Box Turtle Bulletin

Happy Independence Day

The original “Star Spangled Banner”:

And the flag that inspired it:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin Announced Her Resignation — 23 Days from Now

Gov. Sarah Palin (Shawn Wilson/KTUU-DT)

She gave no reason as far as I could tell from her long, rambling speech — unless it had something to do with Seward’s Folly and Alaska being the air transport crossroads of the world. Her resignation doesn’t take effect until July 26. Something tells me that in the unpredictable realm of Palin-land, just about anything can and might happen in the next twenty-three days.

Ft. Worth Mayor Asks For Federal Review Of Rainbow Lounge Raid

While the Ft. Worth Fort Police Department and the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission continue their own internal investigations into Sunday morning’s raid on the Rainbow Lounge, Ft. Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief has asked acting U.S. Attorney James Jacks to independently review those investigations once they are completed.

Moncrief said, “I have confidence that Chief (Jeffrey) Halstead is leading a thorough and professional investigation,” but he wants to make sure that the department “has thoroughly and impartially carried out its obligation to all the citizens of Fort Worth.” He also encouraged the TABC to do the same. City spokesman Jason Lammers reiterated that the mayor’s action should not be taken as a sign of a lack of confidence on the police department’s ability to conduct fair investigation.

Heterosexual Menace: A Mom’s Novel Approach To Conflict Resolution Between Children

Maggie Gallagher, in reaction to the Frank Lombard case, admits that she is very mistrustful of men adopting children. “I have a bias in favor of mothers,” she writes. “I have a suspicion (let me be frank — I’m not proud, but it’s true) of men who want to get close to children while depriving them of mothers.” I guess when it comes to raising children, mothers really know best. We can all probably learn some valuable lessons from moms on raising children.

Like this dilemma every parent faces. What do you do when your nine-year-old child is in the middle of a long-running dispute with one of her classmates?

Well if you’re a licensed clinical social worker and a classroom mother at your daughter’s elementary school, you post a sexually suggestive ad in the “Casual Encounters” section of Craigist. And when throngs of sex-seeking men answer the ad, you give them the phone number of your child’s antagonist.

It just makes sense, right?

That’s what Margery Tannenbaum thought. She placed the ad with the headline of “Looking for a good time? W4M21” on Craiglist. The ad read, “I need a little affection. … I  am blonde and very cute! I’ll be waiting!”

Next thing you know her child’s arch-enemy’s mother had to field at least 50 calls from horny straight men in two days before changing her number. Tannenbaum also ordered at least eight magazine subscriptions, a book and a DVD to be sent to the child’s home.

Tannenbaum was arraigned on Thursday on charges of aggravated harassment and endangering the welfare of a child. Her defense lawyer — he’s probably straight too, but we haven’t confirmed that yet — called her a “good, hardworking professional.” He also says “this is being blown out of proportion.”

This is outrageous, so outrageous I think it calls for some LaBarbera-esqe typography. Heterosexuals will stop at nothing in their thirst for debauchery! If you think this latest example is beyond the pale, then I’ve got news for you: this barely scratches the surface. There\’s more heterosexual menace here and in our report, “The Heterosexual Agenda: Exposing the Myths.”

Update: News coverage of the Long Island mom accused of sending sex-crazed men to her daughter’s nine-year-old classmate is apparently lacking what some say is a key piece of information: the fact the alleged perpetrator is a heterosexual who lives with a “straight” man. Where\’s the media frenzy? Why do all these reports hide that important fact?

Okay, I’ll stop with the red ink. It makes my eyes hurt.

Uganda May Ban All LGBT Advocacy

Uganda Minister of Ethics and Integrity, Nsaba Buturo, speaking about the government's stand on homosexuality at a press conference on Wednesday. (Anna Batcheller/Daily Monitor)

Uganda’s Minister for Ethics and Integrity, James Nsaba Buturo, announced at a press conference on Wednesday that he would be submitting a bill before the Uganda Parliament to ban all forms of expression in support for LGBT people in that country:

He noted that once the Bill is passed into law, it will be an offence to publish and distribute literature on homosexuality or advocate for it. He also stated that it would become impossible for homosexuals to address press conferences and attract people to their cause, once the Bill becomes law. He, however, declined to reveal the penalties for offenders.

Buturo acknowledged that several donor organizations have asked for the elimination of that nation’s draconian anti-sodomy law. Many of those service organizations see the law as being a huge roadblock to their health and anti-HIV/AIDS efforts. Current law punishes homosexual acts with a lifetime sentence. Buturo was defiant against calls to ease these restrictions:

“I have been pressured by some donors to allow homosexuality, but I have told them they can keep their money and the homosexuality because it is not about charity at the expense of our moral destruction,” Mr Buturo said.

Mr Buturo said the homosexual forces are very powerful and operating through powerful governments to have their desire fulfilled but Uganda will not succumb to any pressure to legalise unnatural sex and homosexuality in particular.

Click here to see BTB\’s complete coverage of recent anti-gay developments in Uganda.

Times of India: Delhi Court Ruling Legalizing Homosexuality Binding Nationwide

The Times of India answers the question of whether the Delhi High Court ruling which “read down” Section 377 of the India Penal Code is binding nationwide:

Since a high court has a limited territorial jurisdiction, is homosexuality decriminalized only in Delhi or the whole country? Although legal pundits are divided on this, the law laid down by a 2004 SC judgment implies that homosexuals across the country may rest assured that they too are entitled to the benefits of the historic Delhi high court decision on Section 377 IPC.

In Kusum Ingots vs Union of India, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court had ruled: “An order passed on writ petition questioning the constitutionality of a Parliamentary Act, whether interim or final, will have effect throughout the territory of India subject of course to the applicability of the Act.”

Thursday’s Delhi High Court ruling touches on the constitutionality of an Act of Parliament in effect throughout the country like the one stuck down in Kusum Ingots vs Union of India, The Times concludes that this ruling is also binding nationwide. This makes the impact of this ruling staggering. With a population of over one billion people, seventeen percent of the world’s gays and lesbians have now been legalized in one fell swoop.

The case is expected to be appealed to India’s Supreme Court. Also according to The Times of India, the India government now appears unlikely to challenge the ruling to the Supreme Court.

[Hat tip: Rex Wockner]

Vaccine for HPV Effective in Men

Just ask any anti-gay activist and they’ll tell you: the gays get anal cancer!! In 1997 the anti-gay group Concerned Women for America, in support for their claim that “homosexuality is by its very nature dangerous to those who practice it”, declared

Homosexual men’s practice of anal sex has left many of them victims of anal cancer. One article in the New England Journal of Medicine commented, “Our study lends strong support to the hypothesis that homosexual behavior in men increases the risk of anal cancer: 21 of the 57 men with anal cancer (37 percent) reported that they were homosexual or bisexual, in contrast to only one of 64 controls.”

And even the CDC warns

Gay and bisexual men are 17 times more likely to develop anal cancer than heterosexual men.

You may find this surprising. Looking at your friends you may wonder, “Who has anal cancer here? Why are they keeping this a secret from me?”

Well fear not. Your friends aren’t lying to you. While anal cancer is far more frequent in gay men than heterosexuals (and even more common to HIV politive men), it is still very very rare – and about to become rarer still.

HPV, the human papillomavirus, is sexually transmitted and very common. According to the CDC, “Most sexually active people in the United States (U.S.) will have HPV at some time in their lives.”

Although the virus may never present symptoms, it’s most known for causing genital warts. At any given time 1% of sexually active men in the US have genital warts.

More seriously, a number of cancers have been shown to be associated with HPV including cervical cancer, penile cancer, and anal cancer. Each of these are fairly rare.

The rate of anal cancer in men is 9 out of 100,000. In gay men that rate soars to 35 out of 100,000.

Although 0.035% is hardly the sort of occurrance rathat argues that “homosexuality is by its very nature dangerous”, we should not dismiss or treat lightly the pain and misery brought about by this disease.

Fortunatly there is a vaccine for the type of HPV that causes cancers. It is nearly 100% effective in reducing infection in women. However, the vaccine has not yet been approved for use on men.

A new study may lend support to the vaccination of men as well. (xtra)

“The numbers right now look not quite as good as the girls\’ but still very, very good,” says Palefsky. “The vaccine was nearly 100 percent effective [in women] so you obviously can\’t do better than that.”

Palefsky says the vaccine would still make an effective preventative health tool for everyone because the same strains of HPV that cause most cervical cancers in women also cause a majority of anal cancers in men.

“They\’re entirely the same,” he says. “That\’s why we\’re optimistic that if boys do get vaccinated with the same vaccine that girls are using, it should prevent a substantial number of anal cancers.”

Conservatives have opposed the application of this vaccine for girls under the logic that it presumes that their little Suzy is going to be a promiscuous slut. And since they are good Christians kids wearing their purity ring they will never be exposed to a sexually transmitted virus. (In my experience, Christian kids tend to experience miracle babies – those who show up fully devoloped and health about seven months after a rapidly planned wedding.)

We can expect an even higher level of objection to vaccinating little Johnny who is undoubtedly going to give up his desire to be church organist when he grows up, develops an interest in sports, and marries a nice Christian girl.

But as a matter of policy, every child in the country should be vaccinated, regardless of sex. I care about Suzy and Johnny’s heath even if their parents do not.

FWPD Suspends Operations With State Agents After Rainbow Lounge Raid

Cell phone image of police arresting Chad Gibson after throwing him on the floor. (Dallas Voice)

The Ft. Worth Police Department is now trying to disentangle themselves from the mess they created when FWPD officers joined agents from the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission on their Sunday morning raid of the Rainbow Lounge. Already, Ft. Worth Police Chief Jeffrey Halstead has announced that Chad Gibson was injured with a severe head injury while in TABC custody. In fact, he was adamant that “They were not my employees,” even though a photo taken while Gibson was being handcuffed appears to show a Ft. Worth Police officer with three other officers holding Gibson down while he was being handcuffed. Now we learn that FWPD has sent out a press release announcing that it has suspended all operations with the TABC until the department gains a “better understanding” of the events surrounding the raid.

As I pointed out, the whole program of arresting individuals for Public Intoxication is a complete mess, as well as an open invitation for unchecked abuse with no accountability. It looks like FWPD is starting to see it the same way:

In an effort to establish ‘clearly defined roles and responsibilities’ of each organization, the chief will conduct meetings with TABC officials in the coming weeks. Halstead said the intent is to better serve the community in conducting inspections.  FWPD is also taking steps to ensure that multiculturalism training is provided to all police employees, specifically toward the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.

TABC Reassign Two Agents To Desk Duty

As many as 250 people attended a vigil for Chad Gibson Wednesday night at the Rainbow Lounge. (Chastity Kirven/Dallas Voice)

The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission has reassigned two agents involved with the raid on the Rainbow Lounge to desk duty pending an internal investigation. TABC also acknowledges that Chad Gibson’s head trauma occured while he was in their custody:

“I take seriously all allegations concerning inappropriate or illegal behavior by our employees. We have in the past, and we will in the future, take action against any employee found to have violated agency policy or the law,” TABC administrator Alan Steen said in a statement. “We are saddened that this incident occurred and extend our sincere hope that Mr. Gibson recovers quickly.”

Meanwhile, estimates range from 100 to 250 for the size of the crowd that gathered for a vigil for Chad Gibson outside the Rainbow Lounge in Fort Worth last night.

Delhi High Court: Homosexuality Is Not A Crime

Marchers at Delhi Pride Parade, 2008 (Sonali Gulati/Wockner News)

It appears that about seventeen percent of the world’s population of gay people are about to become legal. The Delhi High Cort “read down” section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, striking India’s law which criminalizes sex between consenting adults of the same gender. The court ruled that the law is a violation of fundamental human rights:

A bench of Chief Justice Ajit Prakash Shah and Justice S Muralidhar said that if not amended, section 377 of the IPC would violate Article 21 of the Indian constitution, which states that every citizen has equal opportunity of life and is equal before law.

The court said that this judgement will hold till Parliament chooses to amend the law.

“In our view Indian Constitutional law does not permit the statutory criminal law to be held captive by the popular misconception of who the LGBTs (lesbian gay bisexual transgender) are.

“It cannot be forgotten that discrimination is antithesis of equality and that it is the recognition of equality which will foster dignity of every individual,” the bench said in its 105-page judgement.

This ruling, which is being hailed as “India’s Stonewall” by India’s LGBT advocates, appears to be legally binding only in the Union Territory of Delhi over which the Delhi High Court has jurisdiction. But it is expected to become an important precedent for the rest of the country. It is also expected that opponents will appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court.

The ruling overturns a 148-year-old colonial law left over from the British Raj. Homosexual acts were punishable with a ten year prison sentence.

Texas Public Intoxication Law Is An Open Invitation For Abuse

Two Texas state legislators yesterday called for an independent investigation into the Rainbow Lounge raid by Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission and Ft. Worth police on Sunday morning. That raid resulted in Chad Gibson, 26, suffering a severe head injury while in TABC custody and landed him in Intensive Care. State Rep. Lon Burnam (D-FW) and state Sen. Wendy Davis (D-FW) met with TABC officials to discuss what happened.

Under Texas law, being intoxicated in public is a misdemeanor. Unlike in most states, it is against the law to be drunk, regardless of where you are or what you’re doing. You don’t have to be driving, fighting, or causing any other problems in order to be cited for Public Intoxication. And unlike drunk driving laws, Texas’ PI law doesn’t define what constitutes being drunk. This comes as a surprise to people who have been drinking but have a designated driver to take them home. Texas authorities have been taking full advantage of this ambiguous law, which is an open invitation for police abuse:

The TABC has been cracking down on public intoxication in bars and clubs because the law is on their side. According to the Texas penal code, public intoxication is when a person appears in a public place while intoxicated to the degree that the person may endanger the person or another. The law also says that a place licensed or permitted under the alcoholic beverage code is a public place.

So, what does ‘endanger’ mean?

Dallas defense attorney Toby Shook said the term is vague, at best. “You can arrest people on probable cause, but it’s very hard to prove that they are a danger to themselves or others,” said Shook.

Shook also believes that ‘public intoxications’ are sometimes issued to liberally. “If officers want to quell a situation, or if they get angry with people, they can be very quick to arrest them on PI,” he said.

TABC has been in trouble before over the open-ended nature of its PI enforcement. Their PI inspections program has been suspended twice since 2005 over eggregious abuse.

In April 2006 TABC announced that it was suspending its Sales to Intoxicated Persons (or SIPs) enforcement program, which sent undercover agents into bars. Originally intended to catch bartenders and servers who sold one (or two or three) too many drinks to clearly intoxicated patrons, SIPs operations instead ended up busting mostly drinkers. Between late 2005 and the spring of 2006, TABC issued more than 2,000 citations for public intoxication.

SIPs, which targeted bars based on DWI suspects\’ self-reported claims of where they\’d had their last drink before heading down the highway, was unpopular with taverns for obvious reasons. But it wasn\’t until an agent busted a woman drinking in an Irving hotel bar that the program blew up. Although TABC had touted SIPs as a public safety measure because it prevented DWIs, the woman had a room at the hotel that night — meaning she was headed nowhere.

The Irving sting made national news and TABC officials were hauled in front of legislators to explain the program. At the time Administrator Alan Steen emphasized his commitment to SIPs, however, today the program effectively has been shuttered permanently, said agency spokeswoman Carolyn Beck. While TABC occasionally conducts an isolated undercover investigation at a bar, she said, it is uncommon and targeted toward establishments with a clear record of proven infractions.

Clear record of proven infractions? Rainbow Lounge had only been open for less than a week. So far, neither Ft. Worth police nor TABC will answer questions about why the Rainbow Lounge was singled out for a raid on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall rebellion.

The whole process of conducting these so-called “inspections” is a complete mess. Earlier this month, a TABC agent was accused of sexual misconduct with a teenager who was assisting a sting operation by posing as an underage drinker. That supposedly resulted in a second suspension of the SIP program, despite the Rainbow Lounge’s raid just a few weeks later.

Not only is the law itself ill-defined, but the run rules for who has responsibility for what seems to be very unclear. For example, TABC has now acknowledged that Chad Gibson was injured while in their custody. Ft. Worth Police Chief Jeffrey Halstead added to that, saying “They were not my employees.”

Cell phone image of police arresting Chad Gibson after throwing him on the floor. (Dallas Voice)

And yet a cell-phone photo appears to show a Ft. Worth police officer with at least two TABC agents while they had Gibson pinned to the ground outside the men’s room. Look closely. On the left/center of the photo, you can see two officers in tan uniforms. Those are TABC agents. Between those two is a third officer in a dark uniform, which appears to be a Ft. Worth police officer. The gloved hand of a fourth officer can be seen just to the right of the bar patron watching them, but it’s unclear whether that hand belongs to a TABC agent or a police officer.

Everything about this suggests a program out of control, with no accountability, no definitions of responsibilities, no criteria for choosing targets, and no clear determination of what constitutes a violation of the Public Intoxication law. The law itself leaves to much to the discretion of an officer’s mood, temperment and biases. This entire program is an open invitation to unchecked abuse by authorities for whatever reason and needs to be put to an immediate halt.

Is Scott Lively’s “Pink Swastika” Kaput?

Not exactly. He’s made a career out of homophobia for nearly two decades now, but he now claims that he’s turning his attention to other matters:

With the June 17th publication of my final book on the homosexual issue, “Redeeming the Rainbow: A Christian Response to the ‘Gay’ Agenda,” I have completed 20 years of service as a front-lines opponent of the homosexual movement. “Redeeming the Rainbow,” which I have published as a free book in pdf format, encompasses all that I have learned through this long tour of duty and I believe there is little more that I could add on the issue.

As of now I am turning my attention to other interests and needs of the pro-family movement and will no longer be monitoring the day-to-day developments of the culture war regarding homosexuality as closely, nor posting stories about it to this site.

I somehow suspect that he’s not going very far. It’s only two paragraphs later when he reveals another update to his book, The Pink Swastika:

I have one last major project to complete on the homosexual issue, the publication of a 5th Edition of my book (co-authored with Jewish researcher Kevin E. Abrams) “The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party.” It will be published in a web-based, documentation-emphasized format. That project will begin soon and a link to it will be available on this page from the early stages, so that readers can follow its ongoing progress and make use of the facts and documentation in their own pro-family advocacy.

The Pink Swastika is Lively’s primary claim to fame. In it, he claims that Nazism was, at its core, a homosexual movement, and that the gay rights movement today is a barely-disguised update of Nazi ideology. He cites the Holocaust as but one example of the inevitable consequences of homosexuality gaining public prominence. His blatant historical revisionism has earned his Abiding Truth ministries a spot in one of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of twelve anti-gay hate groups.

So no, he’s not giving up his holocaust revisionism anytime soon. And since we will all get to see his “ongoing progress” with his online edition, I doubt he’ll leave it alone when he’s done.

Lively says he will continue to be available for conferences, seminars and the like, and I’m sure The Pink Swastika will continue to be the centerpiece of his talks. More recently, he took his Holocaust revisionism abroad with a three-day conference in Kampala, Uganda, where he peddled his wares alongside Exodus board member Don Schmierer. That conference called for the strengthening of Uganda’s anti-homosexuality law by adding the “option” of forced conversion therapy. Uganda’s law already provides for a life sentence. Lively’s book is now being used by Ugandan religious leaders to fuel an ongoing public campaign of vigilantism and police detentions and torture.

Meanwhile, Dr. Warren Throckmorton, an associate professor at the Christian-based Grove City College, has continued to add to his online series debunking The Pink Swastika. His latest installment is probably the most devastating, where Throckmorton catches Lively lying about his source information virtually red-handed. Throckmorton was joined in this endeavor by associate professor of history, Dr. Jon David Wyneken, whose Ph.D. is in modern German history with a focus on the period between 1933 and 1955. Together, they have undertaken a methodical exposé of Lively’s shoddy scholarship.

Throckmorton’s efforts seem to be having some effect. Leadership University, an online ministry affiliated with Campus Crusade for Christ, once proudly hosted a condensed outline of his Pink Swastika thesis. That article, “Homosexuality and the Nazi Party,” has recently been removed.

[Hat tip: Ex-gay Watch]

Don’t Ask, Don’t Live

A sailor, August Provost of Houston, Texas, was found dead at Camp Pendleton near San Diego at about 3:30 a.m. Tuesday. Sources say he was shot and burned, which lead authorities to believe that it was foul play. A “person of interest” is in custody. Some believe it wasn’t an ordinary murder, but a hate crime:

Ben Gomez, head of the San Diego chapter of American Veterans for Equal Rights, a national advocacy group for gay and lesbian military personnel, said he and other local activists believe Provost’s death was a hate crime. Citing unnamed sources with access to a report on the seaman’s death, Gomez said Provost was killed during an argument with another sailor over the victim’s sexual orientation. On his MySpace page, Provost made references to same-sex dating and identified another Houston man as “the love of my life.”

Zero Proof: Why Hasn’t FWPD Produced Evidence That Chad Gibson Was Drunk?

Update: Since this post went live, we now have a statement from Kristy Morgan, Chad Gibson’s sister:

Gibson’s sisters say her brother’s alcohol level was .2. “.08 is the legal limit. He was at .2. You have to be at .4 to have true alcohol poisoning and he was not close to that,” Morgan said.

So now we know Gibson was drunk, at more than twice the legal limit for intoxication, but well under the level for alcohol poisoning. So the next question is this: If someone is drunk, why would it take several police officers to wrestle a 160 lb young man to the ground? And why would it be necessary to slam him against a wall?

Blogging occurs in real time. We see things and gather information and get it out there when we can. When new information arrives, we need to acknowledge it and put it out there, even if (and especially when) it contradicts what we first understood to be true. There are still more answers the FWPD and TABC need to face, but this is an important piece of the puzzle.

I concluded the piece below with “the only plausible answer” in the absence of a critical piece of information. Now that we have that critical piece, there are now obviously other answers. I retract the conclusions I draw below. It is plausible that the symptoms officers observed were due either to his injuries or his level of intoxication.

But for the sake of transparency I will leave this post in place. That’s another component of blogging that I think is important: leave your errors out there, but have them duly noted. And in this post, I also believe the chronology is accurate based on eyewitness accounts, and that chronology is important in establishing culpability for Gibson’s injuries.

The Texas Alcoholic Beverages Commission and the Ft. Worth Police Department have some serious explaining to do.

They have accused Chad Gibson of two offenses in the media without providing a shred of evidence to back up either accusation. The first alleged offense, that Chad either groped or made a “sexually explicit movement,” we’ve dealt with before. Dan Savage put it best when he paraphrased Ft. Worth Police Chief Jeffery Halstead as effectively saying “that faggot had it coming.”

But the second alleged offense, that Gibson was literally falling-down drunk and exhibiting signs of alcohol poisoning is being put forward by both organizations with no evidence to back up their claims.

Before we look at what flimsy evidence they do have, let’s go to the online Merck Manual and compare their descriptions of severe head injury with severe alcoholic intoxication. First the severe head injury:

Severe Head Injury: People may have some of the same symptoms as occur with minor head injury. Some, such as headache, may be more severe. Also, symptoms often start with a period of unconsciousness that begins at the time of impact. How long people remain unconscious varies. Some people awaken in seconds, while others do not awaken for hours or even days. On awakening, people often are drowsy, confused, restless, or agitated. They may also vomit, have seizures, or both. Balance and coordination may be impaired. Depending on which area of the brain is damaged, the ability to think, control emotions, move, feel, speak, see, hear, and remember may be impaired—sometimes permanently. [Boldface emphasis mine.]

Now here’s their symptoms of alcohol intoxication:

• 20 to 50 mg/dL: Tranquility, mild sedation, some decrease in fine motor coordination, and some impairment of driving ability
• 50 to 100 mg/dL: Impaired judgment and a further decrease in coordination
• 100 to 150 mg/dL: Unsteady gait, slurred speech, loss of behavioral inhibitions, and memory impairment
• 150 to 300 mg/dL: Delirium and lethargy (likely)
• 300 to 400 mg/dL: Often unconsciousness
• ≥ 400 mg/dL: Possibly fatal

Vomiting is common with moderate to severe intoxication. Because people may be very drowsy, vomited material may enter the lungs (be aspirated), sometimes leading to pneumonia and death. Drinking large amounts can also cause low blood pressure and low blood sugar levels. [Boldface emphasis mine.]

Cell phone image of police arresting Chad Gibson after throwing him on the floor. (Dallas Voice)

Notice the overlap between the two. So what evidence do police have that Chad was showing symptoms of alcohol poisoning rather than a severe head injury? Is it this?

He was released to paramedics because of his extreme intoxication as he was repeatedly vomiting, police reported. [Boldface emphasis mine.]

Or Ft. Worth Police Chief Jeffrey Halstead’s statement on Monday Morning?

“In the police report, it was stated that he was handcuffed and he exhibited signs of over-intoxication, possible alcohol poisoning, and he fell face first,” Halstead said. “If there\’s an eyewitness to the contrary, then that is exactly the person we want to come forward to the Police Department.” [Boldface emphasis mine.]

Or the TABC’s statement?

At the Rainbow Lounge, TABC agents placed one individual under arrest, Chad Gibson who was injured while in the agents’ custody. Mr. Gibson was released to paramedics for treatment of alcohol poisoning and a head injury and transported to a local hospital.

Is that all the evidence they have? All they saw was that he vomited and fell.

I’m calling bullshit on this. People aren’t charged with drunk driving because they were weaving. They may be pulled over for it, but they are arrested and charged when they fail a legitimate test indicating blood-alcohol levels are above the legal limit. And when we read a news report of a traffic accident involving drunk driving, there is always some mention of blood-alcohol levels to substantiate the charge.

So if they are so convinced that Chad Gibson was falling down drunk, where’s his blood-alcohol level? Did the police or TABC even run a test on Chad? If so, why haven’t either of them released the figure?

Let’s reconstruct what really happened. Here’s our first eyewitness:

Club Manager Randy Norman said Gibson didn\’t seem drunk and was walking from the men\’s room, holding a bottle of water, when an officer pushed him against a wall and then pushed him to the ground. Some patrons said they heard Gibson ask the officer a question, but that he didn\’t fight back. At least three officers were involved in handcuffing him.

Kayla Lane, a visitor from California, has a slightly different memory of where he was handcuffed, but she also reports seeing someone pulled to the ground who wasn’t drunk:

After this, we saw the policemen go into the men\’s restroom, pull out at least two guys from handcuffs from there, and pull one onto the ground before forcefully removing him. What were they doing in there? Raucously disposing of their waste?! There was no reason for ANY of those arrests, at all. These people were NOT drunk, or even overly happy or silly.

We do know however that he was forcefully slammed against a wall:

“The first question I heard was, ‘How much have you had to drink?\'” said Shane Wells, a dancer at the club. Gibson “said, ‘I don\’t have to answer that question\’ and they grabbed him and ran him against that little wall.\'”

And then, according to Chuck Potter, Chad was very brutally thrown to the ground:

Chuck reported that Chad Gibson (who ended up in the Intensive Care Unit at John Peter smith Hospital because of his treatment) was tapped on the shoulder and told he was under arrest. When he asked why he was slammed against the wall, his head was pulled back so far that Chuck was worried that his neck might break. When they released him for a second, Chad tried to catch his breath and staggered as he did so. The police then slammed him to the ground and 5 cops were on top of him. A friend who was at a higher vantage point in the bar saw one cop with his foot on Chad\’s neck on the floor.

Justin McCarty was working security at the Rainbow Lounge that night and he also saw what happened:

McCarty said that he saw officers throw Chad Gibson to the floor, adding that, “There were people standing there watching it happen and crying. They were scared. It was just brutal.”

So did Alison Egert:

It was shortly after that conversation, Egert said, that she saw a patron in the bar “thrown against the wall” and then pushed to the floor. (That man was later identified as Chad Gibson.)

“Here you had this gay man who looked like he weighed about 100 pounds thrown to the floor with six cops on top of him,” she said. “That\’s when I started noticing that they were only arresting men, and they seemed to be targeting the smaller men.”

Another witness, Chris Hightower, told WFAA-TV that he saw Chad hit his head against the concrete step into the men’s room:

They spun him around this way and laid him out on the ground, and that’s when he hit his head on this step and got the head injury.

Floor and step at the Rainbow Lounge where Chad Gibson was thrown. (WFAA-TV)

That’s a very solid brick floor and sharp step for Chad to be thrown onto.

TABC now say that after they took him outside, he fell again and that’s when he received his head injury. They’re clinging to that story so they can claim he was showing signs of “alcohol poisoning”  before he fell outside. And maybe he really did fall again outside; we don’t have any witnesses who said he didn’t. But if he did, it could very easily be because of his loss of balance due to the injury he sustained when his head hit the wall, the brick floor and/or the step.

TABC and FWPD are sticking to the “alcohol poisoning” excuse even though others in the bar didn’t even think he was tipsy. That’s a huge discrepancy. Someone on the verge of alcohol poisoning would look quite a bit more than  “overly happy or silly,” don’t you think?

Nobody has come forward with any convincing evidence that he was actually drunk, but what we do have is convincing evidence that he sustained a severe head injury, because that’s what he’s been in intensive care for since Sunday.

The only way this all comes together is that Chad was injured when he was thrown to the ground outside the men’s room. Given the large number of witnesses who describe that scenario, that looks like the only plausible answer. Unless, of course, TABC or FWPD can produce results from a blood-alcohol test. And they better do that fast or retract their statements. Otherwise, nothing they say or do will have any credibility.

Ex-Gay Question to be Central to Federal Lawsuit

In Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the federal lawsuit by Ted Olson and David Boies to overturn Proposition 8, the judge has decided against placing a hold on Prop 8 and instead is opting for a swift consideration. This is the position that was requested by Gov. Schwarzenegger and Atty. Gen. Brown; they felt that placing a hold would lend to confusion for all parties.

An article in the San Francisco Chronicle reveals that Olson and Boies will be relying on the precident set by Romer v. Evans in which the US Supreme Court determined that states cannot deny rights to gay people as a class based solely on animus.

The attorneys behind the challenge to California’s Proposition 8 plan to argue during a pretrial hearing Thursday that by stripping gays of the right to wed, the voter-approved ban runs afoul of America’s founding framework in the same way — and for the same reason.

“Romer is a strikingly similar situation to what we have here. You had a ballot initiative, a majority vote of the people, taking away a right,” said Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., a member of the legal team led by former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson and veteran trial lawyer David Boies. “And there was no justification or rationale other than disapproval by that majority of that group.”

This case also will ask a question that is at the core of all civil rights legal issues: are gay people really a distinct group of people. Or, in other words, is sexuality immutable.

U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker on Tuesday issued a tentative order to fast-track the case in his San Francisco court.

Among the questions he said he wants covered at trial are whether sexual orientation is unchangeable, if permitting same-sex marriage “destabilizes” traditional unions and whether Proposition 8’s ballot history demonstrates the measure had “discriminatory intent.”

There is little doubt that ex-gays and ex-gay groups will testify before court. And there is little doubt that they will claim “change”.

However, will they be truthful? Will they admit that “change” is only in perspective, in behavior, in identity, but not in attractions?

Sadly, the history of ex-gay activists suggests that they will seek to confuse the court and to leave the impression that orientation can be “overcome through the power of Jesus Christ”. I hope I’m wrong.