Box Turtle Bulletin

Iraq Anti-Gay Torture, Murders Continue

We reported earlier about that at least 25 men who were suspected of being gay have been murdered in Baghdad’s Shi’ite enclave of Sadr City. Most of those murdered have the hallmarks of an honor killing by members of the men’s clans. That campaign is continuing, according to the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC):

…[A]n Iraqi group identified as “Fazilat” (Virtue) posted flyers threatening homosexuals with death on walls in the Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad. The flyers, distributed on April 17, list the names of some of the would-be targets and states that “we will soon punish all you perverts.” Residents of Sadr City say the people who were outed in these fliers have gone into hiding.

The IGLHRC has written a letter to the Iraqi Minister of Human Rights, Wijdan Salim, asking for protection of Iraq’s LGBT population. Amnesty International is writing to Iraq President Nouri al-Maliki, demanding “urgent and concerted action” to stop the killings.

An Arab news source reports that an Iraqi LGBT activist alleges Iraqi militia groups have devised a particularly gruesome torture involving a very strong glue:

According to her, the new substance “is known as the Ameri gum, which is an Iranian-manufactured glue that if applied to the skin, sticks to it and can only be removed by surgery. After they glue the anuses of homosexuals, they give them a drink that causes diarrhea. Since the anus is closed, the diarrhea causes death. Videos of this form of torture are being distributed on mobile cellphones in Iraq.”

The source reports that sixty-three have been tortured in this way. Some survived after being treated, but others were taken to hospitals which refused treatment. She also said that Sunni’s are also answering calls from religious leaders for the “eradication” of LGBT people from Iraq.

Here in the U.S., Congressman Jared Polis (D-Co) has asked the US State Department to investigate. He had recently returned from a visit to Baghdad where he brought up the killings with the chargé d’affaires, including allegations that the Iraqi government is complicit in some of the killings.

According to Polis, the Iraqi governenment has arrested five or six members of the advocacy group Iraqi LGBT. One reportedly has escaped custody and one has been executed. Polis describes these “egregious human rights violations” as being carried out with the sanction of the “highest levels of the Iraqi government.”

Senegal Court Frees Nine Men Convicted Of Homosexuality

Last January we reported on nine men who were sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of engaging in an “unnatural act.” Those men were ordered free last Monday by a Dakar appeals court. According to Biram Sassoum Sy, the lead lawyer for the defense, the nine have been completely cleared and the case has been dropped.

Most of the defendants worked for HIV/AIDS programs targeting men who have sex with men. They were arrested at the home of a prominent gay activist in December without warrants, and police elicited confessions after mistreatment, according to the group’s lawyers. Senegalese law provides for a five year prison sentence on conviction of homosexual acts, but the court piled on an additional three years for “criminal association.”

The conspiracy charge appears to be related to their work with AIDES Senegal. The men were arrested only days after Senegal hosted the 15th International Conference on AIDS and STIs. This conviction has had a deep chilling effect among all HIV/AIDS workers in Senegal.

Anti-Gay Slavs Voted Out of Student Government in Sacramento Community College

In October, the student government of American River College in Sacramento endorsed Proposion 8. It was the only student government association in the state to do so. This engendered a recall effort but most students didn’t bother to vote and the anti-gay students remained in power.

We learned that these students were a coalition of five Slavic students associated with the virulently homophobic evangelical movement in Sacramento and three Mormon students who had joined forces to turn out voting blocks and advance socially conservative positions through student government. And their anti-gay activism was not limited to Proposition 8.

Last Friday the Sacramento Bee reported:

Student leaders at American River College passed a resolution Thursday opposing today’s nationally organized demonstration in support of gay rights.

The resolution asserts that “the Day of Silence has been used to silence and harass religious students at local public schools for expressing their viewpoints,” and instead calls for a “peaceful discussion of controversial issues instead of intimidation and censorship of opposing viewpoints.”

That may just have been too much for the students at American River College. They may have become too embarrassed about representatives that seemed anti-gay, anti-science, and anti-culture and they have voted the religious coalition out of office.

In elections held Wednesday and Thursday, American River College students ousted several conservative council members in favor of a slate that said it wanted the student government to stop focusing on divisive social issues.

Fourteen of 17 student representatives elected are part of the “ARC Students for Change” slate, including David Fisher, who won as student association president.

Congratulations to Fisher and his alliance of students.

Marriage Equality Bills Introduced in New York

From Politics on the Hudson:

The Senate bill, sponsored by Sen. Thomas Duane, D-Manhattan, has 18 Democratic co-sponsors: Adams, Breslin, Dilan, Espada, Craig Johnson, Klein, Krueger, Montgomery, Oppenheimer, Parker, Perkins, Savino, Schneiderman, Serrano, Squadron, Stavisky, Stewart-Cousins and Thompson.

It will need 32 votes in the Senate.

The Assembly bill, sponsored by Assemblyman Daniel O\’Donnell, D-Manhattan, has more, 53: Gottfried, Glick, Titone, Kellner, Silver, Bing, Rosenthal, Jeffries, Dinowitz, John, Kavanagh, DenDekker, Schimel, Sayward, Alessi, Aubry, Boyland, Bradley, Brennan, Brodsky, Cahill, Cook, Duprey, Eddington, Englebright, Farrell, Fields, Gianaris, Hevesi, Hoyt, Jaffee, Lancman, Latimer, Lavine, Lentol, Lifton, Lopez V, Lupardo, McEneny, Millman, Nolan, Ortiz, Paulin, Peralta, Pretlow, Rivera J, Rivera N, Sweeney, Towns, Weisenberg, Weprin, Wright, Zebrowski.

The Assembly bill is expected to pass easily. Current opinion is that the Senate bill will require the support of at least four Republicans and is far less certain.

Mother of Bullying Victim Speaks Out

Sirdeaner Walker’s 11-year-old son, Carl Walker-Hoover, recently took his own life after having been continually harassed with anti-gay taunts. Yesterday, Sirdeaner appeared on Ellen DeGeneres’ show to tell her story and to plead for an end to bullying.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJJF7d2gatc

Uganda Anti-Gay Activists March, “Storm Parliament”

The Daily Monitor of Uganda has this report on a march by local anti-gay activists held on Tuesday:

Anti-gay mobs demonstrating in Kampala, Uganda (Joseph Kiggundu/Daily Monitor)

Activists against homosexuality in Uganda stormed parliament on Tuesday protesting against the practice and demanded a probe into the practice in the country.

The activists who were holding banners denouncing the activity were led by the Family Life Network in conjunction with religious leaders.

The groups led by the Executive Director of Family Life Network, Mr Stephen Langa while handing over their petition to the Deputy Speaker, Ms Rebecca Kadaga said the Parliamentary select committee should also assess the extent of the damage homosexuality has caused to children and Ugandans.

…Mr Langa said the homosexuals under the group Sexual Minorities Uganda spend huge sums of money to recruit University students and those in secondary schools into homosexuality. They did not give details.

Another Uganda news outlet, UGPulse, reported that Deputy Speaker Kadaga “promised to push for the amendment of Article 31 of the Constitution which prohibits homosexual marriages. Langa had earlier noted that the article prohibits gay marriages but not the actions.”The Daily Monitor’s article indicates that the group explained that they wanted the proposed amendment to be broadened to “openly prohibit homosexuality, bisexuality, transsexuality and other related practices.” According to some reports, there are moves afoot to make merely being gay a crime.

April 19, 2009 edition of Uganda\’s Red Pepper (Scans via GayUganda. Names and faces obscured by Box Turtle Bulletin. Click to enlarge).

The anonymous blogger GayUganda reports that the demonstration began at Makerere University, the principle university in Kampala. Makerere University serves as host to pastor Martin Ssempa’s weekly anti-gay talks known as “Prime Time.” From Makerere University, the march worked its way through Kampala to the Parliament building. Portions of the march were carried on local Ugandan television.

This march follows Sunday’s full-page article in the gossip tabloid The Red Pepper, which provided first names and other identifying features of more than fifty gays and lesbians in Uganda. Identifying features included places of residences, employers, partners’ names, and types of cars driven. The article does not appear on The Red Pepper’s web site. The Red Pepper promises another round of public outings next Sunday.

The same tabloid gained notoriety for conducting a similar public outing campaign in 2007. That campaign led to mob assaults, arrests, extra-judicial punishment, and drove some LGBT Ugandans into hiding or exile.

This year’s anti-gay campaign traces its origins to a March 3-5 conference held in Kampala featuring three American anti-gay activists. Conference speakers included Exodus board president Don Schmierer, Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively, and purported raiser-of-the-dead and Richard Cohen protegé Caleb Lee Brundidge.

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

Gay student dismissed from Cornell Christian group

A maelstrom of controversy has erupted at Cornell University, where Chris Donohoe was dismissed from a leadership position at Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship after he came out as gay. The fellowship receives university funding and is headed by pastors Matt and Tracy Herman, who ultimately forced Donohoe out.

Yesterday, the Student Assembly, which doles out funds to campus organizations, suspended funding for the organization and called for an investigation into the incident. Chi Alpha is subject to Cornell’s nondiscrimination policy, which covers sexual orientation and gender identity. 

The Cornell Daily Sun published a wonderful editorial about it:

Those in Chi Alpha would say they gave Chris a choice to reject his sexual orientation and embrace god, or to embrace himself and reject the scripture. But no one at Cornell should be forced to make this choice — to deny who they are in order to gain acceptance from their peers. The University must monitor the role of religion on this campus and ensure that such discrimination does not occur.

Antigay responses to the incident have been typical: 1) the university in infringing on religious liberty 2) why aren’t gays tolerant of intolerance toward them?

In the same way that antigay religious groups argue that they have a right to assemble and set standards, the university has the right to do so as well. And because the religious organization operates under the auspices of the university, Cornell can impose restrictions on what the organization can do. In this case, the restriction is that no organization can discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. 

This rhetoric might sound conservative, but tolerating antigay views does not mean one has to accept them. Chi Alpha’s actions deserve excoriation; they are an embarrassment to the university. Outside the university’s purview it may be legal, albeit immoral, to kick someone out of an organization for being gay, but it seems that antigay activists view any criticism of their actions as an infringement on their religious liberty. Freedom of religion and freedom of speech do not grant immunity from criticism.

Brazil’s Gay Advocates Say LGBT Murders Up 55%

The Brazilian advocacy organization Grupo Gay da Bahia (GGB) has issued its Annual Report on Murders of Homosexuals for 2008. By combing through media reports, the GGB believes that 190 LGBT people were killed in Brazil in 2008.

Because the report relies in reports from the news media, it’s unclear how accurate these statistics really are. But if they are at all accurate, this would that one LGBT person is killed approximately every two days. It would also mean that LGBT murders were up 55% over 2007. While this report cannot be taken as definitive, it nevertheless gives a glimpse into the magnitude of the problem.

According to the report, 64% percent of the victims were gay men, 32 percent were transvestites, and four percent were lesbians. With this data, the GGB believes that “a transvestite is 259 times more likely to be murdered than a gay man.” The violence is concentrated in poorer areas, where economic conditions lure many victims into sex work, which makes them more vulnerable to violence. The state of Pernambuco in Brazil’s impoverished northeast was singled out as being the most violent. According to the report, “A gay ‘nordestino\’ (northeasterner) faces an 84 percent greater risk of being killed than a gay man in the south or southeast.”

New Hampshire Senate Judiciary Opposes Marriage Equality

From the Boston Globe:

The state Senate’s Judiciary Committee has recommended that the Legislature reject legalizing gay marriage in New Hampshire.

The committee voted 3-2 Thursday against a bill that passed the House last month. Committee Chairwoman Deborah Reynolds, a Democrat, said she doesn’t think New Hampshire is ready for gay marriage. Republicans who voted against it said marriage is an institution created and defined by God as between one man and one woman.

New Hampshire Republicans have clearly never cracked the bindings of a Bible. I’m hard pressed to think of a single Biblical hero who actually was in a traditional marriage. Most had more than “one woman”, some married their siblings, some married total strangers, some had children with slaves, some were eunuchs, some eschewed marriage altogether, and some married prostitutes.

I Agree with the National Organization for Marriage

The State of Connecticut has enacted law to formalize the State Supreme Court’s decision which legalized same-sex marriage. At the last minute they accepted amendments which would codify the constitutional rights of religions to reserve recognition to those marriages of which they approve.

In response, the National Organization for Marriage, that wacky group of storm-fearers, released the following press release.

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) applauds the Connecticut legislature which, in a surprise move today, adopted substantive religious liberty protections as part of what was expected to be a routine bill implementing the Connecticut court decision ordering same-sex marriage.

I agree with this paragraph. *

The language adopted by the State of Connecticut seems reasonable to me. It exempts churches, religious societies and other religious non-profits from “services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods or privileges” if the refusal is based on their objection to a marriage which is “in violation of their religious beliefs and faith”. It also exempts religious fraternal benefit societies (eg. the Knights of Columbus) to deny membership and insurance benefits. The third provision would exempt religious organizations from recognizing marriages for purposes of adoption, foster care and other social services provided that they don’t receive public funds for those services.

I have no objection to these provisions and I dare say that most gay folk are just fine with them as well. In fact, I don’t see them as any additional protection than was already guaranteed by the US Constitution.

If anti-gays wanted to drop all of their campaigns against marriage equality, in exchange I’d happily support language that redundantly gives their churches and religious organizations the same protections that they’ve always had. I’d make that deal in a second.

But I wonder why Maggie and crowd are so excited. This language, if adopted, would entirely neuter some of her scare stories. She can’t wail about church groups in New Jersey or Catholic Charities in Massachusetts if the proposed laws exempt these organizations. **

Were all states considering marriage to use this language, Maggie would no longer be able to claim that religious freedoms are impacted and would instead be forced to argue her real objections to civil equality: religious arrogance and personal animus.

– – –

* Of course the rest of the release is full of nonsense including the notion that there is “serious potential implications of same-sex marriage for traditional faith communities” and implying that supporters of marriage equality had previously lacked “willingness to accept broad conscience protections.” But we don’t really expect Maggie to be truthful, now do we?

** Ironically, Catholic Charities would not be exempted because they took state money for their adoption program.

The text of the amendment is below the break

Presbyterians Down to the Wire

The various presbyteries of the Presbyterian Church (USA) are voting on whether to ratify a change in position that would allow gays and lesbians to become pastors and elders.

The church has a total of 173 presbyteries and of them 154 have now voted. The tally now stands at 68 yes to 86 no. If even one of the remaining 19 bodies votes to oppose the change, it will fail.

While it is likely that the PCUSA will not accept gay pastors with this vote, this is a significant improvement over the last time the change was presented, and the very close outcome holds promises for the future.

New Jersey Still Likes Marriage

The latest poll of New Jersey voters finds them liking the idea

The Quinnipiac University Poll results are similar to a Monmouth University poll in February.

This poll finds 49 percent supporting gay marriage; 43 percent are opposed. Women and whites tend to favor a gay marriage law, while blacks, men and those who attend religious services weekly are more likely to oppose it.

Masters and Johnson Gay “Cures” Were Faked

Ex-gay groups are on the constant lookout for data to bolster their claims that efforts to change sexual orientation can be successful. One study which has been a cornerstone for ex-gay therapists’ claims was the book, Homosexuality in Perspective, by William Masters and Virginia Johnson. That 1979 book purportedly presented the results of a 14-year study of 300 gay men and women who underwent a particularly intensive course of treatment lasting two-weeks. That’s right, only two weeks!  And those two weeks must have been pretty intense, because Masters and Johnson claimed some pretty astounding results: a better than 70% success rate.

That was in 1979. Now let’s fast forward thirty years. Biographer Thomas Maier was looking into the Masters and Johnson data for his new book Masters of Sex, and he encountered considerable evidence that the data had been faked:

When the clinic’s top associate, Robert Kolodny, asked to see the files and to hear the tape-recordings of these “storybook” cases, Masters refused to show them to him. Kolodny — who had never seen any conversion cases himself — began to suspect some, if not all, of the conversion cases were not entirely true. When he pressed Masters, it became ever clearer to him that these were at best composite case studies made into single ideal narratives, and at worst they were fabricated.

Eventually Kolodny approached Virginia Johnson privately to express his alarm. She, too, held similar suspicions about Masters’ conversion theory, though publicly she supported him. The prospect of public embarrassment, of being exposed as a fraud, greatly upset Johnson, a self-educated therapist who didn’t have a college degree and depended largely on her husband’s medical expertise.

With Johnson’s approval, Kolodny spoke to their publisher about a delay, but it came too late in the process. “That was a bad book,” Johnson recalled decades later. Johnson said she favored a rewriting and revision of the whole book “to fit within the existing [medical] literature,” and feared that Bill simply didn’t know what he was talking about. At worst, she said, “Bill was being creative in those days” in the compiling of the “gay conversion” case studies.

“Being creative” is a very polite way of saying the presumably scientific data wasn’t all that scientific. But the best evidence we have that the data was bad is this: You can bet your ex-gay dollar that if anyone offered this kind of success with a two-week course of treatment, NARTH and Exodus would be all over it like sequins on a drag queen. Any treatment program with that kind of success rate would have been adopted by therapists around the world, with countless ensuing opportunities to replicate these findings.

But guess what? Neither Exodus nor NARTH, which have the greatest motivation to repeat Masters and Johnson’s amazing performance, have never tried to offer a two-week intensive course of treatment. And more significantly, the Masters and Johnson findings have never been replicated in the thirty years since the book came out. Not by NARTH, Exodus, or anyone else.

Virginia Johnson was right. It is “a bad book.”

And yet, the Masters and Johnson book is referenced in twenty-two individual documents and web pagesat NARTH’s website, and there are seven referencesat Exodus. The Masters and Johnson success figures are also touted at Love Won Out conferences put on by Exodus and Focus On the Family. BTB’s Timothy Kincaid has several more examples of how Ex-gays used Masters and Johnson’s book.

But like much of the “science” we see which ex-gay proponents claim as supporting their work, this too is falling like a house of cards.

Anti-Gays Rely on Masters and Johnson

William Masters and Virginia E. Johnson were sex researcher in the 60’s through 90’s. Their books Human Sexual Response in 1966 and Human Sexual Inadequacy in 1970 were considered classics that broke through misconceptions and myths about human sexuality.

But unlike their predecessor, Alfred Kinsey, they are not hated and reviled by anti-gay activists. Because in 1979 they released Homosexuality in Perspective, in which they claimed that homosexuality could in most cases be cured. And this is a claim very much treasured by those who seek to deny rights and equality to gay citizens.

For example, Thomas E. Schmidt writes in his article Homosexual Causation: Nature or Nurture? hosted on the Exodus International website:

W. Masters and V. Johnson conducted a study of fifty-four men and thirteen women who expressed a desire to convert or revert to a heterosexual orientation. Therapists chose candidates for their apparently high degree of motivation and for their accompaniment by an understanding opposite-sex partner who could serve as a support during the transition period. The treatment format consisted of an intensive two-week program followed by periodic follow-up over a five-year period. The client couple worked with a man-woman therapy team who focused on nonjudgmental identification and explanation of the influences that had led to the client’s homosexual behavior.

The therapists then worked to reduce these influences within the context of the clients’ value system and to encourage heterosexual function on the part of the client couple. About 20 percent failed during the initial treatment period, but the five-year follow-up revealed no more than a 30-45 percent total failure rate, much lower than even Masters and Johnson had expected.

Such well known and respected names as Masters and Johnson lend great credibility to the insistence that homosexuality is not an orientation and can, indeed, be reversed. See how prominently NARTH displays their names.

Is homosexuality immutable? Is it fixed, or is it amenable to change? The 1973 decision to delete homosexuality from the diagnostic manual of the American Psychiatric Association had a chilling effect on research. The APA decision was not made based on new scientific evidence-in fact, as gay activist researcher Simon LeVay admitted, “Gay activism was clearly the force that propelled the APA to declassify homosexuality” (1996, p. 224).

In reviewing the research, Satinover reported a 52% success rate in the treatment of unwanted homosexual attraction. (Satinover, 1996, p. 186). Masters and Johnson, the famed sex researchers, reported 65% success rate after a five-year follow-up (Schwartz and Masters, 1984, pp. 173-184). Other professionals report success rates ranging from 30% to 70%.

And anti-gay gadflies Stephen Bennett and Peter LaBarbera hauled out a 1979 Time Magazine article about the book as evidence that “a permanent, or at least longterm, switch to heterosexuality is possible more than half the time among gays who are highly motivated to change.”

However, as time passed, other researchers were unable to duplicate Masters’ success.

A study conducted by conservative evangelical researchers Stanton Jones and Mark Yarhouse which sought to validate the reorientation efforts of Exodus International found that a change from homosexual orientation to heterosexual orientation was nowhere near 65%. They reported a “conversion” rate of 15% and defined conversion in such a way as to allow for roaming eyes, sex dreams, and other attributes that are not generally considered to be indicative of heterosexuality.

The study, while the best published to date, is fraught with problems including sample size, measurement and definition of change, comingling of retrospective and prospective samples, and lack of follow-up. At best it could be said that

Perhaps eleven percent of an nonrepresentative sample of 98 highly motivated gay people who went through Exodus programs reported that after four years there was “substantial reduction in homosexual desire and addition of heterosexual attraction and functioning”.

But even that statement is challenged by the fact that one of the eleven successes wrote to the study coordinators to inform them that he was not truthful with them and that he had no change in attraction at all. He simply wanted to tell them what all parties really wanted to be true.

So why then is it that the optimistic results of Masters and Johnson are not readily evident in later studies? After all, Masters was reporting success within the first two weeks.

Well new information suggests that the secret may not be the inferior methods of more current attempts. Rather, the fault may lie with the source.

For more information see Masters and Johnson Gay “Cures” Were Likely Faked

Nevada Senate Passes Domestic Partnerships

According to the Las Vegas Review Journal, the state Senate approved a bill allowing domestic partners most of the same rights as married couples. The bill now goes to the Assembly for approval before facing an anticipated veto from the Governor. Although the bill did not pass with a veto-proof majority, the bill’s sponsor is will work to get the support needed to overcome a veto. One interesting quote came from Senate Minority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno:

Raggio said that he has talked with friends who are domestic partners and that they said Parks’ bill goes too far. The rights they want and really need concern medical, inheritance and funeral decisions, he said.

I call bullpoop. While I do think couples did tell him that they need medical, inheritance and funeral decisions, I do not think that a single solitary gay couple encouraged him to vote against the bill because “it goes too far”.

And it’s time that news reporters stop letting these “my gay friends” claims go unchallenged. They are not credible and should not be treated as such.

It’s time for reporters to look the Senator in the eye and say, “Produce them, Raggio.”

UPDATE:

Sources in Nevada tell us that Raggio is scupulously honest. So if he says his gay friends told him it was “too far” then they probably did. They also pointed out that Raggio’s in his 80’s so his friends are probably from a different generation.

UPDATE 2:

We’ve heard from another Nevada source that challenges Raggio’s integrity. This source shares that Raggio has a history of anti-gay attitudes and that his “friends who are domestic partners” may well be fictional.

So again, we are back in a situation in which a politician uses nameless unspecified “friends” as evidence that his position is the correct one. Is he a truthful guy with old conservative friends or is he a shameless politician saying what he needs to say to support his agenda? Unless he trots his friends out, we’ll never know.

Why do we let them get away with this?