Box Turtle Bulletin

Ontario District Branch of the APA Cancels NARTH “Training”

Last week, Timothy Kincaid reported that the Ontario District Branch of the American Psychiatric Association had scheduled a seminar to be conducted by NARTH member Joseph Berger to discuss whether gay people should be subjected to psychotherapy. That salon was also advertised as an “accredited group learning activity.” BTB has now learned that the scheduled salon has been canceled.

In an email sent to members by Executive Secretary Colleen Gambier:

Please note that due to unfortunate circumstances, Salon #14 scheduled for May 13, 2010, will not take place. We regret any inconvenience and look forward to seeing you at our next Salon on Oct 14, 2010 with Dr. Ash Bender on Workplace Trauma.

In 2006, Berger ignited controversy over suggestions that gender non-conforming children should be exposed to taunting and bullying in schools in order to “re-establish that necessary boundary” of conforming to gender roles. That post on NARTH’s blog was removed after considerable outcry, and the blog was eventually shut down.

Jailed Gay Malawian Reportedly Seriously Ill

Stephen Monjeza, the Malawi man who has been imprisoned since late December for holding an engagement party with Tiwonge Chimbalanga who identifies as a woman, is critically ill and has been “vomiting, coughing and suffering from pain and pressure in his chest for the last eleven days,” according to UK LGBT advocate Peter Tatchell. Monjeza is being held in what has been described as deplorable conditions at Chichiri Prison in Blantyre, where sources tell Tatchell that he has been deprived of proper food, sanitation or medical care:

He looks very ill and has lost weight,” Tatchell quotes a prison source. He says that people who have seen him fear his health and that he needs urgent hospital care. “The prison authorities have failed to give Steven proper treatment, or even sufficient pain killers. His pain-killers ran out on 10 April,” said Tatchell.

He added: “My informant says Mr Monjeza urgently needs to go to hospital for a full medical examination and treatment. His health is likely to deteriorate further unless he gets swift medical care.”

Stephen and Tiwonge have been adopted by Amnesty International as “prisoners of conscience.” According to reports, their trial for buggery and “gross indecency” is still ongoing. A final sentencing is expected on May 18. The couple face up to fourteen years’ imprisonment if convicted.

Researcher Denounces “American College of Pediatricians” Bogus Report

If you will recall, there’s the American Academy of Pediatric, made up of 60,000 legitimate pediatricians from across the United States, verses an specifically anti-gay fake group known as the American College of Pediatricians, which is made up of a few dozen anti-gay activists. It was the latter group that sent a letter to school superintendents loaded with massive distortions of legitimate scientific research to warn school leaders against allowing LGBT-supportive policies in the schools.

Timothy Kincaid examined a number of those distortions when the letter was announced. Now, one of those researchers who found his work among those twisted beyond recognition has denounced the ACP for “Implicating me in this chicanery.”

Truth Wins Out has the entire letter by Dr. Gary Remafedi, Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Michigan. After correcting the ACP for what his research actually said, Dr. Remafedi demands:

Please immediately remove any reference to our work from the website. As a suitable remedy, I also would urge you take the following actions:

1) Publicly retract your references to our research with a written statement posted on the home page of your website;

2) Until then, any donations made to your organization since the “Facts about Youth” website was launched should be either returned to the donors or contributed to the LGBT youth research fund of the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine.

No 2010 Reversal for Proposition 8

Most gay organizations did not support going back to the poll this year and were not helpful with the effort to get marriage equality back on the ballot. It now appears that with broad support the low profile effort to collect signatures was not successful. (Contra Costa Times)

Same-sex marriage advocates have failed to gather enough petition signatures to place on November’s ballot a measure that would repeal Proposition 8’s constitutional ban.

Though it didn’t gather at least 694,354 valid signatures from registered voters by Monday’s deadline, the Restore Equality 2010 Coalition insists the effort wasn’t in vain, in that it sets a firm foundation for another try in 2012.

Vatican Official Blames Rape of Girls by Priests on Gays

That’s how the AP is reporting it:

“Many psychologists and psychiatrists have demonstrated that there is no relation between celibacy and pedophilia. But many others have demonstrated, I have been told recently, that there is a relation between homosexuality and pedophilia. That is true,” said (Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio) Bertone. “That is the problem.”

…At least one of the highest-profile pedophiles in the Chilean church victimized young girls, including a teenager who became pregnant. At the time, the archbishop of the capital, Santiago, received multiple complaints about Father Jose Andres Aguirre from families concerned for their daughters. But the priest — known to his parishioners as Father Tato — continued serving at a number of Catholic girls schools in the city. Later the church sent Aguirre out of Chile twice amid abuse allegations. He was eventually sentenced to 12 years in prison for abusing 10 teenage girls.

The Cardinals assertion is a willful faith-based slander, similar to the kind of blame that has been levied against gays here in the U.S. against priests who are equal-opportunity abusers. It’s worth noting that the California priest who Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) in 1985 demurred from defrocking for tying up and raping boys in his parish, was finally convicted in 2004 of molesting a young girl at the home which that very same by-then ex-priest shared with his wife. His crimes also led to a lawsuit against the  Oakland diocese by seven women who said he abused them in the 1970’s, apparently before he tied up those two boys.

Experts on child sexual abuse point out that for many perpetrators the gender of the victim is inconsequential. But who needs experts or common sense when gays makes such a convenient scapegoat?

Australia’s Red Cross is reviewing possible changes for blood donors

From the Sydney Morning Herald

Australia’s Red Cross Blood service will review its policy which prevents many homosexual men from donating blood.

Currently, a man who has had homosexual sex within the past 12 months is excluded from being an eligible blood donor.

I just hope the FDA is paying attention. Australia already has much more lenient policies than the US and instead of observing problems, they are considering further revisions.

Obama’s “Short List” pick for SCOTUS might be anti-gay marriage

ABC News is reporting that President Obama has at least one person on his “short list”:

As speculation swirls about candidates on the president’s list, administration officials have confirmed that at least one of the president’s top picks is a former State Supreme Court justice who would be the first African-American woman to sit on the country’s high court.

Former Georgia Supreme Court Justice Leah Ward Sears, an expert in family law and the first African-American woman to serve as a State Supreme Court chief justice, was on Obama’s short list last year. A member of the left-leaning American Constitution Society, she is also a friend of conservative Justice Clarence Thomas.

While Sears is believed by some to be gay-supportive, her true passion is as an advocate for (heterosexual) marriage. And, as such, she has made statements, built alliances, and contributed to efforts in the past which suggest that she may not completely value equality for our community.

Writing in a Washington Post op-ed in October 2006, Sears made “the case for marriage”. And she identified allies in her quest to have people “get married, stay married”.

I am not alone. For example, “Reconceiving the Family,” a new book published by Cambridge University Press critiquing the ALI’s “principles,” has contributions from 27 family law scholars, including two other state supreme court chief justices. The Institute for American Values recently published a statement, signed by many legal and family scholars, that concluded that “a prime goal of family law should be to identify new ways to support marriage as a social institution so that each year more children are protected by being raised within the marital unions of their parents.” Moreover, the supreme court in my state just established a Commission on Children, Marriage and Family Law with an important goal: to find ways to reduce unnecessary divorce and unmarried childbearing. [emphasis added]

If the Institute for American Values sounds familiar, it is because it is the brainchild of David Blankenhorn, the chief witness on the anti-gay side in Perry v. Schwarzenegger. The book Reconceiving the Family is available at his site, and the following is from the synopsis of the statement that Sears commends:

Unfortunately, the recent trend in family law as a discipline and practice has been just the opposite. Family law as a discipline has increasingly tended to commit two serious errors with regard to marriage: (a) to reduce marriage to a creature of statute, a set of legal benefits created by the law, and (b) to imagine marriage as just one of many equally valid lifestyles. This model of marriage is based on demonstrably false and therefore destructive premises. Adopting it in family law as a practice or as an academic discipline will likely make it harder for civil society in the United States to strengthen marriage as a social institution.

As scholars and as citizens, we recognize a shared moral commitment to the basic human dignity of all our fellow citizens, black or white, straight or gay, married or unmarried, religious and non-religious, as well as a moral duty to care about the well-being of children in all family forms. But sympathy and fairness cannot blind us to the importance of the basic sexual facts that give rise to marriage in virtually every known society: The vast majority of human children are created through acts of passion between men and women. Connecting children to their mother and father requires a social and legal institution called “marriage” with sufficient power, weight, and social support to influence the erotic behavior of young men and women.

We do not all agree on individual issues, from the best way to reform unilateral divorce to whether and how the law should be altered to benefit same-sex couples. We do agree that the conceptual models of marriage used by many advocates are inadequate and thus contribute to the erosion of a marriage culture in the United States. We seek to work together across the divisive issue of gay marriage to affirm the basic importance of marriage to our children and to our society. We call on all the makers of family law—legislators, judges, the family law bar, and legal scholars who create the climate in which other players operate—to develop a deeper understanding of and commitment to marriage as a social institution.

A prime goal of marriage and family law should be to identify new ways to support marriage as a social institution, so that each year more children are protected by the loving marital unions of their mother and father.[Emphasis added]

It is immediately obvious that whatever values are being discussed and whatever disagreement there may be over “whether and how the law should be altered to benefit same-sex couples”, there was absolute agreement that same-sex marriages are “destructive” and “contribute to the erosion of a marriage culture.” In fact, by the time that Sears commended Blankenhorn, he had become best known for his opposition to marriage equality.

Sears has also teamed up with Blankenhorn to sponsor his marriage debates with Jonathan Rouch, and to further the visibility of her own campaign to support heterosexual marriage. (Law.com)

Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears said that the 48-foot-wide, 14-foot-tall billboards are one of the few things a jurist can do to battle high crime rates, high divorce rates and low numbers of fathers raising their kids.

Along with the “Get Married, Stay Married” slogan, each sign shows a happy-looking mother, father and child and one of two messages: “Children do better with parents together” or “For Children’s Sake.”

“We paid $50,000 to get about $500,000 worth of billboard space to send this vital message,” Sears said, noting that the costs of the billboards themselves were paid by the Georgia Bar Foundation and “not state money.” The billboard space was donated by the Outdoor Advertising Association of Georgia, which donates unused billboard space to charitable, civic and governmental organizations.

Sears’ comments came in an interview last week at a more substantive part of her crusade — a two-day conference on marriage for about 250 lawyers, social workers, clergy people and therapists. The event was sponsored by the high court’s commission and the New York-based Institute for American Values, which calls itself a “private, nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that contributes intellectually to strengthening families and civil society in the U.S. and the world.”

While Sears appears to value Blankenhorn and his premises, she has been coy on her own position on the issue. Opponents of Sears claimed that she supported gay marriage in an effort to discredit her elections, but this is not immediately evident from her writing.

Writing in the New York University Law Review in 2007, she said

Finally, before I go any further, I would like to comment briefly on the scope of this Lecture, particularly as it relates to the subject of same-sex marriage. This topic remains a deeply polarizing one for large numbers of Americans, regardless of their sexual orientation. If I were to stake out a legal position on this subject, my comments would hopelessly overshadow anything else I might say about marriage and family fragmentation. More importantly, it would be inappropriate for me, as a sitting judge, to do so. Therefore, this Lecture addresses the more basic question of whether the law should support marriage as an institution at all. The national debate over same-sex marriage raises a host of important issues, and those issues must ultimately be resolved. But as we struggle to work out a consensus, we must not put off the job of reflecting on marriage as we now have it.

Yet one cannot read any of her perspectives on marriage without immediately recognizing that Sears believes that 1) marriage is about children, 2) parents are defined as the natural biological father and the natural biological mother, 3) biological mother/father/child families deserve preference, and 4) other socially recognized structures are destructive to the special status that heterosexual marriage deserves.

We do not, of course, know the extent to which her personal views will color her decisions. But we do know that in 2006, her positions on the constitutional ban on same-sex marriage in the State of Georgia left her on both sides of the issue.

She (and one other justice) opined that the one-sentence amendment was too vague to be put on the ballot because it did not adequately warn voters that civil unions were also being banned. Yet, after the election when a judge struck down the amendment, she voted with the rest of the Georgia Supreme Court to reinstate the ban.

More may come up on Judge Sears which will alleviate my concerns. But until it does, I am troubled by her perspectives on marriage, family, and children and fear that she may prove on the Highest Court to be a life-long opponent to marriage equality.

(hat tip to reader Matt, who brought this to our attention)

Joyce Meyers: Uganda’s Anti-Gay Bill “Profoundly Offensive, Dangerous, and Disturbing Attack”

Our post asking whether popular televangelist Joyce Meyer supported Uganda’s proposed Anti-Homosexualty Bill inspired Michael Jones to follow up with a post at Change.org asking the same thing. I had written to Rev. Meyer’s ministries three tmies, and Michael also wrote seeking a statement. Michael now sends word that he has an answer. Here’s the statement:

It is increasingly evident that the proposed “Anti-Homosexuality Bill” introduced in the Ugandan parliament is a profoundly offensive, dangerous and disturbing attack on the very foundation of individual liberties and human rights afforded not only to the good citizens of Uganda, but on the at-large global community.

If enacted, this hostile legislation will also further, and adversely, serve as a major setback in the global health efforts to combat Uganda’s AIDS epidemic and reduce the record-high infection rates among the country’s HIV population, an already at-risk community that could be further ostracized, threatened, and targeted as potential criminals.

Our missions and ministry message has always been to teach that the Word of God is about helping people – all people – learn that God loves them and has a purpose for their lives, not put guilt or condemnation on them.

As a global society, we do not have to agree, endorse or condone the lifestyle choices of others. However, history has taught us that we equally cannot and should not excuse those who would hide behind religion or misuse God’s word to justify bigotry and persecution.

With this statement, our motivation and intent is not to interfere with Uganda’s political agenda or internal affairs.  As believers, however, we have a moral and ethical duty that compels us to speak out against injustice wherever it may be in the world.

Joyce Meyer Ministries

Conservative Dixie Carter on her gay fans

The incomparable Dixie Carter was not much like her character Julia Sugarbaker. Julie was outspoken and liberal, while Dixie was conservative and more reserved. And Dixie Carter was a Republican and endorsed some Republican candidates.

But, like many Hollywood Republicans, she was not anti-gay. What follows is a quote from a MetroWeekly article in 1998.

MW: Let’s get some opinions from you. Do you have any thoughts on gay rights?

CARTER: I think that gay rights should exist.

MW: Let me be more specific. What about the possibility of gay marriage?

CARTER: That’s hard for me, because I’m very old fashioned, very old-timey. So that idea is hard for me. On the other hand, maybe the most loving marriage that I’ve ever seen is a gay marriage. It has not been codified as such by the church, but it is a marriage. And has been for years and years and years. But to answer your question, I have to work through what marriage means — and the first thing in my mind goes to is that marriage is for the procreation of the race. It’s a sacrament to unite people so that they can begin a family and have children. But Hal Holbrook and I got married at an age past when we can expect to have children. So here I am in a very happy marriage that I think is fine. So if I feel that way about my marriage to Hal, why would I have a problem with a gay marriage? Still, it’s hard for me. I’m very traditional.

MW: Another issue that’s been raised recently in a big way is called “reparative therapy,” where gay people are saying they’ve been cured through various ministries led by the right wing.

CARTER: I think the word cure is insulting, isn’t it?

MW: Yes. And of course the danger is that it suggests homosexuality is a disease, which it’s not.

CARTER: Tell me, are these people who are “cured,” are they ever going to be happy?

MW: It’s hard to say.

CARTER: Well, down the line, it will be discovered whether or not they will be happy. I hate to use this corny expression, but everybody has got to find out who they are and what their needs are. And putting yourself in a straight jacket for appearance’s sake is not going to get it. …. But as I’ve said, I’m old-fashioned. … I feel like such an anachronistic person, but I am slowly coming around — my children are slowly getting me close to where I should be. Maybe by the turn of the century, I’ll be up with everybody else.

Carter may have thought of herself as old-fashioned and anachronistic. But think of how much better life would be if today’s conservatives had the wisdom that Dixie Carter had 22 12 years ago.

The Lights Went Out In Georgia

Dixie Carter died yesterday morning and the surprisingly young age of 70. The cause and location of her death was unknown. Her husband, Hal Holbrook called her passing “a terrible blow to our family. We would appreciate everyone understanding that this is a private family tragedy.”

Dixie was born in Tennessee, and made a career of playing strong, self-assured southern women. And with performances like this, is it any wonder her character in Designing Women became such an icon in in the gay community? She will be greatly missed.

Supreme Court loses its last Protestant

John Paul Stevens, the US Supreme Court’s oldest and longest-serving justice, has announced that he will retire. And the President is undoubtedly already weighing potential replacements.

It is likely that President Obama will place diversity as a desirable attribute. The court currently contains its first (modern) Hispanic jurist, second African American jurist, and both second and third female jurists; for most of its history, the court has been comprised of white men. A candidate that further advances racial or gender diversity will be seen as a potential voice for excluded Americans.

Some may wonder if it is time for a gay or lesbian nominee. While I would love to think that possible, I doubt that this President will appoint a gay Supreme Court justice. Yet even the discussion over the possibility is good for our community.

But one thing I hope that this president considers – that will not likely get much attention – is religious diversity. Currently, the court has six Roman Catholics, two Jews, and the sole Protestant is Stevens who is now retiring.

This matters.

A great many cases that come before the SCOTUS involve issues of religious freedom or religious views. And Christianity is the dominant religion in this country.

But having only one brand of Christianity on the court yields only one perspective on what “Christianity” means. Even the most liberal of Catholics accepts as normal certain ideas that most Protestants reject. And without a Protestant voice on the court, the religious assumptions of the majority of Americans goes unstated.

As recent cases have revealed, the “orthodox Christian view” about homosexuality is relevant to whether laws are based in tradition and faith or in bigotry. In the Perry v. Schwarzenegger trial, denominational stances were cited as evidence of a lack of (or presence of) animus. But if the only Christians on the court come from a faith that values hierarchy, church tradition, and doctrine handed down from a central authority, then testimony from affirming churches can seem rogue or heretic.

So without Stevens, the presumptions about Christianity on the court will be limited to those that come from being raised in (or converted to) Roman Catholicism. And I do not think that this is healthy and I hope that Obama considers this when making his final cut.

Pope Directly Involved In Sex Abuse Coverup

[Update: Copies of relevant letters have been posted online here.]

At what point should American prosecutors consider filing racketeering charges against senior American and Vatican officials of the Roman Catholic Church? We now have evidence that the current head of the Church was directly and personally involved in a conspiracy to conceal criminal sexual exploitation in the United States. The Associated Press has found the smoking gun:

The future Pope Benedict XVI resisted pleas to defrock a California priest with a record of sexually molesting children, citing concerns including “the good of the universal church,” according to a 1985 letter bearing his signature.

…The letter, signed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was typed in Latin and is part of years of correspondence between the Diocese of Oakland and the Vatican about the proposed defrocking of the Rev. Stephen Kiesle.

[Updates: the full text of the letter is available here. Fourteen other letters written by priests concerning Kiesle’s conduct are available here.]

Kiesle had been accused of tying up two young boys and molesting them in a San Francisco-area church rectory, for which he got off with an unbelievable slap on the wrist of three years probation in 1978. When his probation ended in 1981, Kiesle asked to leave the priesthood and the diocese submitted papers to Rome to defrock him. Oakland’s then bishop John Cummins wrote to Ratzinger in 1982, saying “It is my conviction that there would be no scandal if this petition were granted and that as a matter of fact, given the nature of the case, there might be greater scandal to the community if Father Kiesle were allowed to return to the active ministry.” Ratzinger’s response?

In the November 1985 letter, Ratzinger says the arguments for removing Kiesle are of “grave significance” but added that such actions required very careful review and more time. He also urged the bishop to provide Kiesle with “as much paternal care as possible” while awaiting the decision, according to a translation for AP by Professor Thomas Habinek, chairman of the University of Southern California Classics Department.

But the future pope also noted that any decision to defrock Kiesle must take into account the “good of the universal church” and the “detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke within the community of Christ’s faithful, particularly considering the young age.” Kiesle was 38 at the time.

Stephen Kiesel in 2002, after having been arrested for molesting three girls thirty years earlier.

Kiesle had just been ordained in 1972, which means that he must have been tying up and molesting children right out of the gate. This article from 2002 indicates that he had been accused of molesting girls “thirty years ago.” It also gives you an idea about how notorious this guy was. Police suspected he was responsible for the abduction of Amber Swartz-Garcia in 1998 from her Pinole, CA home, as well as the abductions of three other missing girls. Police searched the home Kiesle shared with his wife in Truckee, but found no evidence in that case. (Another convicted felon later confessed to Amber’s killing.)

That same year however, he was arrested and charged with thirteen counts of molestation after three women came forward to accuse him of abusing them while serving in a parish in Fremont in the 1970s. This appears to have been the “thirty years ago” allegations mentioned earlier. All but two of those charges were thrown out after the US Supreme Court found California’s law extending the statute of limitations unconstitutional, but I haven’t been able to find out what happened with the remaining two charges. In 2003, he and the diocese were sued by seven women who said they were abused at St. Paula’s church in during the 1970s.  He was sentenced in 2004 to six years in state prison after pleading no contest to molesting a young girl in 1995 at his Truckee home.

But the well-founded fear that Kiesel would go on molesting more children wasn’t Ratzinger’s greatest concern, it was the fear of bad publicity that led to him arguing for further delay after already delaying for three years. This, despite Kiesle asking to be defrocked, and his bishop all but begging that Ratzinger laicize him, saying that Kiesle would be a threat to children if he remained in the priesthood.

But Cummins isn’t exactly the hero in all of this. While he was warning Ratzinger that Kiesle was a danger to children, what did he do?

As Kiesle’s fate was being weighed in Rome, the priest returned to suburban Pinole to volunteer as a youth minister at St. Joseph Church, where he had served as associate pastor from 1972 to 1975. [Emphasis mine]

And it gets worse.

Kiesle continued to volunteer with children, according to Maurine Behrend, who worked in the Oakland diocese’s youth ministry office in the 1980s. After learning of his history, Behrend complained to church officials. When nothing was done she wrote a letter, which she showed to the AP.

“Obviously nothing has been done after EIGHT months of repeated notifications,” she wrote. “How are we supposed to have confidence in the system when nothing is done? A simple phone call to the pastor from the bishop is all it would take.”

She eventually confronted Cummins at a confirmation and Kiesle was gone a short time later, Behrend said.

[Update: Behrend’s 1988 letter complaining about Keisle’s working with youth is available online here.]

Kiesle was no longer a priest by 1987, although documents reviewed by the AP don’t show how, when or why he was laicized. The AP has constructed a complete timeline of the Kiesle case. Another timeline is available at BishopAccountability.org.

Westboro Baptist Is So Extreme…

Even the Klan wants it known that they don’t want anything to do with them. Meanwhile, Nate Phelps, the estranged son of Westboro Baptist founder and patriarch Fred Phelps, sat for a half-hour interview in Canada a few weeks ago:

WSJ: Should Employers Out Themselves To Job Applicants

The economy is in the dumps, but job losses have slowed significantly, and the recent jobs report indicates a very modest increase in hiring. But there are still a lot of unemployed workers chasing too few jobs. The Wall Street Journal poses a question worth discussing: Should Gay Owners Out Themselves? My immediate answer was absolutely not; just as it’s none of the employer’s business to ask the applicant’s sexual orientation, the same principle should apply in reverse. This seemed like a no-brainer to me, but some gay employers have found some gray area in that thinking.

CNN’s Kyra Phillips: Richard Cohen Not Appropriate Guest for “Cure the Gays” Segment

Earlier this week, CNN’s Kyra Phillips had a bizarre segment questioning whether Homosexuality was “a problem in need of a cure,” and she compounded that bizarreness by inviting none other than ex-gay gafly Richard Cohen on the program as the supposed ex-gay “expert” on the subject. Phillips introduced him as a “psychotherapist” even though he was banned for life by the American Counseling Association in 2002 for multiple ethical violations. He now serves as a “coach” and sells ex-gay therapy “certifications” through his web site.

Phillips responded to the inevitable outcry and ridicule over this serious journalistic misstep yesterday, by hosting another segment, this time by Dr. Clinton Anderson of the American Psychological Association to counter the Cohen’s arguments. She also complained about the response her earlier segment generated:

“Richard Cohen was not the most appropriate guest to have on, but it is a decision that we made and the result of that is our continued discussion today. That is what journalism is all about. And we will continue to do our best to discuss gay and lesbian issues in a fair way on this program. I wish that all of you knew my heart. And as a journalist with a long track record of covering gay and lesbian issues, I wish that those of you who sent me vicious emails watched my newscast more often because if they did, my guess is they would not have been so quick to send such hateful messages. They don’t know my record and my unswerving support for all communities in the battle for human rights, including gays, lesbians, and transgendered individuals. And to make it perfectly clear, I love debating issues. It evokes passion but if we cannot treat each other in a civil manner, even when we disagree, then we will never move forward and have a world where all people are treated with the respect that they deserve.”