Box Turtle Bulletin

Heterosexual Menace: Beware “The Rutting Champanzee”

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund and a leading candidate for the French presidency, was arrested over the weekend on charges of attempted rape and unlawful imprisonment of a maid at the hotel where he was staying. Strauss-Kahn apparently has quite a reputation; the French call him “the great seducer“:

A 32-year-old hotel worker told police she went in to clean what she thought was an empty luxury suite. The woman claims Strauss-Kahn came out of the bathroom naked, locked her inside and sexually assaulted her.

Three hours later, police hauled him off an Air France jet at Kennedy Airport 10 minutes before takeoff.

Women are lining up for their shot against him. French writer Tristane Banon is also expected to lodge an official sexual assault complaint against him. She previously described the attack on television in 2007, when she called Strauss-Kahn, whose name was bleeped out, a “rutting chimpanzee.” Strauss-Kahn is scheduled to appear for his arraignment today. His wife is standing by him and protests his “innocence,” an apparently common practice among heterosexual wives.

You can learn more about how the heterosexuals are destroying the fabric of society here and in our report, The Heterosexual Agenda: Exposing the Myths.

The Daily Agenda for Monday, May 16

TODAY’S AGENDA:
It’s a very light day today and nothing much happened on this day in history, but the birthdays are fabulous.

Tamara de Lempicka (top) and "Auto-Portrait (Tamara in the Green Bugatti)," 1925 (bottom)

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Tamara de Lempicka: 1898. The polish Art Deco painter known as “la belle Polonaise,” she personified the glamor of the Great Gatsby society of the interwar years. In 1978, The New York Times called her the “Steel-eyed goddess of the automobile age.” Her famous self-portrait, Auto-Portrait (Tamara in the Green Bugatti) portrayed a woman who was utterly free, independent, and self-assured. Automobiles provided women with a freedom and mobility that they had never known before, and the portrait’s depiction of a 400 horsepower Bugatti added raw speed and power to the mix. During the roaring twenties, Tamara lived the bohemian life in Paris, hanging out with Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, and André Gide. She was famously, infamously bisexual, and she was uncompromising in her very public affairs in a way that was scandalous at the time. She reveled in it. “I live on the fringe of society,” she announced, “and the rules of normal society have no currency for those on the fringe.”

In 1928, she earned a commission to paint a portrait of the mistress of Baron Raoul Kuffner. By the time she was finished, she replaced the mistress’s position, and eventually became Kuffner’s wife in 1933. In 1939, the couple took an “extended vacation” to America, and ended up staying through the Second World War, where she became a favorite in Hollywood. But by the time the War ended, her style was no longer popular. She switched from using a brush to a pallet knife, but critics savaged her work. She retired from active painting in 1962, determined never to show her work again.

In subsequent years, she not only complained that the paints and materials were now inferior to the “old days,” but that people in the 1970s lacked the qualities and “breeding” that inspired her art. After her husband died, she moved to Cuernevaca, Mexico in 1978 to rejoin the society of aging artists and aristocrats. By then, the art world was rediscovering the Art Deco era and her paintings were rediscovered and became highly sought after. She died in 1980, and her ashes were scattered over the volcano Popocatepetl.

Top: Liberace's signed photo to his mother. He was always Walter to her. Bottom: Liberace's transparent closet.

Liberace: 1919. Born Wladziu Valentino Liberace, he was known as Lee to his friends, Walter to his family, and Liberace to everyone else. His father, a french horn player, loved music but his mother saw it as an unfordable luxury. His father prevailed, taking his children to concerts and insisting on excellence in their music lessons. Liberace later recalled, “My dad’s love and respect for music created in him a deep determination to give as his legacy to the world, a family of musicians dedicated to the advancement of the art.”

On “Mr. Showmanship’s” terms, the advancement of the art took on an entirely new meaning. The word “synonymous” doesn’t do justice to the connection between Liberace’s name and flamboyance. He raised eyebrows by wearing a relatively simple white tuxedo at the Hollywood Bowl in 1952, and he continued to wear it so he could be easily seen in darkened concert halls. But it didn’t take long before that gave way to sequined jackets, then entire rhinestone-encrusted, fur-trimmed monstrosities that were “just one tuck short of drag,” as he put it. In the 1950’s he installed a pexiglass lid on his piano so as to not obstruct the view; by the 1960s his pianos were often encrusted with jewels and mirrors. And then there was the candelabrum. Always the rococo candelabrum. His entrances at the start of his Las Vegas shows were legendary. Sometimes he’d step out of  a sequined limousine that rolled onto stage, sometimes he flew in by invisible wires. After making a grand runway walk, he’d hold out his arms to show off his outfit and yet, “I hope you like it! You paid for it!” The audience roared back their approval.

He was as out as any closeted gay man could possible be, and as closeted as every fearful performer was determined to be. But the difference between Liberace and everyone else is that, his verbal denials aside — he even sued London’s Daily Mirror in 1956 when they questioned his sexuality in print and, incredibly, won! — he didn’t otherwise put a lot of effort into trying to fool his audience while on stage. Art critic Dave Hickey, in his essay “A Rhinestone as Big As The Ritz,” I think, put it best:

He never came out of the closet; he lived in it like the grand hypocrite that he was, and died in it, of a disease he refused to acknowledge. But neither, in fact, did Wilde come out of it, and he, along with Swineburn and their Belle Époque cronies, probably invented the closet as a mode of subversive public/private existence. Nor did Noel Coward come out of it. He tricked it up with the smoke and mirrors of leisure-class ennui and cloaked it in public-school double entendre. What Liberace did do, however, was Americanize the closet, democratize it, fit it out with transparent walls, and take it up on stage and demand our complicity in his “open secret.” …”A bit like cousin Ed, ain’t he,” my grandfather said. Getting it but not saying it.

In 1982, Scott Thorson, Liberace’s 24-year-old bodyguard, limo driver, and boyfriend of five years sued Liberace for $113 million in palimony after they broke up, but wound up settling for a pittance. Liberace’s closet remained sealed right up until he died in 1987. The official cause of death was cardiac arrest due to congestive heart failure brought on by subacute encephalopath. Before he died, Hank Greenspun, publisher of the Las Vegas Sun, wrote in a front-page story that Liberace had AIDS. Greenspun said he had known Liberace for 40 years and that he had the medical records, laboratory reports and other documentation to prove it. Liberace and his handlers stood by their denials, and Wikipedia still has an entire section devoted to his “alleged homosexuality” to this very day.

Tonéx: 1975. Born Anthony Charles Williams II, the preacher’s kid, gospel rapper, producer and preacher himself, Tonéx’s first release, Pronounced Toe-Nay, was sold mainly out of the trunk of his car. The eclectic mix of hip-hop, funk, jazz, mellow grooves, and soul-style gospel quickly caught on and garnered the attention of major gospel labels. While his music had cross-over appeal into secular markets, Tonéx remained committed to making gospel music. His 2004 double CD Out The Box debuted at number one on Billboard’s Gospel Album chart, and featured Kirk Franklin and Prince percussionist Sheila E.

But that same year, things started to unravel. His father died, forcing him to take on the responsibility of becoming senior pastor of their family’s church. He also divorced his wife of 5 years and was sued by his record label for one million dollars citing breach of contract. That led to Tonéx’s announcement that he would retire gospel music, “an industry that is only built to make money, not heal broken souls.” He continued to record, produce and appear in the San Diego cast of Dreamgirls. When he publicly came out as gay in 2010, his transformation was complete, and he officially retired his stage name, restyled TON3X, shortly after.

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).

Welcome Out, Rick Welts

Who’s Rick Welts, you ask? He’s the President of the NBA’s Phoenix Suns. And in the sports pages of today’s New York Times — which I totally would never have read otherwise — there is a lengthy and touching profile of his decision to come out in an industry that is not at all known for its welcoming attitude towards LGBT acceptance.

…Mr. Welts explained that he wants to pierce the silence that envelops the subject of homosexuality in men’s team sports. He wants to be a mentor to gay people who harbor doubts about a sports career, whether on the court or in the front office. Most of all, he wants to feel whole, authentic.

“This is one of the last industries where the subject is off limits,” said Mr. Welts, who stands now as a true rarity, a man prominently employed in professional men’s team sports, willing to declare his homosexuality. “Nobody’s comfortable in engaging in a conversation.”

In 1984 Welts helped to raise the NBA’s profile by creating the NBA All-Star Weekend, and in 1997 he helped to establish the Women’s National Basketball Association. He became President of the Phoenix Suns in 2002.

The Daily Agenda for Sunday, May 15

T-B: New York State Sen. Ruben Diaz, National Organization for Marriage's Brian Brown

TODAY’S AGENDA:
NY Rally Against Marriage: Okay, that’s not how they bill it, but that’s what it is. New York State Sen. Ruben Diaz joins National Organization for Marriage’s Brian Brown for a “March for Dignity” (huh?) today at 149th & 3rd Avenue in The Bronx at noon. From there they will march to the Bronx Supreme Court on the Grand Concourse and 161st Street. It just so happens that for their rally they chose the same day as New York AIDS Walk. Diaz issued a press release justifying the date: “I’d also like to clarify some loathsome accusations about our May 15^th Rally coinciding with the New York AIDS Walk…  [I]t has to be made clear that everyone who participates in the March Against AIDS is not necessarily in support of gay marriage. There is a huge difference between the March Against AIDS and our Rally. One has nothing to do with the other.” Huge difference indeed.

AIDS Walks Today: Minneapolis, MN and New York, NY.

Pride Celebrations Today: Houston TX (Black Pride); Maspalomas, Canary Islands; New Hope, PA; and Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
“Writhing Bedfellows”: 1826. Few intimate letters between men survive from the early nineteenth century, which makes this one so remarkable. It was 185 years ago today when Jeffrey Withers, 22, wrote to his dear friend, James Hammond, 18, a letter which is both frank and playful — even “campy”:

Dear Jim:

I got your Letter this morning about 8 o’clock, from the hands of the Bearer . . . I was sick as the Devil, when the Gentleman entered the Room, and have been so during most of the day. About 1 o’clock I swallowed a huge mass of Epsom Salts — and it will not be hard to imagine that I have been at dirty work since. I feel partially relieved — enough to write a hasty dull letter.

I feel some inclination to learn whether you yet sleep in your Shirt-tail, and whether you yet have the extravagant delight of poking and punching a writhing Bedfellow with your long fleshen pole — the exquisite touches of which I have often had the honor of feeling? Let me say unto thee that unless thou changest former habits in this particular, thou wilt be represented by every future Chum as a nuisance. And, I pronounce it, with good reason too. Sir, you roughen the downy Slumbers of your Bedfellow — by such hostile — furious lunges as you are in the habit of making at him — when he is least prepared for defence against the crushing force of a Battering Ram. Without reformation my imagination depicts some awful results for which you will be held accountable — and therefore it is, that I earnestly recommend it. Indeed it is encouraging an assault and battery propensity, which needs correction — & uncorrected threatens devastation, horror & bloodshed, etc. …

[The letter goes on for two more pages on unrelated matters, then signs off–]

With great respect I am the old
Stud,
Jeff.

Withers would later become a judge in South Carolina and delegate to the conferences that established a provisional government for the Confederacy. Hammond would later become a Congressman, Senator and Governor of South Carolina, and a major apologist for slavery. Hammond responded in kind to Withers’s letter the following September. If you want to see Hammond’s response, you’ll have to do as Withers did: wait until September.

[From Martin Duberman, “‘Writhing Bedfellows’: 1826.” Journal of Homosexuality 6, no. 1 (1981): 85-101]

Homosexual Drives As Menstrual Cycles: 1950. This was a time when Congress was preoccupied with two color-coded scares: The Red Menace of imaginary communists hiding in every cupboard and The Pink Menace of homosexuals working in federal offices. Congressman Aurthur L. Miller (R-Nebr) was particularly incensed over the latter. He was also a doctor and a surgeon, which made this speech during a committee hearing particularly strange:

Some of these people are dangerous. They will go to any limit. These homosexuals have strong emotions. They are not to be trusted and when blackmail threatens they are a dangerous group. … It is found that the cycle of these individuals’ homosexual desires follow the cycle closely patterned to the menstrual period of women. There may be three or four days in each month that this homosexual’s instincts break down and drive the individual into abnormal fields of sexual practice.

Episcopal Church Allows Ordination of Gay Deacons: 1996. An Episcopal Church court threw out a heresy charge and ruled that an Bishop Walter C. Righter, did not violate the church’s core doctrine when he ordained openly gay Barry Stopfel as a deacon, the rank below that of a priest, in the Dioceses of Newark in 1990.

Jasper Johns's "Map," 1961 (Click to enlarge.)

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Jasper Johns: 1930. He probably best known for his 1955 painting Flag, which is, just as its name implies, simply a painting of an American Flag. His focus on the mundane as subjects have led some to consider him a pop artist with an abstract impressionist streak, but it’s probably more accurate to see him as a ne0-Dadaist. Flag exemplifies the movement by taking an object or popular imagery that is imbued with intense meaning and removing it from its context and thereby reducing it to a simple abstract design. Maps (1961) does the same thing. It’s an ordinary map of the United States portrayed in an abstract impressionist style which reduces the iconic image to a series of color splotches and shapes. Flags, maps, stenciled words and numbers — all of these mundane yet symbolic images were subjects for Johns’s paintings.

Jasper Johns receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Johns was born in South Carolina and studied for three semesters at the University of South Carolina before moving to New York to study briefly at the Parson’s School of Design in 1949. After a stint in the military during the Korean War, Johns returned to New York where he met Robert Rauschenberg and they became lovers for eight years. It was through his connection with Rauschenberg that Johns was discovered by the art world.  When prominent gallery owner visited Rauschenberg’s studio in 1958 and saw Johns’s work, he offered Johns a show on the spot. At that debut show, the Museum of Modern Art anointed Johns as a major figure in the art world by purchasing three of his paintings. By the 1980s, John’s paintings fetched higher prices than any other living artist in history. In 2011, Johns was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama, making him the first painter to receive the award since 1977.

Andy Towle: 1967. His last name is pronounced “toll,” not “towel,” making his blog, Towleroad, a homophone for the New Jersey Turnpike. I’m struggling to find a clever meaning in that, but I got nothing. Anyway, before becoming a full-time blogger, Towle was editor-in-chief for Genre magazine. Today, Towleroad (a site with homosexual tendencies) has become one of the highest trafficked LGTB blogs with its focus on popular culture and the arts with a heavy dose of politics thrown in.

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).

Wealthy New York Republicans Back Marriage Equality Push

Clifford Asness

The New York Times this morning reports that wealthy Republican New Yorkers, some of them quite conservative otherwise, have donated more than $1 million to LGBT advocacy groups to fund their push for marriage equality. The donations already make up about two-thirds of the state’s same-sex marriage fundraising, far outstripping donations from Democratic and liberal sources.

New York mayor Michael Bloomberg has given $100,000 and will host a fundraiser among his well-connected friends. Donations have come in from top Republican donor and hedge fund manager Paul Singer, who is one of the most generous GOP donors in the country. He also has a gay son who married in Massachusetts. Singer has personally donated $425,000 and solicited an additional $500,000 in donations. Financiers Steven Cohen, Daniel Loeb and Clifford Asness have donated. Asness explains:

“I’m a pretty straight-down-the-line small-government guy,” said Mr. Asness, who described himself as a libertarian who favored less government intrusion in both markets and personal affairs. Mr. Asness, a frequent Republican donor, has praised Tea Party activists on his blog and last year attended a conference of right-leaning donors held by Charles and David Koch, among the leading conservative philanthropists in the nation.

“This is an issue of basic freedom,” Mr. Asness said.

The Daily Agenda for Saturday, May 14

TODAY’S AGENDA:
“Mayday for Marriage” RV Tour: The Family Research Foundation’s RV is touring the state with their message against marriage equality. Today, gampa’s grumpybus has a very special stop: a free, family-oriented barbecue fundraiser near Rochester. The event will be held in the baseball quadrant pavilion of the Grace & Truth Sports Park (373 North Greece Rd., Greece). If you’re in the area, you might consider bringing the kids and showing everyone what family really looks like.

GLAAD Media Awards: At the San Francisco Marriott Marquis. The details are here.

AIDS Walks This Weekend: Minneapolis, MN; New York, NY; and Stockton, CA.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Brussels, Belgium; Charleston, SC; Houston TX (Black Pride); Maspalomas, Canary Islands; New Hope, PA; and Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

A diagram from 1971 of a system to deliver electric shock aversion therapy to gay men. (Click to enlarge.)

TODAY IN HISTORY:
“Shock Doc” Protested at APA: 1970. Protests and demonstrations over injustices were already de rigueur when the American Psychiatric Association held its annual meeting in San Francisco in 1970. Gay advocates had long observed that the APA’s labeling of homosexuality a mental disorder served as a handy excuse to enforce widespread discrimination and legal sanctions against LGBT people in all areas of life. What’s more, psychiatry’s attempts to cure homosexuality often were physically torturous, with electric shock therapy not an uncommon method. And one of the stars of shock therapy, an Australian psychiatry by the name of Nathaniel McConaghy, was coming to San Francisco to read a paper before the august organization. Advocates were waiting. As McConaghy was coolly described the methods he used — his patients’ penises were wired to measurement devices and they were shown porn; once twinge of arousal and they were delivered powerful electric shocks — gay advocates were in the crowd shouting “vicious!” and “torture!” and “where did you take your residency, Auschwitz?”

When the moderator announced the next session, the gay advocates exploded and demanded to be heard. When the moderator refused, the meeting broke down into shouts and recriminations. One physician reportedly called for the police to shoot the protesters. Most left the room, but some stayed, and the conversations that ensued over the next three years ultimately led to the APA’s delisting of homosexuality as a mental disorder.

In 1981, McConaghy was still unapologetic about his treatment of gay people. In an article he published in the journal Behavior Research and Therapy, he was still presenting the results of his electric shock experiments on gay men. But before he did so, he defended his work as ethical and resented having had his presentation interrupted eleven years earlier. By the mid 1980’s he had abandoned aversion therapy, but he was still trying to cure an illness that no longer existed by other means. And yet somehow, his reputation remained intact. After he died in 2005, the Archives of Sexual Behavior published a memorial lauding him as a pioneer in behavioral therapy who “inspired many to pursue truth and beauty through his example.” The memorial was notable for three things. It briefly mentioned his attempts to cure gay men and painted his response to the “near riot” of 1970 as heroic (“He remained a fearless champion of the application of scientific methods to the study of human sexuality,” it said.) But the memorial neglected to mention his use of electric shock therapy. It was also unsigned.

First LGBT Civil Rights Bill in Congress: 1974. Bella Abzug, the Democratic Congresswoman in for Manhattan and part of the Bronx, was a civil rights attorney before she entered Congress. She was an outspoken supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment and opposed the Vietnam War. Her stands earned her a position on President Richard Nixon’s famed “Enemies List.” On this date in 1974, Rep. Abzug introduced the first federal gay rights bill, the Equality Act of 1974, with fellow New York City Rep. Ed Koch. The bill went nowhere then, and similar efforts to ban discrimination have come to naught in the 37 years since then.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Magnus Hirschfeld:1868. Known as “The Einstein of Sex,” German-born Magnus Hirschfeld was the most prominent advocate of gay emancipation in his day. In 1897, Hirschfeld co-founded the Wissenschaftlich-humanitäre Komitee (Scientific-Humanitarian Committee), whose first project was to repeal Paragraph 175, which criminalized homosexuality between men (women were unmentioned in Germany’s anti-gay code). He never succeeded in repealing the law, but the committee succeeded in gathering signatures of some 6,000 Germans calling for repeal. In 1919, he founded the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Science), and was widely recognized as a prolific writer and speaker on sexual minority issues. He also figured in film history, when he made a cameo appearance in the 1919 film Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others), the first film to portray a homosexual love story in a sympathetic light.

While Germany’s Wiemar Republic saw homosexuality becoming somewhat accepted in Berlin, extreme right-wing forces reacted with violence. In 1920, Hirschfeld was attacked and severely wounded in Munich after a conference, and in 1921 his skull was fractured in another attacked. From 1929, Nazis repeatedly disrupted his lectures. In 1930, Hirschfeld began a lecture tour of the United States, which was expanded to a world-wide tour. By the time he returned to Europe in 1932, conditions in Germany became so dangerous that he decided not to return. On May 6, 1933, the Nazis attacked and destroyed the Institute for Sexual Science, and on May 10, they burned its library and files, the largest of its kind in the world. Hirschfeld wandered Europe before settling in Nice, France in 1934. He died there in 1935, with his death coming also on this very same date in history.

Julian Eltinge: 1881. He was, perhaps, America’s first famous drag queen. One story has it that he first donned women’s clothing at the age of ten for an appearance in Boston. Another one suggests that his mother helped him to dress in drag at a very young age to perform in the saloons in Butte, Montana, and that his father nearly beat him to death when he found out. At any rate, he was performing onstage and touring Vaudeville after the turn of the century. Unlike most female impersonators at the time, he didn’t place farcical caricatures of women for laughs. He sought to create the full illusion of actually being a woman. He toured Vaudeville under the his last name “”Eltinge,” which gave no hint of his gender. After his act of singing and dancing, he stepped forward on stage, and in a dramatic gesture emulated later in the 1982 film Victor/Victoria, he reached up and removed his wig to the surprise of his often unsuspecting audience. He arrived on Broadway in 1907 at the Alhambra Theater, and through the next decade he was reputed to be the highest paid stage actor. He started appearing in films in 1914, and by 1920, had one of the most lavish mansions in Southern California, where he lived with his mother.

Eltinge countered rumors of his homosexuality offstage by presenting a unrelentingly masculine presence in public. He smoked cigars, was an amateur boxer, got into bar fights, and had long engagements with women. Funny though, he never married. “I am not gay,” he protested, “I just like pearls.” But by the 1930;s, his heyday was over. He gained weight and started drinking as his career took a nose-dive. He was reduced to performing in a Hollywood nightclub catering to a gay clientele, but local laws intended to contain the “homosexual menace” banned dressing in drag. Eltinge had to perform in a tuxedo alongside mannequins dressed in his outfits. He’d point to them while enacting his characters. He died in 1941, reportedly of a brain hemorrhage, although some suspect suicide. His will, dated October 13, 1938,  stated “I declare that I am a bachelor” and left everything to his mother.

You can see an early silent film from 1918 featuring Eltinge in drag here.

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).

Maggie’s Minnesota poll mixup

Maggie Gallagher’s National Organization for Marriage put out poll results last week that showed that Minnesotans overwhelmingly support a constitution amendment to ban marriage equality in the state.

56 percent of Minnesotans said only heterosexual marriages should be recognized in Minnesota and 42 percent said they supported same-sex marriage. The poll, by the National Organization for Marriage, Minnesota Family Council and Lawrence Research, also says that 74 percent of Minnesotans want to vote on the marriage amendment.

The Minnesota Independent asked for more details about the poll, the questions asked, and the methodology used. Considering the accuracy of some of Maggie’s other polls, this seems reasonable. But it turns out that polling questions and methods are just like images of anti-gay witnesses and the identity of anti-gay donors: super-duper secret.

But now the Star Tribune has put out their Minnesota Poll which finds responses a bit differently than NOM. They also happily provide details about their questions and methodology.

Fifty-five percent of respondents said they oppose adding such an amendment while 39 percent favor a constitutional ban — views that appear to be a sharp reversal of poll results seven years ago.

Opposition to the ban generally cuts across all ages, though support rises gradually with age. Sixty percent of Minnesotans aged 18 to 34 oppose the idea. A slim majority, 51 percent, of Minnesotans older than 65 oppose the constitutional ban.

Now, I’m not calling Maggie a liar. Nor am I suggesting that she wouldn’t know the truth if it snuck up and bit her on her prodigious posterior. I’m not even implying that Maggie and her integrity parted long ago on such bad terms that if they find each other in the same room they scowl.

Not at all.

I merely think that Maggie accidentally reversed the “support” and the “oppose” results in her poll.

Maybe It Was The Line “Galileo Figaro”

Dateline Wasilla:

The Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman reports today that the principal of Wasilla High School told members of the school’s symphonic jazz choir that they would not be allowed to perform the 1975 Queen song “Bohemian Rhapsody” because Freddy Mercury, who wrote it, was gay.

In the face of student protests, and fearing ACLU involvement, the principal backed down–to a point.

The choir will be allowed to perform the song, but only in a censored version, without lyrics the principal deems objectionable.

In a lame face-saving move, principal Dwight Probasco decided to compromise by banning the lyrics about the singer having “just killed a man.” No word on whether “We Will Rock You” and “We Are The Champions” are allowed at hockey games. Joe McGinniss is having a field day on his blog, including a “separated at birth” photo of Probasco alongside Elton John that you absolutely have to see. His commenters are also getting in the spirit, including one Sandra Tompkins who re-wrote the lyrics of “Bohemian Rhapsody” just for Wasilla and its favorite daughter. It totally needs to go viral:

Click here to sing along to "Wasillian Rhapsody."

ESPN on gay support in professional sports

Pro Hockey player Sean Avery, arguably the biggest jerk in professional sports, recorded an advertisement in support of New York’s same-sex marriage campaign. A father-son team of agents stood up for “real marriage” (as opposed to man-man or man-horse marriage) assuming that this was surely the more accepted position in the world of hockey. ESPN’s Johnette Howard looked at the fallout.

It’s hard to gauge who did more to advance the cause of legalizing gay marriage in the past week — New York Rangers forward Sean Avery (the first pro athlete to publicly support New Yorkers for Marriage Equality), or the father-and-son sports agent team of Don and Todd Reynolds, whose swift attacks of Avery’s stance caused a remarkable thing to happen. The Reynolds’ reactions caused thousands of other people to step forward and out themselves as gay rights supporters, too, in a louder, longer show of support for Avery on Twitter and Facebook, radio and TV, in blogs and newspapers and sports fan message boards than Avery’s appearance in a video advertisement for the marriage equality campaign might have generated on its own.

Perhaps it’s time to put to pasture all of the presumptions about sports and homophobia being inextricably related.

A message to Jim Burroway

Jim,

Politics is a funny animal and the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009 could still raise its head in another form. But it does look very promising at this time that this bill may be finally dead.

And much of the credit goes to Box Turtle Bulletin, and especially to you personally.

This has been a TREMENDOUSLY time consuming effort involving a matter that surely no one here ever considered to be our bailiwick, involving connections that we could not assume we could even develop, and creating allies that were unimaginable. Going into this two years ago we never dreamed of reaching the State Department, much less having statements from the President and many governments around the world.

It has been a lot of work, but you must be feeling tremendous satisfaction. I certainly do for my much less significant role.

Congratulations, my friend and associate. You changed the world.

Timothy

King and Spaulding dropping DOMA was due to Clement’s error, not gay bullies

When King and Spaulding announced that they would not be defending DOMA on behalf of the House of Representatives – after partner Paul Clement had announced that they would – anti-gay activists had a field day. Words like “intolerance” and “homosexual activist bullies” screamed across headlines in articles designed to portray the gay community as a collection of thugs who forced a poor defenseless international law firm into following the insidious homosexual agenda.

Even mainstream newspapers and editorial staff immediately assumed that the homosexuals were being too pushy and self-righteously took the opportunity to remind gay people that while gay rights may be worth fighting for, they really are just a “cause”, you see, and not so important that you can’t play nicely. Pointing out to a lawfirm that DOMA hurts gay people is, well, Un-American.

The Washington Post ran an editorial titled King & Spalding and HRC do a disservice to American values in which they declared:

HRC is right to fight vigorously to overturn DOMA, which deprives gays and lesbians of many of the rights enjoyed by their heterosexual counterparts. But it sullies itself and its cause by resorting to bullying tactics.

At the San Francisco Chronicle, a writer indignantly asserted “Case closed. This is intimidation. This is intolerance.”

I do believe that HRC bungled this situation. They behaved like jerks, adopted high-pressure tactics as their first option, and presented our community in about the worst light possible. Threatening to send out letters to K&S clients and then bragging on TV when the case was dropped was about the most stupid course of action that could be imagined.

If there are any of our readers who still contribute to HRC, this might be a good opportunity to look for another organization – one that has a better ear for political tone.

That being said, it is not unreasonable to remind a company – including law firms – that engaging in anti-gay activism or acquiescing to the demands of anti-gay activists will cost them the support of gay people and our friends, family, neighbors, supporters, and all people who value equality. As equality becomes more and more the national favored opinion, companies will find that being “neutral” on matters of sexual orientation equality will be viewed like being “neutral” on racial equality or gender equality. Forward thinking CEO’s may well be receptive to reminders about future image, provided that they aren’t made to be fools in the press.

But as it turns out, neither HRC’s bragging nor anti-gay activists’ shrieking are based in reality. King & Spaulding dropped the DOMA defense because Paul Clement never had it approved in the first place. He signed the case without following procedures or giving the firm an opportunity to measure the benefits or detriments of such a course of action.

The Fulton County Daily Report decided to look into things and found an entirely different chain of events than that which the big papers just assumed had happened. (Via WSJ)

But the Daily Report spoke to two firm lawyers and a third source anonymously who said that the DOMA matter was not fully submitted to King & Spalding”s business review committee, a firm requirement, before Clement signed a contract obligating the firm. They said the committee immediately began reviewing the case the day after the firm learned of the contract—and rejected it the next day, according to the Daily Report.

The sources said the firm’s partners were taken by surprise when news broke that Clement had taken the case. “Any matter that is controversial in any way or where there is a discounted rate goes through the business review committee,” one of the sources told the Daily Report, noting that the DOMA engagement was both controversial and had a discounted rate.

The King & Spalding sources, according to the Daily Report, said that there was widespread, adamant opposition to the DOMA case within the firm. “”It sticks a finger in the eye of people,” said one source, referring to the firm’s gay lawyers and staff.

And, a source said, the case did not fit the firm’s business mission. “King & Spalding is a corporate law firm—not a constitutional firm.”

I believe that there could have been a way that Clement could defend DOMA and that Spaulding & King could have worked with our community to craft a statement that did not back K&S into a corner. But Clement did not consider his firm’s interests and it was his arrogance and presumptions about DOMA and public opinion that ultimately embarrassed the firm.

Not Yet Uhuru

This South African hit by Letta Mbulu was released in 1991 during the euphoric days after apartheid. While South Africans celebrated their newly-won freedoms, she sang, “There are some people who look at us as being free, but when you speak with regular folk they say it’s ‘not yet uhuru’.”  The phrase “Not yet uhuru” is a mix of English and Swahili — not yet free. Similar to another phrase from Mozambique’s war for independence, “a luta continua” (the struggle continues), “not yet uhuru” reminds us that there is still much work to be done. As an email friend from Uganda reminded me a month ago, “Until equality is reality for every human being… it’s not. It’s not yet uhuru.”

For more than two years now, we have been watching in horror as events spun out of control in Uganda, events that were dangerously inflamed by American Evangelicals seeking to deport their thinly-veiled disgust (if not outright hatred) for LGBT people. From the moment we first learned about the then-pending March 2009 conference put on by three American anti-gay activists — Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively, still sitting Exodus International board member (and now treasurer!) Don Schmierer, and International Healing Foundation’s Caleb Lee Brundidge; may their shameful roles never be forgotten — through the connections between the Anti-Homosexuality Bill’s sponsor and the shadowy American evangelical group known as The Family, through other connections between the bill’s godfathers and the American-based College of Prayer, through a supporting Kampala rally featuring Lou Engle and open expressions of unreserved support from Andrew Wommack’s spokesman, WND’s Molotov Mitchell, and Peter Labarbera, it became clear that while homophobia runs rampant in Uganda, it is strongly supported through the active encouragement of American anti-gay extremists.  

This looked like a saga without ending. I had begun compiling a list of all of the posts about Uganda and its slide into hatred, but by May of 2010 our blogging software stopped accepting updates to that page; it had gotten too big for it to handle. It was as if WordPress itself had thrown up its hands and shouted, “Enough!” But it wasn’t enough. Events continued to spin out and we kept watching and reporting. (You can follow our posts via this tag.)

And so finally we came to this moment. When I went to bed very late last night, it was already 9:00 a.m. this morning in Kampala. When I put the finishing touches on today’s Daily Agenda, I understood that the chances against the bill becoming law were somewhat in our favor, but the rapid pace with which the bill was suddenly put into play last Friday left me to wonder what forces were impelling its rapid progression in a country where nothing happens quickly. I was, frankly, despondent. Ask my partner. He’ll tell you.

This morning, the sun is very bright here in Tucson. The temperatures are going to be in the upper 90s, which is considered temperate here. The weekend looms, and the only hitch right now is that pollen is in the air and everyone’s sneezing. But that’s a minor hitch. On the other side of the world, nightfall has already descended upon a teeming city of more than two million people, and for many the work week has just ended. Restaurants and nightclubs will soon be hopping, the streets will be noisy, and Ugandans will be celebrating the weekend. Some folks will probably celebrate more than they should, but a few will celebrate with an extra dose of verve. And for some, their celebrations will be muted as they remember those who are no longer around to celebrate.

And tomorrow, a new day will begin, but it will not be much different from the day that just ended. We won’t know for certain whether this evil bill is well and truly dead until Parlaiment constitutionally expires on May 18. Even then we don’t know because there is speculation that there may be some unknown procedure allowing the 9th Parliament to take up the 8th Parliament’s unfinished business. And if it turns out it can’t, we still have the promises of one hate-filled politician who vows to introduce a new bill in the next Parliament.

But for the first time, I am just now beginning to allow myself to believe that this may be a turning point.  It took me about three hours after I posted the news this morning before I could give myself permission to believe it. And even now I’ve discovered that giving myself permission and actually believing it are still two separate things. It’s not yet uhuru. A luta continua.

Dictionary.com’s Hot Word of the Day

Transgender

Uganda Parliament Breaks Without Voting On Anti-Homosexuality Bill

The Order Paper for the Ugandan Parliament this morning has only three items on the agenda:

FRIDAY 13TH MAY 2011, ORDER PAPER

26TH SITTING OF THE 2ND MEETING OF THE 5TH SESSION OF THE 8TH PARLIAMENT OF UGANDA: FRIDAY 13TH MAY 2011 – TIME OF COMMENCEMENT 10.00 A.M.

1. PRAYERS

2. COMMUNICATION FROM THE CHAIR

3. ADJOURNMENT

KAMPALA
13TH MAY 2011

And the following announcement was subsequently posted on Uganda’s web site:

Emotional farewells as Eighth Parliament closes

The term of office for Members of Parliament elected to the Eighth Parliament of Uganda has come to an end. Speaker of Parliament Rt. Hon. Edward Kiwanuka Ssekandi announced to MPs, in an emmotional sitting , the end of the term of the Eighth parliament urging MPs to appreciate and embrace the multiparty political system.

“This Parliament was different from all parliaments before it.But my assessment is that people still long for the movement political system other than the multiparty system .The two systems are different and what you must know is that under multiparty system, Mps on the government side came with one manifesto that the executive is trying to implement,”he told MPs.

Speaker Ssekandi announced that the official proclamation for the end of the Eighth Parliament had already been signed and would be gazetted on May 18, the day the ninth Parliament would commence.

The middle paragraph is a bit of ruling party propaganda that can be safely ignored. The important point is that the proclamation for the end of the Parliament “had already been signed.”

Now the Associated Press confirms:

Uganda’s parliament adjourned Friday without acting on a criticized anti-gay bill that would mandate the death sentence in some cases, drawing praise from an advocacy group that said parliament’s failure to act was a “victory for all Ugandans.”

Speaker of Parliament Edward Ssekandi Kiwanuk said there is no time to take up the bill this session, which ends Wednesday, leaving the bill’s future uncertain. Kiwanuk adjourned the parliament Friday and set no date for the body to return.

…Kakoba Onyango, a member of parliament, said the anti-gay bill has taken so long to be acted on because President Yoweri Museveni did not back it and because of the criticism of human rights groups.

AFP adds a hint to the reason why Parliament abruptly adjourned:

David Bahati, the lawmaker behind the anti-gay bill, said that as the cabinet was dissolved following the inauguration of President Yoweri Museveni for a fourth term on Thursday no bills could be passed.

Warren Throckmorton points to this news item (and confirmed through a Parliament spokesperson) indicating that the hitch may have had to do with the Cabinet being dissolved in preparation for yesterday’s swearing in on President Yoweri Museveni for another term. Writes Throckmorton:

According to parliamentary spokeswoman, Helen Kawesa, Parliament is stalled on a “technicality.” She said there is no Cabinet in place because it was dissolved in preparation for the end of the 8th Parliament in advance of yesterday’s Presidential inauguration. It is unclear who raised the issue of the necessity for Cabinet to be place for business to be conducted. However the effect is that the session is winding up, with members discussing how to proceed before the end of the 8th Parliament on 18th.

Ordinarily, all unfinished bills die at the end of Parliament. There may be a procedural move which could allow the Anti-Homosexuality Bill to be carried forward to the next Parliament. It is unclear whether such a move will be made.

There have been so many twists and turns over the past two years that it’s been hard to ever really know (or believe) what the status of the bill really is. That’s why I am not given to celebrate until the 18th of May. But I am more optimistic than I ever have been before that this odious act of evil may well be finished.

UPDATE: Sexual Minority Uganda’s Frank Mugisha is considerably more confident: “Right now I would say that I am almost sure that the bill is not coming,” he told Radio Netherlands Worldwide.

The Daily Agenda for Friday, May 13

L-R: Ugandan dictator Idi Amin (1971-1979), Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni (1986-), South African Archbishop and Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu.

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Uganda At The Crossroads: There is no question whatsoever that Uganda stands at a historic turning point as Parliament convenes an extraordinary final session today. When Parliament suspended business on Wednesday, a day which was supposed to be the 8th Parliament’s final day, four contentious bills on the agenda remained unfinished. Women delegates walked out because of a dispute over one of the bills, depriving the House a legitimate quorum. Parliament will meet again beginning this morning at 10:00 a.m. East Africa Time (seven hours ahead of EDT, ten hours ahead of PDT). Parliament usually begins its session at 2:00 p.m.; the early start is seen as an indication that the house intends to leave as much time as possible to get through the entire agenda. Last on the agenda (as of Wednesday) is the draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill. Possibly gone from the plan is the oft-repeated assurance that the death penalty would be dropped. That now appears unlikely. But even if dropping the death penalty were still on the table, the remainder of the bill remains so wide-reaching, so draconian, so “odious” in the words of the U.S. State Department, that anything short of killing the bill altogether would be a huge step backwards towards Uganda’s world-renowned legacy of death and destruction.

The questions that Uganda faces today are momentous. Will Uganda retreat to its blood-soaked past? Will neighbor turn against neighbor, tribe against tribe, and powerful men against innocent minorities and scapegoats as it has before? Or will the nation step away from the brink, break free from its old habits and turn toward a promise of peace?

Today, the civilized world awaits Uganda’s choice.

“Mayday for Marriage” RV Tour: The Family Research Foundation’s RV is touring the state with their message against marriage equality. Today, the hatebus stops again in the greater Rochester area — Fairport, to be exact — at noon at State Sen. Jim Alesi’s District Office (220 Packetts Landing, Fairport) FRF says they “urge concerned citizens to attend these events and remind their elected officials that base voters care deeply about this issue.” If you’re concerned, you’re invited.

Bullying Briefing: The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights will hold a public briefing in connection with its 2011 statutory enforcement report, Federal Enforcement of Civil Rights Laws to Protect Students Against Bullying, Violence and Harassment at The Washington Marriott at Metro Center, 775 12^th St. NW, Junior Ballroom Salons 1 and 2, Washington, DC 20005. The briefing will start at 9:00 a.m. EDT and is expected to continue to 4:30 p.m. EDT. The meeting is open to the public.

The National Youth Advocacy Coalition (NYAC) Closes: The economy is straining everyone’s pocket books, and non-profits are no exception. After more than eighteen years of advocacy on behalf of LGBT youth, the Washington, D.C.-based national organization is closing its doors. In the past few years, more than eighty percent of the group’s funding came from a single federal grant for HIV testing and prevention. Efforts to expand their donor base came to naught, leading to today’s closure.

AIDS Walks This Weekend: Minneapolis, MN; New York, NY; and Stockton, CA.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Brussels, Belgium; Charleston, SC; Houston TX (Black Pride); Maspalomas, Canary Islands; New Hope, PA; and Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
“Cambio de Sexo”: 1977. Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s death in 1975 brought a new permissiveness in Spanish film-making, and Catalonia-born director Vicente Aranda probed the limits in what was acceptable in a still-conservative society. Cambio de Sexo (“Change of Sex”), which debuted on May 13, 1977 to critical acclaim, starred Victoria Abril as José Maria, a shy, introverted teenager living in the outskirts of Barcelona. Bullied and harassed by his schoolmates, José is expelled from his school. His father tries everything to “cure” him of his effeminate mannerisms, including, in a pivotal scene, taking him to a strip club in Barcelona. But unbeknownst to his father, one of the acts in the strip club is a pre-operative transgender. The father, clueless to the situation and determined to see his son lose his virginity, insists that José goes home with the stripper. Let’s just say the entire experience is revelatory as José understands that he was actually meant to be a girl. But the movie is more than just a story of the teen’s metamorphosis into a young woman. The transgender theme served as a reflection of the larger social changes which were just beginning to overtake Spain.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Bea Arthur: 1922. After serving thirty months in the Marine Corps as one of the first members of the Women’s Reserve. Her enlistment officer wrote that she was “officious — but probably a good worker — if she had her own way!” That description would be a good description of the characters she would portray on television. After working on and off Broadway, she landed the breakout part as Maude Findlay on Norman Lear’s groundbreaking sit-com All in the Family. The Maude character was Edith Bunker’s cousin who was the polar opposite of bigoted Archie Bunker. That 1971 episode led to her own spin-off in 1972, Maude. As the theme-song said, she was “uncompromisin’, enterprisin’, anything but tranquilizing.” The series tackled women’s liberation, menopause, drug and alcohol addiction, and spousal abuse.  In one memorable two-part episode which aired two months before Row v Wade, Maude decided to terminate a late-life pregnancy with an abortion. Maude ended in 1978. After a few other roles in television and the movies, she landed the role of Dorothy Zbornak in the hit series Golden Girls. Between Maude and Golden Girls, Arthur became an LGBT icon. The Advocate in 1999 asked her why she thought that was. “You play strong, honest people,” she said, “and gays buy it because it’s real and it’s slightly anti-establishment.” She was certainly real. Also she was on Broadway in Mame. You can’t forget that.

Armistead Maupin: 1944. He was born in Washington, D.C. but grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. He began working as a newspaper reported in Charleston, S.C. before he moved to San Francisco in 1971 to work for the Associated Press, In 1976, he released the first installment of his Tails of the City serials. first in a now-defunct Marin County newspaper and later in the San Francisco Chronicle. Those columns were re-worked into a series of books in 1978. In 2007, Maupin married his husband Christopher Turner in Vancouver. During a trip to Australia in 2011, Maupin and his husband were denied the use of a restroom at a saloon in Alice Springs where they were having lunch. The bartender told them to go across the street because their rest room was reserved for “real men.” “So we did what real men do and crossed the street to the visitor’s center where we filed a complaint,” Maupin wrote. “Impressively we received an e-mail apology from the bartender that afternoon. Fair dinkum, mate. Next time don’t [expletive] with the poofters.”

Alan Ball: 1957. Screenwriter, director, actor and producer Alan Ball was born in Atlanta George and graduated from Florida State University with a degree in theater arts. He has written two films, American Beauty (for which he won an Oscar for best original screenplay) and Towelhead. He is more familiar to television audiences for his role as creator, writer and producer of the HBO drama series Six Feet Under (for which he won an Emmy in 2002) and True Blood, a series that has been seen as a paper-thin allegory for the LGBT community. Ball has called the comparison “kind of lazy”, adding “I just hope people can remember that, because it’s a show about vampires, it’s not meant to be taken that seriously. It’s supposed to be fun.”

Ball not only has to contend with critics, but this spring he and his partner, actor Peter Macdissi, got tangled in a legal tussle with their neighbor, Quentin Tarantino, who filed a lawsuit claiming that the pair’s collection of exotic birds constantly emit “blood-curdling” and “pterodactyl-like screams” each day which have disrupted Tarantino’s work as a writer.

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). You’d be surprised how many notices I receive without these vital details. I wish I had the time to hunt them down, but I just don’t.