed, and thus reject the idea our Founding Fathers inserted a right to gay marriage into our Constitution.

Three, defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act vigorously in court.

Four, establish a presidential commission on religious liberty to investigate and document reports of Americans who have been harassed or threatened for exercising key civil rights to organize, to speak, to donate or to vote for marriage and to propose new protections, if needed.

Five, advance legislation to return to the people of the District of Columbia their right to vote on marriage.

Most of this is just a declaration of personal anti-gay animus and is neither a pledge of intent or likelihood.

There is almost no chance at all that two-thirds of each house of Congress would vote for a Federal Marriage Amendment and that likelihood decreases significantly with each passing year. By the time that the 2013-2017 Presidential term begins, it doesn’t matter what a President might “support”, it isn’t going to happen.

Also by that time, it is likely that the constitutionality of DOMA3 will have progressed out of the initial federal court hearings and on to appeal. And having declined to defend the law, the Justice Department cannot decide to step in and resume authority once a new Attorney General is in the office. At most, the Attorney General could file an amicus brief, which any of these nominees could do on their own today.

As for establishing a presidential commission to look at how gays are harassing and threatening homophobes, that would be political suicide. Not only would it appear to oh, just about anyone, as homophobic and an abuse of power, but it would be embarrassing to NOM when the commission released its report. The boycott of El Coyote may sound like a “threat” to NOM’s target audience, but “the gays didn’t eat there after the owner gave to Prop 8” is going to sound like a statement of the obvious to the rest of the country.

Equally stupid would be an effort on the part of the federal government to interfere with the District’s Human Rights Act so as to exclude gay people. That is the only mechanism by which legislation could “return to the people of the District of Columbia their right to vote” on limiting any of the District’s provisions based on sexual orientation. Only two Senators and 37 members of the House were willing to sign on to an amicus brief arguing that the Human Rights Act didn’t cover gay marriage. Even fewer would sign on to legislation to amend the “The Human Rights Act” specifically to exclude gay people from coverage.

Now none of this is to say that Michele Bachman and Rick Santorum would not try to do all of the above. They live in a bubble in which the things that they say actually make sense and where people admire them and their values. But both are wackadoodles with no chance of winning the Presidency.

Mitt Romney, however, is a credible candidate. And he should have thought a bit more before signing onto this pledge. Because he just made a declaration that has potential to negatively impact his campaign.

No, it was not the wacky appeal to ancestor-worship that has our “Founding Fathers” writing the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. Palinist history is about symbolism, not fact, so this is not much of a liability to Romney at this stage.

Nor is it unusual for Republican nominees to declare their support for a commitment to constraint and to oppose those who “legislate from the bench.”

But this pledge goes way beyond such language. And by signing, Mitt Romney took the unusual step of declaring that his judicial nominees must reject the idea that the US Constitution protects the marriage rights of gay people. Mitt Romney announced that he has a litmus test.

In practice, litmus tests for judicial nominees are complicated.

An administration makes judicial appointments that it believes share its ideology. But the nominees themselves are bound by professional ethics from declaring their position on matters that are expected to appear before them. And most aren’t much favorable of the notion that your whim is to be followed rather than their consideration of the facts, weight of precedent, or argument of the litigants.

But regardless of whether or not litmus test questioning occurs in private, declaring a litmus test for judicial nominees, especially this early in a political campaign, is not wise. And at some point, a reporter is going to ask Romney the unanswerable question, “Considering Ted Olson’s legal stature and established conservative credentials, would his support for same-sex marriage disqualify him from an appointment to the federal bench?”

Sao Paulo’s legislation: Straight Pride or Hate Pride?

I support straight pride.

Heterosexuals have made many contributions to society, have unique attributes that deserve acknowledgement, and should never be made to feel shame for their orientation. If straight folk feel insignificant or have experienced discrimination, then by all means celebrate and find pride in your identity. Set up panels to discuss opposite-sex attractions and explore them and think about what it means to be straight. Embrace your heterosexuality.

And there’s even a benefit for non-straight people: people who are truly comfortable with their sexuality tend to be tolerant of those with different sexuality. Those who are brave enough and curious enough to try and understand what motivates their desire and to truly understand their attractions seem to develop a respect and even advocacy for others in the process.

But, of course, that it not what those who say that they want Straight Pride mean at all. They don’t want a festivity of heterosexuality or a discovery of its meaning and celebration of its culture. It isn’t Straight Pride that they are seeking, but Anti-Gay Pride. It’s not love for heterosexuals that they seek to express, but hatred and contempt for gay people.

As is evident in Sao Paulo, Brazil. (AP)

The city council of South America’s biggest city has adopted legislation calling for a Heterosexual Pride Day to be celebrated on the third Sunday of each December.

Are they seeking to celebrate straight conformity with signs extolling family dinner or straight abandon like a second Carnival? No. Their reasons don’t even mention heterosexuality.

The legislation’s author, Carlos Apolinario, said the idea for a Heterosexual Pride Day is “not anti-gay but a protest against the privileges the gay community enjoys.”

As an example, he mentioned how Sao Paulo’s huge gay pride day parade is held every year on Paulista Avenue, one of the main thoroughfares in this city of 20 million people, while the March for Jesus organized by evangelical groups is not allowed on the same avenue.

Oh… so this isn’t about straight pride at all, just anti-gay resentment.

This legislation must be signed by the Mayor to go into effect. But I don’t much care if they get their Straight Pride day. They can even close Paulista Avenue and make it theirs for the day.

Obviously it isn’t a good thing when the city council of the largest city in South America endorsed homophobia. But I have no fear about comparing Gay Pride to Anti-Gay Pride in Sao Paolo. Show the world which parade that city’s residents endorse.

Because the thing about events is that it can be fun to join someone in celebrating their uniqueness and love for their community – be it St. Patrick’s Day or the Lotus Festival or MLK Day or Gay Pride or even a March for Jesus, I suppose. And in Sao Paulo about three million people show up at Gay Pride to watch the floats, dancers, and marchers and to enjoy the fun and celebration.

But days to celebrate hate just don’t put a smile on your face. An Anti-Irish Day Parade would not be much fun at all and I doubt that a Stomp on Lotus Festival would get beyond the planning phase.

Sure some Eastern European cities have had anti-gay marches and there are always those donkey people in Jerusalem, but the Anti-Gay Pride Parade just doesn’t seem to promise the sparkle and flash that Parada do Orgulho LGBT de São Paulo brings. Besides, what would they do for floats? Straight go-go dancers often aren’t and the straight version of drag tends to be pro-gay anyway.

The Alliance Defense Fund Lies to its Base

This week I came across an article so very lame there seemed no point in in debunking it. Then I saw it was from the Alliance Defense Fund.

Oh geez.

These folks are co-counsel for ProtectMarriage.com, the group defending Prop 8 in Federal court. I’ve already written about their ridiculous notion that Christian state employees in New York state don’t have to abide by the law. Basically, they’re the country’s chief anti-gay legal group, and while it pains me to take them seriously, they are a genuine threat.

The new article is called, Games the left plays with polls about same-sex ‘marriage.’ It’s egregious because the author, Brian Raum, claims to tell the truth about a gay-positive poll when in fact he merely lies about it.

Brian is complaining about a survey from Harris Interactive (HI) that shows strong support for marriage equality. He thinks HI stacked the deck:

Harris Interactive purposely oversampled those who engage in homosexual behavior, thus guaranteeing the results would not represent the overall American sentiment, but rather would be skewed to reflect the views of those seeking to further the homosexual agenda. (To the credit of Harris Interactive, they admitted the oversampling in the fine print at the bottom of their survey results, albeit in a place few will see, and even fewer will care to search for.)

How significant was the oversampling? Consider this: those who identify as homosexual only constitute 1.4 to 1.7 percent of the U.S. population, according to the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the Harris Interactive poll, they constituted a sample of well over 14 percent. With this distortion understood, it’s no wonder the poll showed that “‘49% of all U.S. adults…support the right for same-sex couples to marry,’ [vs.] 41% who oppose the right, and 10% who are not at all sure.”

In other words, Oh my gosh, no wonder the survey’s so gay-friendly — it has 10 times as many homosexuals as it should!

So much wrong here.

Sampling and weights

Brian doesn’t understand the difference between sampling and analysis. A sample might have too many or too few gays, straights, Protestants, Catholics or whatever. Pollsters compensate by weighting their data to get the right proportions when they do their analysis.

In fact, by applying some basic algebra to HI’s results, you’ll find they weighted LGBTs as about 7.7% of the adult US population. A bit high? Perhaps. But nowhere near the 14% Brian wants us to believe.

Brian ought to understand this difference between sampling and analysis — certainly if he’s going to earn money writing about this stuff. That brings up the usual question: incompetence or rank dishonesty? Hard to know.

What’s the right weight?

Brian wants us to think 1.4 -1.7% would be an appropriate LGBT weight, based on CDC figures. But he’s, er, mistaken. Those numbers just cover the Ls and the Gs (1.3% of all women for lesbians and 2.3% for gay men). What about the Bs? Bisexuals add another 2.8% for women and 1.8% for men. Now we’re looking at 4.1% for LGB.

But there’s more.

The CDC also lists “Something else” and “Did not report.” No way of knowing exactly what that means, but I can tell you this: 9.7% of women declined to say they were straight, along with 9.8% of all men.

In other words, according to Raum’s own source, HI’s LGBT weight should be at least 4.1%, and possibly a good bit higher. Once again, incompetence or rank dishonesty? Hard to know.

Oh, and one more delicious bit: Antigays love to say there are no homosexuals, just homosexual behavior. You see that in Brian’s wording: “Harris Interactive purposely oversampled those who engage in homosexual behavior…” But the CDC measures that, too. 3.2% of those self-identified straight men have engaged in homosexual behavior, along with 9.0% of straight women. Using Brian’s criteria actually bumps up our numbers even further.

I truly hate this no-homosexuals-just-homosexual-behavior meme, so I love watching it turn around and bite Brian in the ass.

What if we only weighted LGBTs at 4.1%?

Brian’s implying Harris Interactive counted ten times as many LGBTs as it should have. What a conspiracy! The truth is not so ominous. Let’s go to the lowest possible extreme and assume HI should have used a 4.1% weight. How much difference does that make?

Not much.

A bit more algebra says instead of 49 – 41 result favoring marriage equality (plus 10% undecided), we’ll get a 48 – 43 victory,  (total percentage not equal to 100 due to rounding). That difference is basically insignificant in the world of statistics.

Poor Brian. All that work debunking the poll, and it amounts to nothing. Incompetence or rank dishonesty?

Does Brian care?

Brian is just wrong, wrong, wrong in this article. The irony is that he’s trying to expose “games the left plays with polls about same-sex ‘marriage.” Combine all his falsehoods with his ballsy assertion of setting the record straight, and you have to wonder if the truth really matters to him. Is it paranoid to think he’s happy lying to his own base as long as it fires them up? Could a strategy like that even work?

A hint appears in the comments section of his article at TownHall.com. One fellow, Lon, pointed out Brian’s confusion over sampling and analysis. Here are the two responses Lon got back:

And you are not up-to-speed on research rules.

Lon the fraking loon of TH grunts again………………………

Another commenter, Jeremy, explained, “Over-sampling gays doesn’t guarantee results skewed in their favor. He probably thinks it means over-representing.” Simple, direct, civil, and true. Jeremy got one response:

Thanks.

We needed input from an intellectually-challenged gay.

Now we have it.

They don’t care. Lying to your base, it seems, works just fine for anti-gay activists. As long as anti-gay is your only moral value.

Last Known “Pink Triangle” Holocaust Survivor Dies

Rudolf Brazda, who is believed to be the last surviving gay Holocaust survivor, has died at the age of 98. The Berlin branch of the Lesbian and Gay Association said that he died on Wednesday. He died peacefully in his sleep in a nursing home, where he resided since last June.

Born in 1913, Brazda grew up in Meuselwitz near the Czech border, where he frequently ran into trouble with local authorities over his homosexuality. Meuselwitz later became the site for a subcamp for the Buchenwald concentration camp. Brazda spent three years from 1942 through 1945 at Buchenwald, after having been convicted of homosexuality by the Nazis as a “repeat offender.” After the war, he moved to the Alsace region of eastern France. Last year, he co-authored Itinerary of a Pink Triangle about his internment, forced labor, beatings, and harassment. The book is not yet available in English.

During the Nazi regime, an estimated 54,000 men were arrested by the Nazis under Paragraph 175, the criminal code which outlawed male homosexuality. Upwards of 15,000 of them were sent to concentration camps, where it is estimated that approximately 60% died. The end of the war meant liberation for the much larger interned populations of Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Russians, and other undesirables, but allied forces often returned gay men to post-war prisons to continue to serve out their terms. Homosexuality wasn’t formally decriminalized in Germany until 1994.

Brazda’s funeral will be held on Monday. In accordance with his will, Brazda’s remains will be cremated and his ashes placed alongside those of Edward Meyer, his life partner of more than 50 years who died in 2003.

Earlier this year, Brazda was awarded France’s Legion of Honor. An interview with Brazda was posted on YouTube last October.

The Daily Agenda for Thursday, August 4

TODAY’S AGENDA (OURS):

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Amsterdam, Netherlands; Hamburg, Germany; Leeds, UK; Oakland, CA (Black Pride); Reykjavik, Iceland; Salem, OR; Stockholm, Sweden; and Windsor, ON;

Also This Weekend: Summer Diversity, Eureka Springs, AK; and Louisville LGBT Film Festival, Louisville, KY.

TODAY’S AGENDA (THEIRS):
Catholic Ex-Gay Conference: Mundelein, IL. Courage, the Roman Catholic ex-gay group, operates at a considerably lower profile than does its Evangelical counterpart, Exodus International. And unlike Exodus, Courage generally emphasizes Catholic teachings of chastity and downplays (but doesn’t discourage) change in sexual orientation. But it is no less active or ambitious. Today marks the start of a four day Courage Conference at the University of St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein, Illinois. This year’s conference is dedicated to Fr. John F. Harvey, the group’s founder, who died last December. Harvey’s writings were a mix of conservative Catholic sexual theology, a simplified understanding of out-dated fifty-year-old Freudian psychology, and deeply flawed social “science” (including citing discredited “researcher” Paul Cameron). The inaugural Mass this evening will be celebrated by Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke, Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura. Also speaking at the conference is Richard Fitzgibbons, a member of NARTH’s Scientific Advisory Committee and the Catholic Medical Association.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
California’s Prop 8 Declared Unconstitutional: 2010. It’s hard to believe that only a year has passed since the initial euphoria over Federal Judge Walker Vaughn’s decision declaring California’s Proposition 8 unconstitutional. The judge’s findings were far-reaching, saying that Prop 8 could not withstand any level of scrutiny under the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. The case is now before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, who are struggling with the issue of who, if anyone, has standing to appeal the case since the state of California isn’t interested. The Ninth has punted that question to the California Supreme Court because it involves the interpretation of California law. The California court will hold oral arguments on the matter on September 6.

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).

Scott Lively: Marriage Equality is “Sign Of The End Times”

Could it be... Satan

Guess what folks. We’re the chosen people!  Or, rather more precisely, “God has chosen rampant homosexuality to be a key warning sign for judgment of the world as a whole, and not just of individual nations,” says Scott Lively. One proof is with the rainbow itself:

In Chapter 9 God made an everlasting promise never again to destroy the earth by water, and said “I set my bow in the cloud and it shall be for a sign of a covenant between Me and the earth.” hereafter, fire was always the symbol and means of God’s wrath…

Did you also catch the spiritual significance of the rainbow in this context? Why has the homosexual movement chosen the rainbow as its symbol? I think they are deliberately flaunting their sin under God’s nose while holding up the reminder that He promised not to destroy the earth by flood again. They are proclaiming “See, God, you can’t stop us!” which was the exact sentiment expressed by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick when he signed the first “gay marriage” policy in the nation into law: looking up at the sky he said something to the effect of “See, nothing happened.”

So, it’s Satan, definitely Satan, who is is behind all this. There is no other possible explanation:

I have made this point before, but it bears repeating. I am 53 years old. When I was born homosexuality was illegal throughout the entire world. In the space of just half a century this tiny 1-3% of the population have made themselves a global political power with greater influence in the courtrooms and legislatures of the world than the Church of Jesus Christ. This astonishing transformation surpasses that of Darwinism, Marxism, and even Islam in its speed and breadth of reach. To my thinking, this can only have been accomplished by the god of this world (Satan 2 Cor 4:4) who knows his time is short and is making his move. What is more alarming is the shocking apathy of the church, which I take as a sign of the apostasy warned about by Jesus in Matt 24:12. The “love of most” for the truth of God truly has grown cold.

The Daily Agenda for Wednesday, August 3

TODAY’S AGENDA:

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Amsterdam, Netherlands; Hamburg, Germany; Leeds, UK; Oakland, CA (Black Pride); Reykjavik, Iceland; Salem, OR; Stockholm, Sweden; and Windsor, ON;

Also This Weekend: Summer Diversity, Eureka Springs, AK; and Louisville LGBT Film Festival, Louisville, KY.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Michael Hardwick Arrested: 1982. It all started in July, when Michael Hardwick threw a beer bottle into a trash can outside of an Atlanta gay bar. A police officer cited him for public drinking. He went to court the courthouse, payed the $50 fine, and thought nothing more of it. For some reason, his payment wasn’t recorded correctly, and when his court date came and went, a warrant was issued for his arrest. On August 3, a police officer went to Hardwick’s apparent to serve the warrant. The police officer entered the apartment (accounts differ on how he got in), and discovered Hardwick and another man engaged in oral sex, which Georgia defined as “sodomy” under the law. The officer announced that they two were under arrest. Hardwick shot back, “What are you doing in my bedroom?”

The arrest was humiliating for the two men. Hardwick recalled that the police officer brought them to the police station, he loudly made sure everyone there knew that he had arrested them for “cocksucking,” and that they should be able to find plenty of what they were looking for in Atlanta’s city jails. Hardwick posted bail within the hour, but was detained for twelve hours near other criminals who had been told why he was there. Hardwick had never fought for gay rights before, but that moment changed him. “I realized that if there was anything I could do, even if it was just laying the foundation to change this horrendous law, that I would feel pretty bad about myself if I just walked away from it.”

After the local district attorney decided not to press charges, Hardwick decided to Georgia attorney general Michael Bowers in federal court to overturn the state’s sodomy law. The ACLU agreed to take the case on Hardwick’s behalf. The case ultimately made it to the Supreme Court. But in a surprising move, the Court upheld Georgia’s sodomy law. Surprising because the Court had built a solid case history upholding the rights to privacy for heterosexuals to engage in private, non-procreative, non-marital sexual behavior in the privacy of their bedrooms. But for gay people, that same right to privacy vanished. It wouldn’t be until 2003, when the Supreme Court decided that Bowers v. Hardwick “was not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today,” that sodomy laws were overturned nationwide in Lawrence v. Texas.

[Source: Joyce Murdoch & Deb Price, Courting Justice: Gay Men And Lesbians V. The Supreme Court]

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).

Taking the NAACP seriously?

Last Monday, the NAACP held its first ever town hall meeting on LGBT issues as part of their Annual National Convention. No More Downlow was there.

The debate got heated when the current NAACP CEO Benjamin Jealous is asked by our executive producer Earnest Winborne, “How can the LGBT community take the NAACP seriously, when its current board members are out saying that gay rights are not civil rights” – referring to current NAACP board member Rev. Keith Ratliff recent statement “Gay community stop hijacking the civil rights movement.”

Mr. Jealous responded saying the gay community should take the NAACP seriously because the NAACP was there with the Human Rights Campaign helping to pass the Matthew Shepard / James Byrd Hate Crimes Bill. The NAACP were champions of fighting Prop 8 in California as well as fighting alongside the LGBT community in Maine, Massachusetts, in Washington D.C. and in Maryland, and in other places. Jealous also said the LGBT community needed to do more ground work in the black community and not come late in the game with an expectation. He also said the black community needed to be treated with the same respect as the other allies of the LGBT community

Rather than discuss Ben Jealous’ answer, I want to make three observations.

One: I may be mistaken, and I am no weather-vane for any social trends, but I believe that I have seen a change in the way that bloggers, writers, and commentators within the black community have been discussing gay people and, more importantly, responding to those who do make slurs. I’ll leave it to those who have a better sense of the community, but it may be that a breakthrough is coming.

Two: The problem is not limited to a lack of support for gay issues in the African American community. Equally concerning are issues of racism and exclusion in the gay community. We, all of us, whatever race, ethnicity, religion, orientation, gender, or whatever need to look more for ways of seeing each other as “just like me” instead of letting our insecurities drive us into looking for differences and ways to separate. But we must also be careful that “just like me” doesn’t erase concern for each others’ real and unique challenges.

Three: In this discussion, let us never forget that “they” are already “us”. We have strong intelligent effective gay men and women who are not always valued due to prejudices that we may not even know we hold. Those who walk with a foot in two communities because of their race, religion, political ideology or other separation deserve respect. They’ve proven themselves and fought for our community and often been rewarded by being treated as the scapegoat. We, as a community, have to stop that.

Second Indian Tribe adopts marriage equality

In 2008 marriage equality established itself in southern Oregon. Now Washington State can be the site for same-sex marriages as well. Provided, of course, that you are a registered member of the appropriate Indian tribe.

On Monday, the Suquamish Tribal Council formally changed its ordinances to join Oregon’s Coquille in extending marriage rights to same-sex couples. (Kitsap Sun)

The Tribal Council held a public hearing on the ordinance change in June and formally adopted it in a unanimous vote Monday.

The new law allows the tribal court to issue a marriage license to two unmarried people, “regardless of their sex,” if they at least 18 years old and at least one of them is an enrolled member of the Suquamish Tribe.

Dolly’s family

It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to name an amusement park after yourself. It take a boatload of charm and goodwill to get away with it. And Dolly Parton has both, in spades.

Along with an entertainment career including top-five country hits in each of the past five decades, half a dozen movies, more than 3000 songs, a themepark complex, a production company, the title of Queen of Country Music, and the respect of most everyone who’s ever worked with her.

Dolly also has a long history of supporting the gay community ranging from simple statements of inclusion (“they accept me and I accept them“) to endorsement of issues, projects with LGBT themes, support for AIDS causes, and perhaps most importantly to being the voice of comfort and love to gay kids growing up in the Bible Belt.

So when I heard that a lesbian couple accused a themepark owned by Parton of being insensitive to gay couples, I dismissed it as a misunderstanding.

On July 9, Olivier Odom and Jennifer Tipton attended Dollywood Splash Country with two children. But the ticket agent requested that Odem turn her shirt inside out so that the slogan “Marriage is so gay” not offend other customers. He noted that Dollywood is a “family park”.

And the Dollywood complex does have a “family” dress code which restricts slogans:

To preserve our family atmosphere proper clothing is required including shirts and shoes (sandals or flip-flops are acceptable). Clothing with offensive words and/or pictures will not be permitted inside the park. Guests may not wear character type costumes on park.

For decades, the word “family” has been utilized as code for “no gays allowed.” Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, American Family Institute, Family Values Coalition, and a host of other “family organizations” have all used the slur “anti-family” to tell the world that LGBT people are not only unwholesome and dangerous but an enemy of home, hearth, and protection of children. And even secular use such as “family programming” or “family counseling” has at times defined family in ways that exclude LGBT people.

Which makes Dolly Parton’s response to the issue even more interesting:

I am truly sorry for the hurt or embarrassment regarding the gay and lesbian t-shirt incident at Dollywood’s Splash Country recently. Everyone knows of my personal support of the gay and lesbian community. Dollywood is a family park and all families are welcome. I am looking further into the incident and hope and believe it was more policy than insensitivity. I am very sorry it happened at all.

This is the appropriate response: owning responsibility, reassuring the community, and promising further review. A well crafted apology.

But there in the middle is a seemingly innocuous sentence that sets an entire industry of anti-gay activism on its ear. Lesbian couples are not welcomed as some exception to the family image, but because the Dollywood definition of “family park” already welcomes them. This is a revolutionary statement for Bible Belt mentality.

Dollywood is careful that it’s image is not like some amusement parks which seem to cater to vulgarity and crassness. No, Dollywood is a safe place designed for the family. It’s wholesome and unoffensive and protective of the innocence of children, so naturally it’s where gay families belong. Because gay people are part of what Dolly calls “family“.

And this casual presumption of inclusion in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, is what makes Dolly Parton a particularly effective ally and a truly wonderful person.

LaBarbera Acknowledges Tax Problems

Accountability buddies? Matt Barber (left) and Peter LaBarbera (right)

The Peter LaBarbera as notified in May, 2011 that the IRS had revoked his tax exempt status. That revocation became effective June 10, 2011. The cited reason was his failure to provide tax returns for three consecutive years. Today, seven weeks after his tax exempt status was revoked, LaBarbera finally gest around to commenting on the issue:

The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, August 2

TODAY’S AGENDA (THEIRS):
Exodus Conducts “Equipping Event”: Sugar Land, TX. Exodus International is laying the groundwork for another Love Won Out roadshow, this time in the Houston suburb of Sugar Land. That conference, scheduled for September 10 at Sugar Creek Baptist Church will be marketed more to the general public, specifically to parents and other family members of gay people, as well as to a few prospective ex-gays themselves. Today’s all-day “Equipping Event” is geared more toward “pastors, ministry leaders, campus workers, educators, counselors,” and is designed to introduce the ex-gay philosophy to Houston-area religious leaders. Today’s conference will provide them with an abbreviated version of LWO, thereby equipping them with talking points so they can encourage others to attend LWO when it comes to town. Today’s conference begins at 9:00 a.m. and continues until 2:00 p.m.

Doubted prostate massages would cure homosexuality.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Should homosexuals be treated?: 1913. The very word “homosexuality” had only entered the English language two decades earlier, but already medical and mental health professionals were debating the merits of trying to treat gay people. Among them was Columbia University’s Abraham A. Brill, who, as the English translator of Sigmund Freud’s writings, had singlehandedly introduced Americans to Freud’s teachings and became known as the father of American psychoanalysis. The August 2, 1913 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association published Brill’s talk at the AMA’s convention in Minneapolis in June, where he discussed how his encounters with homosexuals shaped his understanding of them:

Of the abnormal sexual manifestations that one encounters none, perhaps, is so enigmatical and to the average person so abhorrent as homosexuality. I have discussed this subject with many broad-minded, intelligent professional men and laymen and have been surprised to hear how utterly disgusted they become at the very mention of the name and how little they understand the whole problem. Yet I must confess that only a few years ago I entertained similar feelings and opinions regarding this subject. I can well recall my first scientific encounter with the problem. Ten years ago, when I met a homosexual who was a patient in the Central Islip State Hospital. Since then I have devoted a great deal of time to the study of this complicated phenomenon, and it is therefore no wonder that my ideas have undergone a marked change. Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner, I have met and studied a large number of homosexuals and have been convinced that a great injustice is done to a large class of human beings, most of whom are far from being the degenerates they are commonly believed to be.

Part of the injustice, Brill concluded, lay in the fact that physicians were offering quack advice on treating homosexuality:

…I can never comprehend why physicians invariably resort to bladder washing and rectal massage when they are consulted by homosexuals, unless it be to kill the homosexual cells in the prostateso that their place may be taken by heterosexual cells, as one physician expressed himself when one of my patients asked him how massage of the prostate would cure his inversion. It is an unfortunate fact that such ridiculous ideas are often heard in the discussion of psychosexual disturbances. Only a few months ago a patient told me that he was told by two physicians that his hope for a cure lay in castration.

Castration may cure (after a fashion) homosexuality — and all other sexuality with it — but of course it should be no surprise that prostate massages had little curative effect. Brill added, “Investigators agree that homosexuality is no sign of mental or physical degeneration,” and he agreed with those views. Nevertheless, he described three cases in which he claimed to have “cured” homosexuals after only six to ten months of psychoanalysis.  In the discussion that followed, Dr. D’Orsay Hecht of Chicago noted the incongruity:

I was also impressed with the effort of Dr. Brill to correct homosexuality by decrying it. But if in the eye of the specialist homosexuality is but a contravention, socially speaking, and if it has just as much right to a hearing from the point of view of a sexual act as has heterosexuality, I really cannot see why the homosexual should care to be delivered from his homosexuality, except that he feels disgraced by it. Then again, a large number of homosexuals are in no way abhorrent of themselves in respect to their natures; they seem to be perfectly happy and perfectly well adjusted, probably in a restricted sense, and these patients probably are not worth while treating as Dr. Brill treats them. If we accept homosexuality as a condition which has as much right to exist as heterosexuality, why should we address ourselves to the duty of treating it?

Brill didn’t give much of an answer, except to say that gay men came to him, and not the other way around. That answer is strikingly familiar: When Marcus Bachmann was confronted with the same question over his clinic’s ex-gay practice, he essentially gave the same answer. The difference between now and some 98 years ago however is that today, every major mental health and medical organization opposes therapies intended to change sexual orientation, with many of them noting the harm that can come from those therapies. The ex-gay movement however remains mired in the age of Freud and the Model T.

Reagan Bans AIDS Discrimination: 1988. Acting on a recommendation from a 13-member AIDS Commission, President Ronald Reagan ordered a ban on discrimination against federal workers with AIDS. His actions, however drew sharp criticism for not acting on many of the other wide-ranging changes recommended by his own commission, which urged federal legislation to protect HIV-positive workers. The President instead urged “businesses, unions and schools to examine and consider adopting” similar policies. Vice President George Bush, who was running for president, had already endorsed the commission’s recommendations which included spending an additional #3.1 billion to combat the disease. Dr. Frank Lilly, the commission’s only openly gay member, criticized Reagan’s limited action. “We’ve got a blueprint for a national policy on AIDS,” he said. “It’s a piece of whole cloth. You can’t pick and choose your own menu from it.”

More fully American in Paris.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
James Baldwin: 1924. He was born to poverty in Harlem, the son of a pentecostal preacher and a mother with, as he put it, “the exasperating and mysterious habit of having babies.” As he grew older, his father groomed him for the family business of saving souls, but when Baldwin turned seventeen, he left the business and his home and journeyed to an entirely different world in the Village. He began writing book reviews for the New York Times, focusing on books about “the Negro problem, which the color of my skin made me automatically an expert.” Some of his essays led to a few fellowships which allowed him to leave New York for France, where he stayed for the next six years and would spend the better part of his life. While in Europe, Baldwin learned two surprising things: 1) that he was never before more thoroughly an American as he was the moment he landed on French soil, and 2) “I was forced to admit something I had always hidden from myself, which the American Negro has had to hide from himself as the price of his public progress; that I hated and feared white people.” And from working through those two issues, he came to a profound realization:”I imagine that one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, that they will be forced to deal with pain.” He also worked through his ambivalence of what it was to be an American. “I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”

Baldwin’s first novel, 1953’s semi-autobiographical Go Tell It on the Mountain, written during his first sojourn to France, became an instant American classic. His first collection of essays, Notes of a Native Son came out two years later. Despite his success, his publisher turned down his third novel, Giovanni’s Room. Baldwin, this time, had tried to break two barriers. The first was that Baldwin’s characters were all white. Baldwin was an established Negro writer, his publisher argued. This book, they feared, would alienate his audience and ruin his career. “They would not, in short, publish it, as a favor tome. I conveyed my gratitude, perhaps a shade too sharply, borrowed money from a friend, and myself and my lover took the boat to France.”

Of course, Giovanni’s Room broke a second barrier; the two main protagonists were gay lovers. And yet the themes were similar to those confronted in Baldwin’s two earlier works. Just as Baldwin had to escape New York so he could work out the alienation he felt for the land that he loved, the American “David” in Giovanni’s Room had also found himself in Paris, torn between the expectations of marriage to his fiancé and the love that he felt for his Italian lover. Other novels — 1962’s Another Country and 1968’s Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone — also dealt with homosexual and bisexual themes in a unflinching and nuanced way. In an essay that was included in the 1961 collection Nobody Knows My Name, he tackled the argument that homosexuality was somehow unnatural:

…To ask whether or not homosexuality is natural is really like asking whether or not it was natural for Socrates to swallow hemlock, whether or not it was natural for for St. Paul to suffer for the Gospel, whether or not it was natural for the Germans to send upwards of six million people to an extremely twentieth-century death. It does not seem to me that nature helps us very much when we need illumination in human affairs. I am certainly convinced that it is one of the greatest impulses of mankind to arrive at something higher than a antural state. How to be natural does not seem to me to be a problem — quite the contrary. The greatest problem is how to be — in the best sense of that kaleidoscopic word — a man.

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The Perry approach to the Constitution

Texas Governor and Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Perry supports the Constitution. But his support appears to be based not on principle or conceptual idea but on legality. He endorses what it says, but seems at a loss as to what it means.

Perry invokes the Tenth Amendment when he says that he supports the right of New York to define marriage as they wish. This fits well with the ‘don’t mess with Texas’ independent streak that has been a part of that state since it gave up its separate nation status. This individualist desire for self-determination, though bipartisan, fits nicely with Republican rhetoric about smaller more localized government.

But Texas, Perry, and the Republican Party are also very socially conservative. And this combination results in policy and positions that often could best be paraphrased as “give me the freedom to chart my own destiny, but you must do as I say”. And it is the second half that Perry invokes when he endorses a constitutional amendment to overrule New York’s right to its own marriage criteria.

His thinking is revealed in an interview with Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins. Gov. Perry leaped at a peculiar notion that allowed him to support Texas’ individuality while denying New York’s self determination (FRC Blog):

TONY PERKINS: Governor, we are about out of time but I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but I think I hear what you are saying. The support given what’s happening across the nation, the fear of the courts, the administration’s failure to defend the defense of marriage act.

The only and thin line of protection for those states that have defined marriage, that have been historically been defined between a man and a woman. The support of a marriage amendment is a pro-state’s rights position, because it will defend the rights of states to define marriage as it has been.

GOV. PERRY: Yes sir, and I have long supported the appointment of judges who respect the constitution and the passage of a federal marriage amendment. That amendment defines marriage between one man and one woman, and it protects the states from being told otherwise. It respects the rights of the state by requiring three quarters of a states vote to ratify. It’s really strong medicine but is again our founding fathers had such great wisdom and their wisdom is just as clear and profound today as it was back in the late eighteenth century.

Perry has some small connection with principle in this statement, but it is based on false premises, perverted self interest, and results-driven thinking.

There are marriage-related issues which, one could argue, threaten a state’s right to self government. Divorce is a prime example. There is a pretty decent argument that having united two people for life, a state’s authority is challenged when another state undoes this act. But states have long since come to all provide for divorce and Perry is not challenging divorce laws.

And, using a real-case example, should Virginia refuse to recognize the custody decisions of Vermont, one could find a threat to the underlying function of federalism. But Perry is not coming down on the side of recognition.

And it must be noted that Perry is not predicating his support for a Federal Marriage Amendment on the repeal of DOMA, nor does his support extend only to protecting Texas’ autonomy. While I would oppose a constitutional amendment that was limited to giving states the right to refuse to recognize marriages conducted in other states as being deliberately discriminatory and a nightmare to negotiate or administer, I could respect those who supported such a “solution” as having some measure of consistency and logic to their position. But this is not Perry’s goal.

And it also must be clarified that Perkin’s assertions about the Defense of Marriage Act, upon which Perry leaped, are flat out distortions. The legal challenges and the government’s determinations have been limited in all instances to “Section Three: Definition of Marriage” of DOMA – that which deals with the Federal Government’s recognition of a state’s laws – and does not challenge “Section 2. Powers reserved to the states”.

Should Governor Perry truly respect a state’s right to define marriage within its borders (even over another state’s right to expect recognition of its acts by other states) then he would not be troubled by challenges to DOMA3 at all. Rather, he would support efforts to throw out this federal disrespect of states’ autonomy.

But Perry has a results-driven agenda. He wants marriage to be restricted according to his religion’s doctrines and is willing to impose those restrictions on others with no regard to self determination or personal freedoms. But to do so without contradicting his admiration for the Tenth Amendment, he spills out a justification that lacks any basis in principle.

The Tenth Amendment was not handed to Moses on Mount Sinai. It is, rather, language written to formalize and give structure to a principle. The notion underlying the words is that individuals should be governed according to shared community values and that such restrictions as are imposed on the individual should not be the result of some other community’s goals or dreams.

Interestingly, this notion is also seen in the provisions laid out for constitutional amendment. Recognizing that states would seek advantage, the authors set the rules of change to be so strict as to make imposition of unfair local or regional values on the entire nation very difficult.

And it is to these provisions that Perry appeals when he says that the rights of New York and its citizens are respected “by requiring three quarters of a states vote to ratify.” Perry argues that New York has the ability to convince just a quarter of other states to protect their autonomy. And yes, is just such an attack that the founders sought to avoid.

However, while Perry praises the language of the Constitution, he fails to see his role.

Yes, New York can appeal; but to whom? And with what argument? When the state of New York comes calling, asking for those who champion a state’s autonomy, what will Perry say?

And that is where Gov. Perry reveals his support for states’ rights to be a sham. He doesn’t really support the rights of a community of individuals to self-determination. Rather, he supports such rights such rights for him and his state, but others have this right only so long as they determine what he want them to determine.

Ugandan LGBT Advocacy Group Reports Suspicious Burglary

Freedom and Roam Uganda (FARUG) has reported that their offices were broken into on Saturday night. According to a message posted on facebook by the group’s leader, Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera, thieves took five computers, two printers, a server, microwave oven and all office phones. Most worrying, some documents were taken, including the group’s membership database. A jerrycan of acid was left behind, and acid was poured into padlocks. No one was in the office at the time.

The crime has been reported to the police, but Kasha reports that they have not yet arrived at the premises to investigate the crime scene.

[Hat tip: Paul Canning]