Box Turtle Bulletin

Repressing What Comes Naturally? There’s An App For That

 Exodus International is on quite a media blitz this week. First came the announcement that they’ve released their very own iPhone App. Let’s just say that the reaction to that announcement is mixed, having garnered a two-star rating on the iTunes page. The app’s functionality is rather limited,  amounting to a website-cum-app experience with links to their facebook page and twitter stream. “Exgaysurvivordan” (whoever that is) writes, “This app is little more than a glorified (yet still clunky) web browser to navigate around Exodus’ walled-garden of predictable anti-gay content.”

Exodus also showed up on Oprah’s OWN Network’s In America with Lisa Ling last night. I didn’t get to watch the program, but Ling appeared on The View to discuss the program.

It’s typical to portray gay people as drug-fueled sex addicts as exemplified by their poster boy “Christian.” But really, what does this have to do with homosexuality? Ling does seem to see through a key element of the ex-gay message though: Nobody really changes, despite the empty promise that “change is possible.” Exodus International president Alan Chambers says so in moments of candor, and so does the American Psychiatric Association.

Alexandria’s Echo Press ignores Lundsten’s toxicology report

On Saturday, January 15, 2011, openly gay 18 year-old high school student Lance Lundsten died. Fellow students reported that Lance was openly gay and subjected to bullying at school and expressed their sadness and their wish that some adult had protected him. But the adults in Lance’s life had an entirely difference response.

Jefferson High School, where Lance was subjected to homophobic bullying, has no gay-straight alliance, has no inclusive anti-discrimination policy, and no acknowledgment of the existence of students like Lance or any provisions to address their need or concerns. The school superintendent Terry Quist issued a statement that not only refused to consider that bullying could have played a part, but chastised and criticized Lance’s friends for suggesting that Lance’s death may have been at his own hand and due in part to bullying he experienced while under Quist’s supervision.

We are aware that statements attributed to unidentified students have been reported by the media. However we have no information regarding the source of or any factual basis for the statements. It would be disrespectful, as well as a violation of privacy laws for us to engage in speculation regarding the cause or circumstances of Lance’s death.

But lack of “factual basis” did not limit others from engaging in a public relations effort to deny who Lance was, squelch any talk about issues that could have led to his death, and craft a pretty lie to replace the story that fellow students were presenting. Rather than allow the tragedy to be an opportunity to acknowledge that Alexandria, MN, has a culture of animus and hostility towards gay people, including their own children, those who should have protected Lance instead joined together to bully him after his death.

Lance had a strained relationship with his parents and was living with his grandparents at the time of his death. After his son killed himself, his father stepped up as spokesman for his estranged and now dead son and declared that it was a medical condition that killed the young man.

And although the coroner refuted this claim, Jon Lundsten was not interested in considering whether his son had been bullied or whether Jon’s own difficulties with his son had contributed in any way to Lance believing that life was not worth going on. So he stuck with his “enlarged heart” tale.

Besides diverting any need to talk about any icky gay stuff, this solved a more immediate problem. Declaring Lance’s death not to be a suicide allowed for his memorial and burial to be through the Catholic Church. Rev. Father Steve Binsfeld could officiate.

And Jon Lundsten had found himself an ally in his campaign of denial and deceit: Al Edenloff, the editor of the local newspaper. Over the next several days, the Echo Press, which calls itself “The Official Newspaper of Douglas County!” ran several stories on Lance’s death:

Throwing caution (and subtlety) to the wind, the first, on January 18th, was titled “18-year-old from Miltona, Minn., dies from medical condition”

According to preliminary autopsy results that were shared with the family, he died from cardiac edema, a condition caused by an enlarged heart.

There was no evidence that drugs or alcohol played any role in the death, according to a family member interviewed by the newspaper. The family was told that it would be six to eight weeks before complete toxicology results are determined.

This was a pure fabrication. But on the 21st, that story was expanded and renamed “School copes with loss of 18-year-old“. It repeated the “preliminary autopsy report” claims.

But across town, the television news was not going along with Jon Lundsten’s diversion. Instead, they ran a story on the reports of bullying, talked with the coroner’s office, interviewed a gay former student from Jefferson, and exposed the truth that Jon Lundsten, Al Edenloff, and Terry Quist wanted to keep hidden.

And fellow students who saw through all the denials began to band together, insisting that if the adults wouldn’t protect gay kids, then they would do what they could to help. Being of the social media generation, they used Facebook to not only expose the lack of concern of the adults, but also to reflect on how they could work together to address bullying.

This was certainly not the message that reflected well on the adults. Rather than have media interest in Lance’s death quickly die off as a tragic tale of a young man cut down early by a heart condition, the story began to grow as one about callous administrators who refused to take responsibility for their own actions. Even worse, the public was becoming aware that the school board’s decision not to protect gay students could lead to death.

So Edenloff went into crisis mode, writing an editorial that again denied that Lance had broken under
Alexandria’s intolerance and the lack of support in his family and his school. Seeking to keep the city and the school from being portrayed as “a backwoods little punkwood town”, he went on the attack against those students who dared to make a difference.

Calling his scold piece “Editorial – Lessons from the death of an 18-year-old”, Edenloff began with a lecture:

Don’t believe everything you read on Facebook. And don’t post things on the Internet that you’re not entirely sure of when it comes to someone else’s life.

And although by this time Edenloff had to know that Jon’s story was not being backed up by the medical examiner, he surged ahead with accusations and insinuations.

Unfortunately, whipped up by the Facebook frenzy, the distorted story of Lundsten’s death took on a life of its own. A TV station reported about the Facebook speculations and it snowballed quickly from there, getting reported by other media outlets as well – a sad case of media reporting what other media were reporting, even though it was untrue.

Today the toxicology reports came back.

Lance’s death was a suicide.

KSAX

The mystery surrounding the January death of Lance Lundsten, the Miltona teen whose controversial death sparked a conversation about teen suicide across the nation, has now been revealed by the Douglas County Medical Examiner.

Dr. Mark Spanbauer confirmed Monday, March 7, that the teen’s manner of death was ruled suicide. The toxicology report from the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and MEDTOX, determined the cause of death to be a mixed drug ingestion, according to Spanbauer.

“It was a mixed drug ingestion and suicide was the manner of death,” Spanbauer said.

The Echo Press decided not to cover this story.

UPDATE: At some point after we posted this commentary, the Echo Press ran a blurb noting the cause of death.

Civil Unions clear CO Senate Judiciary Committee

Yesterday, the Colorado Senate Judiciary Committee was blessed by some brilliant factual information from BTB author Daniel Gonzales and some amusing anus-talk from Eagle Forum director Rosina Kovar. The committee voted to approve the bill and advance it to the Committee on Finance.

Voting against civil unions were Republicans Steve King, Kevin Lundberg, and Mark Scheffel. Supporting the bill was Republican Ellen Roberts and all five Democratic Senators: Angela Giron, Linda Newell, Jeanne Nicholson, Lucia Guzman, and Morgan Carroll.

Although this reflects a somewhat typical Republican/Democrat split, it’s also worth noting that the vote was split along gender lines.

Coloardo Senate committee hears testimony about the human anus

Yesterday a Colorado Senate committee held a hearing on civil unions legislation.  Members of the public were free to sign up and testify.

I posted this video last night and sent it out to a few of my friends for their entertainment.  I wake up this morning and find it’s taken on a life of it’s own, even appearing on the Denver Post’s blog site.

I’ll let Rosina Kovar, an at-large director for the Eagle Forum, take it from here:

Defender Of Non-Monogamous Marriage To Retire

Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) has announced that he won’t run for re-election in 2012. This announcement comes almost two years after the “sanctity of marriage” advocate sanctified his own marriage by having an affair with a staffer. The staffer’s husband also worked for Ensign’s Senate Staff. Moneys changed hands, possibly in an attempt to keep the whole thing quiet. That possibility is the subject of a Senate Ethics Committee probe.

In 2004, Ensign spoke from the Senate Floor in favor of the proposed “Federal Marriage Amendment,” which would have written discrimination against gays and lesbians into the U.S. constitution. He insisted the amendment was necessary, saying, “Marriage is the cornerstone on which our society was founded.”

Today, with no apparent awareness of the concept of irony, Ensign gave this reason for retiring: “At this point in my life, I have to put my family first,” Ensign told reporters at a news conference in Las Vegas.

Ensign was identified as a member of the “C” Street, also know as “The Family” or “The Fellowship.” The secretive group was found to have links to the draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill that had been proposed in Uganda’s Parliament.

Full text of my Colorado Senate committee testimony on civil unions

Senator Pat Steadman, the bill's sponsor is seated next to me.

The Colorado Senate is holding committee hearings on the civil unions bill today and I will be testifying.  I’ve noticed that Focus has been coming at the issue in the media from the angle of “the body of scientific research proves that children do best with a mom and a dad.”  Not one to let their abuse of research slide I have written a testimony that takes Focus head on.  Full text after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Colorado Dems Name Gay Man To State Chair

Rick Palacio will head the Colorado Party going in to the 2012 elections, having won more than 50 percent of the vote in this weekend’s convention. He has quite a legacy going. His grandparents were miners in Colorado and his grandmother survived the 1914 Ludlow Massacre, when Colorado National Guard troops opened fire on a tent encampment of 1,200 striking miners and their families.

Scott Lively Warns of “Outbreak of Homosexuality” In Moldova, Part of a “Secret Plan By the Homosexual Powers of the EU”

Scott Lively (left) at a news conference in Moldova

According to this clunky Google translation of a Moldovan news report:

Public Association “Pentru Familie” / “For the family / states that adopted recently by the Government bill threatens the institution of family and social morality as homosexuality is pick up swing in the Republic of Moldova. Visiting Association, an international expert in the field of human rights Lively Scott, warned of “an outbreak of homosexuality” in Moldova, in case the parliament adopts the bill, reports Info-Prim Neo.

This is a bill to prevent and combat discrimination, government-approved on February 17. Chairman of the association “Pentru Familie” Vasile Filat said at a news conference on Monday that if this law is passed in parliament, this would entail the legalization of same-sex marriages, adoption of children couples gay acceptance of homosexual practice as the norm in schools.

…Foreign visitor Lively Scott stressed that this law has caused dire consequences in other countries where it was passed. “I guarantee you, if this bill passes, all the evil that struck the European Union, the collapse and to the Republic of Moldova”, – said the expert in the field of human rights.

Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively is up to his old tricks again, even though it was not even two months ago that he said he was through with anti-gay activism.  Shocking, I know.

I’m having a hard time finding any more info on what Lively’s doing or saying in Modova, but here’s something I found interesting coming from what looks like an email to supporters from Lively posted to a Canadian web site:

However, in God’s divine schedule I arrived just after the first move of a secret plan by the homosexual powers of the EU to push an anti-discrimination law based on sexual orientation through the Moldovan government.

I wish I had known at the beginning of my ministry in the early 1990s what I know now. We might have stopped the homosexual agenda in America. What I know now, and have taught the Moldovans, is that the anti-discrimination law is the seed that contains the entire tree of the homosexual agenda, with all of its poisonous fruit. It is the cornerstone of their legal and political strategy, putting the power of the governernment [sic] behind the legal premise that the practice of homosexuality deserves public approval and that opposition to homosexuality, including that which is rooted in the Biblical world view, must be discouraged. From that premise the conclusion is logically inevitable.

The Moldovan version of the bill however went much farther than usual and included a far reaching provision to give homosexual activists power in the national school system, teacher training and the preparation of instructional materials. They normally don’t include such power-grabbing measures at the beginning, which indicates to me that they had extreme confidence that this law would pass with very little scrutiny or opposition.

Lively is adding a new twist to his vast worldwide homosexual conspiracy. Again, from the Moldovan web site:

Lobbying for the legalization of homosexuality is made from outside the Republic of Moldova, by agents of millionaire George Soros, who is interested in the fact that homosexuals have become a force, said Lively, Scott.

I wish I had just a tenth of the the imagination it takes to to make this up.

The unfortunate thing however is that Moldova has a serious problem with severe anti-gay violence. In 2008, a gay pride march was in the Moldovan capital of Chisina was attacked and broken up by a mob of skinheads and Moldovan nationalists. Violence and calls to violence has a habit of following Lively around, which is just one of many reasons for his “ministry” being among the very few in the U.S. who is listed as an anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. In 2009, he unleashed what he called a “Nuclear Bomb” in Kampala, Uganda. That sparked yet another round of anti-gay vigilantism and violence, culminating in the introduction of the draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill in that nation’s Parliament.

Log Cabin Head Backs Boehner’s Steps Toward Defending DOMA

Fireworks ensued.

LCR issued a press release calling on House Speaker John Boehner not to “take the bait” on DOMA. Now that Boehner is taking initial steps to do precisely that, LCR’s R. Clarke Cooper is covering his back, although he says that his support is limited to the current exploratory steps.

Log Cabin Republicans are still battling to have “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell declared unconstitutional. While the Congress and Administration have already taken steps to have the law fully repealed sometime this year, the issue remains that repeal will not include an anti-discrimination clause. And with out that, future presidents will be free to impose a ban on gays serving in the military unilaterally via executive order. LCR has denounced the Justice Department for continuing to defend DADT.

Arora Goes Clintonian

It looks like Maryland delegate Sam Arora got an earful after he tried to pull an Arora yesterday, in which he pulled back his support for a bill allowing marriage Equality that is making its way through Maryland’s lower house. Until this week, he had not only co-sponsored the bill, but campaigned (and accepted campaign donations) on the promise that he would support marriage equality. Then he announced that he would screw his LGBT and LGBT-supportive constituents who helped get him elected by voting no on the measure. Then today, we get this:

I have heard from constituents, friends, and advocates from across the spectrum of views and have thought about the issue of same-sex marriage extensively. I understand their concern—this is a very serious issue, and one that many people feel passionately about. As the vote drew nearer, I wrestled with this issue in a way I never had before, which led me to realize that I had some concerns about the bill. While I personally believe that Maryland should extend civil rights to same-sex couples through civil unions, I have come to the conclusion that this issue has such impact on the people of Maryland that they should have a direct say. I will vote to send the bill to the floor because it deserves an up-or-down vote. On the floor, I will vote to send the bill to the governor so that Marylanders can ultimately decide this issue at the polls. I think that is appropriate.

That has got to be the most convoluted mess of a statement I’ve ever seen. But the bottom line is that when Maryland’s House Judiciary committee finally voted to send the bill to the House floor, Arora voted yes.

As recently as February 21, Arora told his constituents that he passionately believed in marriage equality. According to Joe Sudbay, Arora was still privately speaking of his support for the bill as late as Sunday. But two days later, he started tweeting that he was walking back his support. Along the way, something or somebody definitely got to Arora.

So now, we have his yes vote — and yes, that part is with my thanks and with gratitude — along with this strange, disturbing, Clintonesque statement that continues to raise red flags. You remember what happened when President Bill Clinton went Clintonian on LGBT rights: we got DOMA and DADT. So now we have Arora trying to pull off the same thing. He is now against marriage equality, thinks we should have civil unions instead, and wants to get this bill to the governor as quickly as possible to NOM can gather signatures for a referendum so that our rights can be put up to a vote. Just so you know what he’s talking about, this is how that referendum process would work:

According to Maryland’s State Board of Elections, opponents of the marriage bill can start collecting signatures for a statewide referendum immediately after the passage of the bill in the House of Delegates, before Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) signs the bill. A total of 55,736 signatures are required on the petition and must be submitted to Secretary of State John P. McDonough (D) by June 30. One third of those signatures are due on May 31.

This sets up a strange dynamic. The longer the House can delay the vote, the less time signature gatherers would have to collect signatures to put a referendum on the ballot. But the longer the House delays, the more time there is for Arora and others with a similar lack of integrity to change their minds and vote against the bill. You would think that with Democrats holding a 98-43 majority in the House, this should be an easy shot. But you would be wrong. Such is the moral cowardice of far too many Dems who were elected with LGBT support.

Boehner responds to Obama’s refusal to defend DOMA

House Speaker John Boehner has announced the direction that he will go in response to Attorney General Holder’s declaration that he and President Obama would no longer defend the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act. And it appears, to me, to be a measured and non-hysterical response. (WaPo)

Boehner said he will convene a meeting of the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group, a first step toward taking action in the House to defend the law.

“It is regrettable that the Obama administration has opened this divisive issue at a time when Americans want their leaders to focus on jobs and the challenges facing our economy,” Boehner said in a statement. “The constitutionality of this law should be determined by the courts – not by the president unilaterally – and this action by the House will ensure the matter is addressed in a manner consistent with our Constitution.”

On the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group are the top three House Republicans – Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Va.) and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) – and the top two House Democrats – Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (Md.).

The group has the authority to instruct the House general counsel to take legal action on behalf of the House. It typically gets involved in situations where leaders believe there are institutional or separation-of-powers concerns.

This is, in other words, the appropriate group to consider whether there is any issue of the President acting in a manner that violates the rights of the Congress.

Boehner is walking softly on this issue, and this “all by the book” response is far more measured that I would have predicted. I wasn’t expecting him to appoint the Pacific Justice Institute to represent the House, but I also wasn’t expecting him to treat the matter as though the President’s position should be given any thought before responding or to invite the Democratic leadership to participate in the response.

And the language he has selected – language that does not insist that DOMA is constitutional and makes no appeal to “protecting the family” or “the will of the people” or even a reference to a “homosexual agenda” – speaks of disapproval of process or timing rather than homophobic posturing.

It is far too little and far too soon to read too much into this (and I am aware of my inclination to look for the silver lining), but somehow it feels as though there has been a shift. It feels to me as though the Republican leadership may be moving away from knee-jerk dismissal of the claims of gay citizens. It’s hard to put my finger on it exactly, but it feels different, as though they aren’t agreeing or supporting, but finally they’ve started listening.

Marriage passes Maryland judiciary

By a vote of 12 to 10, the House Judiciary has supported the marriage equality bill. So it looks like the three or so Representatives who did acrobatics in the political circus this week finally did vote in favor.

Now on to the full House of Representatives. Why am I fearing even more theatrics?

UPDATE: Alston voted “no” but Vallario, who was not a co-sponsor, voted in favor. Someone send him roses.

How Do You Define “Arora”?

Benedict Arnold’s name has become an adjective. How do you define Arora?

The lead sponsor of the marriage bill in Maryland’s House of Delegates was also the first person to endorse Del. Sam Arora (D-Montgomery County) in his 2010 election. Now, however, Del. Kumar Barve (D-Montgomery County), says that Arora’s decision to vote against the bill is “a shock.”

“I don’t know what to think,” Barve tells Metro Weekly this evening of Arora’s decision to vote against the marriage bill that he once co-sponsored, once it makes its way to the House floor, something Barve says Arora told him personally.

“He told me that he was going to vote against it on the floor,” Barve says. “I’ve been in the legislature for quite a while and nothing is a reality until you actually push the button. And these are hard issues. But he came to me and told me that he was having difficulty with the concept of it.”

Democrats control the Maryland House with a 98-43 majority, yet the marriage equality bill’s sponsors are having a tough time coming up with the votes to pass it the bill. Part of the problem is with people like Arora, who had not only co-sponsored the bill, but campaigned (and accepted campaign donations) on the promise that he would support marriage equality. He even earned the support of Maryland Equality in the past election, where he wrote this addendum on their questionnaire:

I am a former law clerk to Attorney General Doug Gansler. I publicly supported his decision to recognize out-of-state marriage licenses for same-sex couples and immediately put out a release praising his findings. For me, it’s simply a matter of equal rights under the law.

But now that he’s been elected, all that has changed. He not only says that he will vote against it, but he is trying to wipe out his previous boasts that he was a co-sponsor. His facebook friends aren’t having it (John Aravosis saved a few choice responses in case Arora decides to “Arora” his facebook page as well.) Meanwhile, campaign donors are demanding refunds from the moral coward who lied through his teeth to get elected.

Here is his contact info. You know what to do.

Twitter: @Sam_Arora
FACEBOOK: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sam-Arora/334183772314
(410) 841-3528, (301) 858-3528
1-800-492-7122, ext. 3528 (toll free)
e-mail: sam.arora@house.state.md.us
fax: (410) 841-3011, (410) 841-3528, (301) 858-3528, (240) 245-0018

Now, about that definition of “Arora”… (I’m relaxing enforcement of our comments policy for this post only. Simply because Arora deserves it.)

Maryland’s Alston proposes ‘no marriages for anyone, civil unions for all’ compromise

As surmised, Tiffany Alston’s boycott of the marriage vote on Tuesday had far far less to do with other issues that were not receiving adequate attention and far more to do with pressure she is receiving from religious African-American anti-gay activists.

So Alston is wanting to propose a compromise (myfoxdc.com):

“I believe, as a government, we should issue something that is the same for everybody,” Alston explained in a hallway outside the House Judiciary Committee. “And I think, if we wanted to issue a license to everybody and call it a civil union license. And then everybody in the state – whether heterosexual or homosexual – would get the same exact license.”

Alston said religious groups could then hold their own ceremonies – some would include gay nuptials, some would not.

Ideologically, that argument does make a certain amount of sense. It would get around the “marriage is a sacrament” belief that has been instilled by attending weddings and watching movies and seems to lodge somewhere in the back of our subconscious thinking. And considering the number of churches across the nation (and internet ministers) that would delight in granting same-sex couples “marriage” status, it would not serve as an impediment to the status found in that term.

But pragmatically, it’s impossible. If Maryland’s residents were to separately and solely determine that no one in their state has “marriage” as a legal status, then chaos would result. Federal law does (irrespective of the unconstitutional DOMA) rely on state marriages for its determination of marriage for federal purposes. And as it is abundantly clear that legislators do not see civil unions as the same as marriage (ask New Jersey and Hawaii), there is no way that Maryland’s representatives are going to go back to their constituents and announce that they’ve down-graded their marriages to civil unions.

And, let’s face it, it’s not a compromise that the anti-gay folk would ever accept. They don’t really want to protect their right to define marriage for their own congregation; this is all about forcing their definition of marriage on those who don’t go to their church.

But it does seem clear that Alston ‘gets it’ that laws which provide different treatment based on what group you are in are discriminatory. And let’s hope that, like Maryland Republican Senator Allan Kittleman who proposed the same thing, this will result in a vote for marriage equality.

Meanwhile Jill Carter is back on board the marriage train with a brand new explanation as to why she boycotted Tuesday’s proposed vote. (Investigative Voice)

“I didn’t block the vote ” Jill Carter (D-41st) told Investigative Voice in a telephone interview early Thursday morning. “We didn’t have the votes.”

The leadership “didn’t take a whip count, she explained, and I know we were at least two votes short” of passage.

But Carter is not available for a vote today, either.

Jill Carter is sick.

Uganda Parliamentary Committee Chair: Anti-Homosexuality Bill May Not Come Up For A Vote

That’s the word Warren Throckmorton received from the Chair of the Parliamentary and Legal Affairs Committee, Stephen Tashobya. His committee was assigned the Anti-Homosexuality Bill for consideration and possible revision before reporting the bill back out to Parliament for a vote. Tashobya now says “I am not sure if we will get to that one now” before the current Parliament ends in May, citing a backlog of other bills that require consideration. Warren notes that this contradicts Tashobya’s prediction in January that the bill would be brought to a vote during Parliament’s lame duck session following February’s elections.

Uganda held Presidential and Parliamentary elections on February 18, which returned 25-year ruling President Youweri Museveni to another five year term and assured his ruling party a veto-proof majority in Parliament. His ruling party, the National Resistance Movement (NRM) also holds the required majority in Parliament to change the constitution at will. On the bright side, Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba Buturo, one of the bill’s most ardent supporters, lost his re-election bid. It’s not clear though that this guarantees the end of his tenure in Museveni’s cabinet since the constitution allows the President to appoint ministers who are not members of Parliament. David Bahati, the bill’s sponsor, easily won re-election to represent his Ndorwa West constituency after his opponent withdrew from the race over concerns for his safety and that of his family.

The next Parliament will be seated in June. If the Anti-Homosexuality Bill is not reported out of committee and onto the floor of Parliament for a vote before the current Parliament ends, it will die at the close of Parliament.