Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyMarch 15th, 2011
Fr. George Buleya, Secretary General of the Episcopal Conference of Malawi
From Malawi’s Nyasa Times, we get this report about statements made by that nation’s Anglican Catholic and Muslim leaders concerning HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and other outreach programs for the local LGBT community. Fr. George Buleya, Secretary General of the Episcopal Conference (Roman Catholic) of Malawi said:
“I believe that there are no homosexuals who are born as such in Malawi but if at all there are some who claim to be, they are moved to do so because of poverty. By the way, why are you forcing us to accommodate homosexuals when there are many thieves, adulterers and a lot of people who do evil?
“Christianity does not work on sociology but morality. To us, we cannot punish those caught in the act but God will,” he said.
Questioned that this might as well retard their fight against the Hiv/Aid pandemic because they will not be able to reach out to the minority groups, Buleya said: “Our effort is to reach out to the faithful and if they are not within our jurisdiction, then, we will not work with them.”
Interesting. For Buleya, the LGBT community isn’t even an opportunity for missionary work.
Muslim Association of Malawi (MAM) Secretary General Sheikh Imran Sharif Mohammed’s position is even worse:
“Homosexuality is sin and is punishable by beheading. The Holy Koran clearly states that any community which indulges in these acts is calling for calamities like those that happened to Sodom and Gomorrah,” said Mohammed, a lecture at the University of Malawi’s Chancellor College.
“Nobody can change our laws which are both in the Koran, as a primary source and Hadith as our secondary source. These people are enemies and there is no way we can condone them in our communities,” he added.
March 15th, 2011
Uganda's Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba Buturo
New Vision, Uganda’s government-aligned newspaper, reports that Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba Buturo has complied with a Supreme Court order and resigned from his Cabinet post.
Last autumn, Buturo was among nine Cabinet members who lost their primary elections for nominations to Uganda’s Parliament on behalf of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM). The primary elections were very chaotic. Buturo charged that his loss was the result of fraud, which, ironically may well be true, given the lack of transparency in what is effectively a one-party state. While it is possible for the President to name Buturo to the cabinet post despite not holding a seat in Parliament, Buturo’s resignation signals that, for whatever his reason, he has worn out his welcome with President Yoweri Museveni.
Buturo was , from the very beginning, a staunch defender of the draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill that was introduced into Parliament in 2009. That bill is still languishing in committee, but a recent New Vision article indicates that the bill may be brought up for a vote when the Parliament returns for its lame duck session beginning March 22.
March 14th, 2011
Unconscionable. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know what “unmarried” is code for. From Think Progress:
Less Government Now appears to be tied to Scott Maddox, a Democratic operative who unsuccessfully ran for Agricultural Commissioner last year, and has been used to bolster tea party candidates in an attempt to split the GOP vote. Tampa has non-partisan mayoral elections, but Ferlita, a current county commissioner, is a Republican.
March 14th, 2011
As natural disasters go, this is big. We’ve become so used to hearing about tens of thousands people being wiped out by monsoonal flooding in Bangladesh that it doesn’t even make the news anymore. The humbling thing about this disaster is that it shows that we are all vulnerable, whoever and wherever we are.
The American Red Cross has set up a special designation for disaster relief efforts in Japan. To donate, click here, or text REDCROSS to 90999 to instantly donate $10.
Huffington Post has also put together a pretty good list of organizations involved in disaster relief right now:
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is sending two three-person teams to the Iwate and Miyagi prefectures in Japan. To learn more about the organization’s efforts or make a donation, visit Doctorswithoutborders.org.
Other relief organizations are also sending representatives to disaster sites, including AmeriCare and Shelterbox.
MercyCorps is gathering donations for its overseas partner, Peace Winds Japan, which currently has personnel on the ground distributing emergency relief in Japan.
Along with an appeal for monetary donations, Operation USA has also announced efforts to collect bulk corporate donations of health care supplies. If you are interested in donating bulk medical items, visit OpUSA.org.
For any who have loved ones abroad, Google has stepped up to help. Along with a tsunami alert posted on its front page, Google has launched the Person Finder: 2011 Japan Earthquake to help connect people that may have been displaced due to the disaster. Google has also launched a crisis response page filled with local resources and emergency information.
They could all use your help.
March 13th, 2011
[This post is part of a series analyzing Robert George’s widely-read article, “What is Marriage“, which appeared on pages 245-286 of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. You can view all posts in the series here.]
Pages 256-257, and 265-268, in which Robert George explains why infertile opposite-sex couples can still have “real marriages.”
A consistent question for skeptical readers is whether Robert George’s reasoning led to his conclusions or whether he started with certain conclusions and developed reasoning, however tortured, to justify them. This section, more than any other, shows the answer.
The problem and the promise
George now tries to roll a heavy boulder up a steep hill. He’s just not strong enough to do it.
His task in this section — in the whole article, actually — is to develop a theory of marriage that excludes same-sex couples and includes infertile opposite-sexers. Let’s recap his argument against same-sexers to see why this will be so tough.
I hope I’ve thoroughly slaughtered this argument, but for now let’s take it seriously. It would seem this excludes infertile opposite-sexers, too.
But George doesn’t think so. In fact, he promises to show that problem of whether:
marriage is possible between an infertile man and woman—is easily resolved.
“Easily resolved.” Let’s have a look and see. Read the rest of this entry »
March 11th, 2011
In a legislative body with 98 Democrats and 43 Republicans, in a state that already recognizes same-sex marriages conducted next door, supporters of the Maryland marriage equality bill were unable to round up 71 votes. (WaPo)
The effort to legalize gay marriage in Maryland died for the year Friday after supporters said they could not find enough votes to pass the measure in the House.
House leaders avoided a final vote on the bill and returned it to the House Judiciary Committee after it became apparent they did not have the 71 votes needed for approval. The bill to make Maryland the sixth state to allow gay marriage had already passed the Senate, and the governor said he would have signed it.
March 11th, 2011
[This post is part of a series analyzing Robert George’s widely-read article, “What is Marriage“, which appeared on pages 245-286 of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. You can view all posts in the series here.]
Page 259 (and also 250): In which Robert George doesn’t realize he’s made a case for recognizing incestuous and polygamous (and polygamously incestuous) marriages.
Polygamy and the revisionist/common view
Opponents of marriage equality love polygamy. They make a scarecrow out of it, wave him from their rooftop, and roll him down that shingled slippery slope to take out anyone on the ground who’s thinking, Perhaps equality under the law is a good thing after all.
George seems to think his conjugal/procreative view is the only thing holding back polygamy. In fact, however, the revisionist/common view can argue powerfully against it, too. Here’s George’s own description of this view, which he so dislikes:
Marriage is the union of two people (whether of the same sex or of opposite sexes) who commit to romantically loving and caring for each other and to sharing the burdens and benefits of domestic life. It is essentially a union of hearts and minds, enhanced by whatever forms of sexual intimacy both partners find agreeable.
How does this relate to polygamy? Scholar Jonathan Rauch offers this:
If marriage has any meaning at all, it is that when you collapse from a stroke, there will be another person whose “job” is to drop everything and come to your aid. Or that when you come home after being fired, there will be someone to talk you out of committing a massacre or killing yourself. To be married is to know there is someone out there for whom you are always first in line.
No group could make such a commitment in quite the same way, because of a free-rider problem. If I were to marry three or four people, the pool of potential caregivers would be larger, but the situation would, perversely; make all of them less reliable: each could expect one of the others to take care of me (and each may be reluctant to do more than any of the others are willing to do — a common source of conflict among siblings who need to look after an aging parent). The pair bond, one to one, is the only kind which is inescapably reciprocal, perfectly mutual. Because neither of us has anyone else, we are there for each other.
A few weeks ago, crippling abdominal pain sent me to the emergency room late at night. Read the rest of this entry »
March 9th, 2011
Congressional Republicans aren’t the only ones seeking to defend an unconstitutional anti-gay law. In Kansas, the ranking Republican and Democrat on the state’s House Judiciary Committee confirmed that they intend to leave Kansas’s law criminalizing gay sex on the books, even though the statute is unenforceable due to the 2003 Supreme Court decision overturning sodomy laws nationwide.
A clean-up bill was making its way through the committee when Rep. Lance Kinzer (R-Olathe) and Rep. Jan Pauls (D-Hutchinson) agreed to remove a provision that would have repealed the unconstitutional law. According to the Topeka Capital-Journal, “(Pauls) said this controversial provision related to homosexual activity might have prompted the Legislature to reject the entire bill, which was a risk she didn’t want to take.”
Equality Kansas is calling for a march on March 17 in downtown Hutchinson, Kansas.
March 9th, 2011
TPM reports that House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has issued a statement announcing that the House will intervene as a third party defendant in court cases challenging the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act. TPM quotes from the statement:
“Today, after consultation with the Bipartisan Leadership Advisory Group, the House General Counsel has been directed to initiate a legal defense of this law,” Boehner said in the statement. “This action by the House will ensure that this law’s constitutionality is decided by the courts, rather than by the President unilaterally.”
Of course, the president didn’t determine the law’s unconstitutionally unilaterally. The administration instead determined that they could not defend the law’s constitutionality based on the facts and heightened scrutiny. The administration also threw some bait in Boehner’s direction, pointing out that the House was perfectly within its rights to argue in court that that the law did not result in discrimination against LBGT couples. Boehner dropped the “only interested in the budget” charade to take the challenge. This should be fun.
The Hill reports that the action was taken based on a party line vote following a thirty-minute meeting, with Boehner joining House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) and House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) supporting the move. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA.) and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) voted no.
March 9th, 2011
Yes! This is a welcome image and message at this critical time.
March 9th, 2011
Seattle Stranger advice columnist Dan Savage has been getting a lot of press lately as the 21st century uncensored version of Ann Landers. His frank advice pivots around three important rules: Full disclosure of any and all information of relevance to a sexual partner, autonomy and reciprocity. Toward those ends, he has given tacit and explicit approval to all sorts of marital and sexual arrangements — but only as long as all three of those principles remain intact. As an example (and the most talked about one), he has endorsed non-monogamous relatinships for those who want it (autonomy), whose partner is okay with it (reciprocity), and after full communication of ground rules, concerns, worries, fears, and anything else that comes to mind (full disclusure).
This is the kind of advice you don’t see among mainstream advice columnists, until today that is.
March 9th, 2011
Today the Maryland House of Representatives took a step closer towards passing marriage equality. (DelawareOnline)
The House advanced the bill today on a voice vote.
Gay marriage supporters rejected four amendments to the measure — any of which could have sunk the bill’s chances this year — including one which would have put the issue on the ballot in 2012.
The measure —which would make Maryland the sixth state to grant full marriage rights to same-sex couples — now moves to a final vote in the House, which could come as soon as Thursday.
In response, the National Organization for Marriage has publicly offered a bribe to legislators: If you vote the way we want, then we will spend a million dollars on your reelection.
The National Organization of Marriage today announced that it will form the “NOM PAC Maryland” in the state. NOM pledges to spend at least $1 million in Maryland to support Democratic State Legislators who cast their votes to defend the traditional marriage and oppose any Republican Legislators who vote to redefine marriage.
I’m not sure, exactly, how that differs from an illegal bribe; it ties one specific vote to a promise of cash. But I’m sure NOM wouldn’t care one way or the other about the legality of their action.
March 9th, 2011
Yesterday television media in Alexandria, MN, followed up on their coverage of the local anti-gay bullying problem. They confirmed the claims of anti-bullying advocates in reporting that toxicology reports reveal that, indeed, Lance Lundsten’s death was due to suicide. This contradicted the position taken by the local newspaper which had been insisting that Lundsten had died due to a medical condition.
As of late afternoon yesterday, the Echo Press had made no mention of the toxicology results. At some point after Box Turtle Bulletin criticized them for their silence on the issue, the following blub appeared on their website:
18-year-old’s death in Miltona determined to be suicide
Toxicology reports indicate that 18-year-old Lance Lundsten of Miltona was a victim of suicide.
Lundsten, a senior at Jefferson High School, died on January 15 at his home.The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office investigated the death and initially described it as a medical call/sudden death.
Family members said they were initially told that a preliminary autopsy indicated that Lundsten had cardiac edema, a medical condition caused by an enlarged heart. The family was told it would be six to eight weeks before complete toxicology results could be determined.
Those results are back now and they show “a mixed drug ingestion” led to the death and that the manner of death was suicide, according to Douglas County Medical Examiner Dr. Mark Spanbauer.
Not much there… but the language included – and excluded – is worth noting as an example of a newspaper deliberately seeking to deceive its readers.
The Echo Press carefully strung together a few sentences, each of which may be factual but when taken together tell a false tale. And all of it is designed to cover the butt of publisher Al Edenloff.
First, yes it was a “medical call/sudden death.” This is a pretty broad description and could cover anything.
But the Echo Press included this terminology for a very specific reason: to imply validation for their campaign to deny the true cause of Lundsten’s death. Lookie there, the sheriff used the word “medical” so we’re justified in insisting that the cause of his death was “cardiac edema, a condition caused by an enlarged heart.”
Then Edenloff defends his scolding editorial and incorrect reporting by shifting blame to fourth-party information. “Family members said they were initially told…”
To those who have not followed the drama, this looks to be some little story of the medical examiner discovering that the cause of death wasn’t what he thought after all. To the shock of everyone, this was a suicide. Whoda thunk it?
But what happened is quite something else. A false story was spread to cover the truth behind Lundsten’s death and the motivation appears to be to cover up the community’s entrenched anti-gay bias. And Echo Press was the main culprit in the propagation of this story.
Mr. Edenloff was angered that “anti-bullying groups” were covering the story in ways that reflecting badly on the city and the school. He didn’t like that Senator Al Franken had used the story to highlight the need for anti-bullying legislation.
And I suspect that he may have truly believed his happy fairly tale that swept everything under the rug, caused no reason to question the attitude that Alexandria and Jefferson High have towards gay kids, and implicated no one in the death of a high school student. Or he chose to believe it.
But he was wrong. And rather than admit this and apologize to those whom he chastised and criticized, he’s trying to act as though the reporting and editorializing of the Echo Press was reasonable. It was not.
Oh, it’s possible that Edenloff will run an editorial “explaining” his actions. And while I can hope that some humility may creep in, I suspect it will ignore the story behind the story: that Alexandria’s gay youth are going though torment while its adults blithely traipse along refusing to see or do anything about it.
I doubt that Edenloff will suddenly join those who are calling for protection for students, like Lance, who are bullied at Jefferson High. He has not yet been willing even to acknowledge that Lance was reportedly bullied, or even that he was gay. Perhaps he thinks that this would smear Lance’s reputation.
In January, the Echo Press titled its editorial “Lessons from the death of an 18-year-old” and set out to lecture on what others could learn. But it’s time for Edenloff to look at the situation and see what lessons are there for him.
He would do well to ask himself what, exactly, is the role of a newspaper in today’s instant media society. While newsprint once could serve as community scold and publisher of opinion, that role has now been taken over by blogs and social media.
The real value of newspaper media is that unlike instant media they – at least in theory – publish hard facts. They do background and talk to source and try and see a bigger picture. Newspaper reporting is presumed to be fact-checked and accurate. This is what differentiates them from much of the blogosphere.
But what value is a newspaper that prints known falsehoods rather than facts? If the Echo Press has no more accuracy than the most agenda-driven and biased of bloggers, then it no longer has any value or purpose.
March 9th, 2011
President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle will host an anti-bullying conference at the Whte House tomorrow which will be streamed live at WhiteHouse.gov. The conference includes teachers, students, and community leaders, and will include online live chats. In preparation for the conference, the President and First Lady recorded this Facebook message.
You can submit questions here, and you can RSVP for a “Facebook live” chat here. There’s also more information at StopBullying.gov.
Last October, President Obama released a video for the “It Gets Better” campaign, aimed at stemming the epidemic of youth suicides brought on by bullying.
March 9th, 2011
CNN profiled an interesting blog called Born This Way. Paul V., who created the blog acknowledges, “Yes, I know – the awesome Lady Gaga is calling her new CD this as well. But that name and this idea has been brewing in my head for a long, long time, and I finally got off my ass to at least start the project here.” The photo/essay project invites readers to submit childhood photos and pictures reflecting their earliest memories of how they expressed themselves in unique and foretelling ways. “Nurture allows what nature endows,” he reiterates, and his blog is a great participatory project with the goal of showing kids that being different does not make them a freak. It makes them beautiful.
Featured Reports
In this original BTB Investigation, we unveil the tragic story of Kirk Murphy, a four-year-old boy who was treated for “cross-gender disturbance” in 1970 by a young grad student by the name of George Rekers. This story is a stark reminder that there are severe and damaging consequences when therapists try to ensure that boys will be boys.
When we first reported on three American anti-gay activists traveling to Kampala for a three-day conference, we had no idea that it would be the first report of a long string of events leading to a proposal to institute the death penalty for LGBT people. But that is exactly what happened. In this report, we review our collection of more than 500 posts to tell the story of one nation’s embrace of hatred toward gay people. This report will be updated continuously as events continue to unfold. Check here for the latest updates.
In 2005, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that “[Paul] Cameron’s ‘science’ echoes Nazi Germany.” What the SPLC didn”t know was Cameron doesn’t just “echo” Nazi Germany. He quoted extensively from one of the Final Solution’s architects. This puts his fascination with quarantines, mandatory tattoos, and extermination being a “plausible idea” in a whole new and deeply disturbing light.
On February 10, I attended an all-day “Love Won Out” ex-gay conference in Phoenix, put on by Focus on the Family and Exodus International. In this series of reports, I talk about what I learned there: the people who go to these conferences, the things that they hear, and what this all means for them, their families and for the rest of us.
Prologue: Why I Went To “Love Won Out”
Part 1: What’s Love Got To Do With It?
Part 2: Parents Struggle With “No Exceptions”
Part 3: A Whole New Dialect
Part 4: It Depends On How The Meaning of the Word "Change" Changes
Part 5: A Candid Explanation For "Change"
At last, the truth can now be told.
Using the same research methods employed by most anti-gay political pressure groups, we examine the statistics and the case studies that dispel many of the myths about heterosexuality. Download your copy today!
And don‘t miss our companion report, How To Write An Anti-Gay Tract In Fifteen Easy Steps.
Anti-gay activists often charge that gay men and women pose a threat to children. In this report, we explore the supposed connection between homosexuality and child sexual abuse, the conclusions reached by the most knowledgeable professionals in the field, and how anti-gay activists continue to ignore their findings. This has tremendous consequences, not just for gay men and women, but more importantly for the safety of all our children.
Anti-gay activists often cite the “Dutch Study” to claim that gay unions last only about 1½ years and that the these men have an average of eight additional partners per year outside of their steady relationship. In this report, we will take you step by step into the study to see whether the claims are true.
Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council submitted an Amicus Brief to the Maryland Court of Appeals as that court prepared to consider the issue of gay marriage. We examine just one small section of that brief to reveal the junk science and fraudulent claims of the Family “Research” Council.
The FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics aren’t as complete as they ought to be, and their report for 2004 was no exception. In fact, their most recent report has quite a few glaring holes. Holes big enough for Daniel Fetty to fall through.
“Google” is a trademark of Google Inc.
© Box Turtle Bulletin. All Rights Reserved.
Posts 
Posts via daily email: