Box Turtle Bulletin

Life Expectancy With HIV Closer To Normal

New research published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association demonstrates that the life expectancy of people with HIV is now approaching those who are not infected.

A team of British researchers lead by Kholoud Porter constructed a database consisting of 16,534 individuals whose date of HIV infection is known with different degrees of accuracy assigned. Researchers discovered that mortality due to HIV/AIDS is now 94% lower than it was before 1996. That was the year in which the multi-drug Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy (HAART, or the “AIDS Cocktail”) became available.

Excluding those who are infected due to injected drug use, people today who are under 45 years of age when infected with HIV experience an excess mortality rate of less than 1% during the first five years after infection. That excess mortality rate rises to approximately 2.4% to 7% fifteen years after infection.

The results are not as good for those who are above the age of 45 when infected. People in that age group experience a 1.5% greater mortality rate than the overall population during the first five years after infection. That morality rate rises to 11.9% at the fifteen year mark.

Porter commented to Reuters on the study’s results:

“This is looking really good that life expectancies are becoming close to the uninfected population,” said Porter, an epidemiologist. “It also underscores the importance that people are identified and treated early.”

Anti-gay activists often try to claim that being gay shaves 20 years off the life of a gay man. Nazi apologist Paul Cameron has been claiming that for years, returning to that theme again just last year in a move that earned him condemnation from the president of the Eastern Psychological Association. This study doesn’t try to assess the lifespan of the overall gay male population. It should however lay to rest the urban myth that gay men die at 40. It won’t probably, but it should.

Exodus and Richard Cohen Make Peace?

It was only a year ago that Richard Cohen displayed his “holding techniques” for supposedly making gay men straight before a national audience, embarrassing everyone in the ex-gay movement. His stint on Comedy Central was the last straw for the few remaining holdouts. While NARTH and PFOX quietly scrubbed their web sites of all mention of him, Ex-Gay Watch reported that Exodus International President Alan Chambers resigned from PFOX’s board after concluding that PFOX hadn’t distanced themselves enough from Cohen. (Richard Cohen is a former PFOX’s president, and PFOX was still privately referring clients to Cohen’s practice.) Exodus also had posted a formal disclaimer on Cohen’s techniques on their web site.

Now Ex-Gay Watch has noticed that the disclaimer is gone, as are other statements denouncing Cohen’s cuddling techniques. David Roberts also noticed that several Exodus board members openly endorce Cohen’s practice and other similar methods, which led him to asked directly: Does Exodus approve of Cohen or not?

While XGW is still waiting to hear from Exodus, Cohen’s people have already provided an answer:

Richard explained more about his work and his position and methods to Exodus and they all made peace.

If  NARTH and PFOX have already forgiven and forgotten his lunacy — can Exodus be far behind? They’ve already gotten past their embarrassment over James Phelan’s boorish behavior. If they can welcome Cohen back, then it will be loud-and-clear confirmation that Exodus is far more worried about public embarrassment than therapeutically appropriate behavior. And that should be cause for everyone to worry.

Bush “The Best President On AIDS”?

Benkof thinks so. Internationally, one could make such an argument. But it’s easy to support AIDS work in Africa where its a mostly heterosexual disease.

But domestically, President Bush’s proposals for HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention haven’t been keeping up with demand. This is especially true among young, African-American men who simply aren’t responding to the White House’s abstinence only messages. They have been the driving force behind recent increases in HIV infections, making up 49% of new infections in 2005.

What do you think? Is Bush the best, worst, or somewhere in between?

Family “Research” Council Repeats Benkof’s Distortions

The Family “Research” Council sent an Action Alert out with this familiar distortion:

Michigan’s largest homosexual activist group says once marriage is legally redefined to include homosexual couples, business owners and even news media outlets that refuse to recognize such marriages should be jailed, or sued and “publicly slapped.”

As we reported earlier, the source of this piece of libel is Benkof’s column in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Sean Kosofsky complained that his remarks were taken completely out of context and misrepresented to say something which he did not say:

David Benkof is misleading folks about my quote. He selectively removed several minutes of our conversation between statements and did not disclose that. What I said was that if you break a civil law and you do not pay your penalty or you do not follow a judges order that you could indeed be found in contempt of court. When an individual is found in contempt of court a punishment for breaking the law can include jail time. I don’t know of any gay activist prescribing jail time for discrimnination. Although when you violate a court order you should be penalized accordingly.

And when Benkof tried to defend his distortion, Sean was more blunt:

David, it is flat out immoral to do what you did. It is not my responsibility to track you down to correct a lazy, stupid and inflammatory misrepresentation. You should be ashamed of yourself, your journalistic integrity and your misrepresentation of your agenda during our call. The right wing is using your article all over the country to smear my good name because of your sloppiness or outright slant. I did leave a correction at the LA Weekly sight so I did try to correct you. This is horrible of you to do.

We’ve come to expect these sort of tactics from the Family “Research” Council, and we have documented countless instances where they have distorted social science research and other sources. This is their stock and trade, as exposing these distortions is ours.

Now the FRC has found a comfortable bedfellow in David Benkof. They make a good pair, as I frankly am unable to see much of a difference between them in their tactics. Maybe we can soon chalk the FRC’s web site as yet another of those “prestigious” media outlet’s he’s a columnist for.

A Gay-Friendlier Dr. Laura

I’ve listened sporadically to the Dr. Laura radio show for years.

Dr. Laura Schlessinger, who dispenses advice – usually common sense – to callers with relationship and other issues, has had a rocky history with the gay community. Originally she was fairly friendly and matter of fact. But in 1998, Schlessinger converted to Orthodox Judaism and I began to detect a change.

More and more Dr. Laura seemed to encourage her listeners to do more than “go do the right thing”; she advised them on political opinions and partisan issues and sought their help in influencing legislation. Time previously spent on advising housewives about how to deal with their mother-in-law was now used to complain about law or the culture.

It was also at this time that Schlessinger’s attitude about homosexuality took a sharp turn. While previously supportive, Dr. Laura began to use terms and support ideas that were less than favorable.

Dr. Laura began to support, ex-gay claims and efforts. Her language also came to reflect a changed view about the nature of homosexuality. In 1998 she made her now famous statement,

“I’m sorry, hear it one more time perfectly clearly: If you’re gay or a lesbian, it’s a biological error that inhibits you from relating normally to the opposite sex. The fact that you are intelligent, creative and valuable is all true. The error is in your inability to relate sexually intimately, in a loving way to a member of the opposite sex – it is a biological error.”

And in 2001, ex-gay gadfly Richard Cohen published his book Coming Out Straight: Understanding and Healing Homosexuality with a foreword by Dr. Laura Schlessinger. In it she states, “It will open the door to a new, happier, and fulfilling heterosexual life.”

For some time a battle raged between Dr. Laura and the gay community. When Schlessinger got a TV deal for her own show, a group of gay activists including John Arivosis started a website, StopDrLaura.com, which monitored the site, contacted sponsors with documentation of Schlessinger’s anti-gay content, and identified embarassing programming decisions.

Schlessinger tried to downplay her statements and made public apologies. But after her television show was canceled she maintained and expressed bitterness against the gay community and gay persons on her radio show.

But in 2003, Schlessinger denounced her affiliation with Orthodox Judaism. She told her radio audience that while she still considers herself a Jew, “My identifying with this entity and my fulfilling the rituals, et cetera, of the entity — that has ended.” And as recently as the past week, Dr. Laura has mentioned that she does not keep Kosher.

Since her deconversion, I’ve noticed a softening of Dr. Laura. She seems less interested in preaching and more interested in finding practical solutions to her callers’ problems.

Today, while out getting lunch, I heard Dr. Laura address a caller. Considering her history, I was particularly interested to hear how she would respond to this young man who “really very much wants to get married and have children and grow old with some woman” – but finds himself attracted to men. He had been living celibately but was finding his life frustrating.

I was wondering if Dr. Laura would advise reoreintation efforts or perhaps marriage with the intent of denying himself and living with fidelity.

But she told him, “No.”

Dr. Laura told the caller that a woman wants a man who wants her, and that it is unfair to deny some woman a chance at a real relationship.

And although the caller hopefully expressed that he had had girlfriends in the past, at no time did Dr. Laura suggest that he was anything but gay or that there was even the possibility of “change”. She told him that while she would like to be “a Fairy Godmother (pardon the term)” and grant all the wishes of her callers, she can’t and we don’t always get to have what we want.

She then went further and told him that he would be happier if he came out to his family. She recommended throwing a big “Coming Out” party and invite everyone.

I wish that she had told him that gay relationships can provide a loving commitment in which he could grow old happily. But she did tell him that her own personal closest friend is gay.

And I wish that she didn’t believe that children need both male and female presence. But she did tell him that if he lived with his mother (for that female presence) that there’s no reason he couldn’t be a great parent to kids who need one.

I do wish that Dr. Laura Schlessinger would use her access to an audience that most of us cannot reach to bring about civil equality and social acceptance. But I am happy that today, on the air, Dr. Laura provided a pragmatic real-life response in a way that was neither judgmental or confrontational. She treated this gay man’s concerns for what they were and offered neither a sermon nor false hope.

Anti-Gay Politics, Arizona Style

The Tucson Observer has published a first person account of the final hours of the Arizona Senate’s passage of the anti-marriage amendment. In this Legislative Update by Representative Steve Farley (D-Tucson) you really get a sense of the boorish, contemptible behavior of a Republican majority with no regard for their own rules. And you also get a sense of how spineless Senate President Timothy Bee was throughout all of this.

After the budget was finished Thursday night, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Mesa) made an attempt to adjourn sine die and end the session right away. Unfortunately, he got the wording wrong, so Majority Leader Tom Boone (R-Peoria)–who had other plans in mind for a number of unfinished bills–made a substitute motion to recess which canceled out Biggs’ motion when the vast majority of the body, unsure what to do, stood in support of Boone.

That paved the way for us to come back the next day for a horrible day of legislating where a whole lot of bad things happened, none worse than the resurrection of the anti-marriage amendment.

You may recall that we have spent much of the session fighting Republican efforts to place a constitutional amendment on the November ballot to outlaw Gay marriage, which is already illegal. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Phoenix) carried out an ingenious strategy to derail the House version of the bill several months ago.

As a referendum, it is not subject to veto by the Governor — it goes directly to the voters if approved by both houses of the Legislature. Right-wingers in the House have been conspiring with the Center for Arizona Policy ever since to find a way to bring another version to the floor.

On May 12, that new version, SCR1042, passed out of the House by one vote when Rep. Marian McClure (R-Green Valley) changed her vote to Yes, under pressure from her partners running for the Corporation Commission–Bob Robson (R-Chandler) and Bob Stump (R-Peoria). They all have been led to believe that the anti-marriage amendment will bring more hard-right voters to the polls in November, and they will benefit from it. It would appear it doesn’t matter to them how many LGBT people get hurt on their way to higher office.

Despite withering pressure from the hard right lobbyists, the bill never made it to the floor. Senate President Tim Bee (R-Tucson) apparently came to understand that a yes vote on the amendment would compromise the image of moderation and bipartisanship he has built up over the years, so he refused to bring it forth while at the same time saying to members of his own caucus that he would bring it forth in time.

His caucus members brought it forth for him on Wednesday when they voted to force it to the floor, but it did not receive the votes to carry at that time because the 16th vote was in a cabin in northern Arizona — Senator Karen Johnson (R-Mesa). She is not running for re-election, and had declared early in the session that her last day would be June 21. She left and planned not to return.

What she didn’t plan on was members of her church–including her bishop for Arizona–surrounding her cabin at all hours of the day and night praying for her that she be moved into returning to Phoenix to vote for the amendment.

The pressure worked, and she arrived at the Capitol on Friday, when the bill would be brought back up for reconsideration. Senator Tom O’Halleran (R-Sedona) was rumored to be gone as well, but he stayed to vote Yes. Sixteen votes in favor, including Tim Bee, were present, but we found out that two of them, Senator Pam Gorman (R-Anthem) and Karen Johnson, had plane flights out of town that evening and would be gone by 7pm.

So we forces of reason had our mission — drag things out until those two were gone, then adjourn sine die. For reasons way too complicated to explain in this already voluminous missive, we had to filibuster in the House and in the Senate, without making it appear we were actually filibustering. Rep. Sinema served as field general, and she picked four of us to do the talking, based on the fact that we always did a lot of talking and we didn’t want others to catch on to what we were doing.

The four were Reps. Prezelski (D-South Tucson), Ableser (D-Tempe), Ulmer (D-Yuma), and me. We asked a whole lot of questions in caucus (at one point we stretched out discussion of two of the bills to 40 minutes), in Committee of the Whole, and in explaining our votes in third read and final passage. We were so convincing that certain other members of our own caucus who were not in on the plan began to openly mock us for talking too long and told us to sit down and shut up. In the end we were able to extend debate past 7pm.

Our colleagues in the Senate were doing the same thing on the floor, but things were not going so well. Republicans began suspending Senate rules left and right to deprive the Democrats of talking time, and in one case suspended an entire calendar of bills that had already been passed, a move that had the effect of killing them. People called each other names and nearly got into shoving matches. Senators cried, while other senators openly laughed at those who cried.

Decorum broke down almost completely as the torchbearers for the “moral majority” followed a scorched-earth policy in their single-minded quest to take away rights from LGBT people. After 7pm, it became clear that Gorman and Johnson had no intention to leave to make their planes, and by 7:20, the filibuster could hold out no longer.

The vote was called for through a series of rule suspensions, and voting finally proceeded. Senator Carolyn Allen (R-Scottsdale) left in disgust before the vote. Senator Paula Aboud (D-Tucson), the only open lesbian in the Senate, talked about the power of the love between her and her partner, and asked the other senators, “Why are you afraid of our love? Are you afraid of me? Do I scare you?” Every Republican (besides Carolyn Allen) voted yes, then turned their backs and left the floor in the middle of Aboud’s speech.

After all had voted except President Bee, the tally stood at 15 in favor. Weighing in last, Bee explained his vote. He hammered the Center for Arizona Policy and its tactics, calling the issue divisive and saying that the lobbyists in favor of the amendment had “confronted members in hostile ways and coerced them.”

Many of us watching held our breath, wondering if Bee would step up courageously to do the right thing–not the easy thing. Would he vote No, and show that he puts policy above politics? Would he reject the Republican strategists who were convinced the anti-marriage amendment would help spur conservative voters to vote for him in his congressional race against Gabrielle Giffords?

His voice moved swiftly lower–almost to a whisper–as he concluded, “But my constituents want to vote on this, so I will vote Aye.”

With that, Tim Bee cast the deciding 16th vote, and in effect personally placed the anti-marriage amendment on the ballot once again, ensuring that the divisiveness will continue into the electorate at large.

This concluded the session like a punch to the gut. Exhausted and dispirited, we adjourned sine die shortly thereafter without doing much else. Bills that were in process died, including a vital bill to enact new tax credits for attracting huge solar energy plants to Arizona–plants and factories we are currently losing to California and Oregon in increasing numbers. But apparently, outlawing Gay marriage again was much more important than rebuilding our economy through renewable energy.

After lambasting CAP’s political tactics, Bee turned around and blamed his constituents for his cowardly vote. His constituents don’t deserve being scapegoated like this. They already voted on this in 2006 and gave a resounding “no” — 47.5% to 52.5%. That was wider than the statewide margin of 48.2% to 51.8%. And the Congressional district that he wants to represent come November also said “no” by a wider margin still: 45.4% to 54.6%. What part of “no” does Bee not understand?

More Reactions to AZ Anti-Marriage Amendment Fiasco

I like the way “Tedski” at the Arizona political blog Rum Romanism and Rebellion thinks, probably because I myself in almost perfect agreement with his reaction to Arizona Senate President Tim Bee’s disgraceful performance in the closing hours of the legislative session:

On the other hand, there was the leadership that he applied to the gay marriage referendum. He went back and forth on this one. For example, he was one of the main sponsors of the legislation, but delayed the vote in the hopes that time would run out and it would never actually be presented. This back and forth was so public that it didn’t fool anyone. He even pulled a Marion McClure on this, giving an impassioned speech that seemed to be against the bill then casting the deciding vote for the darned thing.

Apparently, he then disappeared into his office to “compose” himself for about an hour.

Now, that’s leadership.

My take on Bee’s performance is here. Is this the man we’re supposed to send to Congress? If he can’t stand up to Cathi Herrod at the Center for Arizona Policy, how can we expect him to stand up to lobbyists in Washington?

By now it should be obvious to anyone paying attention that his political career is toast. Good thing he has his brother’s Bee Line school bus service to go back to.

Tedski closes with this:

Say, what does Bee’s campaign chair, Jim Kolbe, think of all this?

Yeah! That what I want to know!

Indian Pride

Gay pride made its presence known in Calcutta, Bangalore and New Delhi today (AP).

While small groups have marched in the eastern city of Calcutta in recent years, Sunday’s events were the first gay pride parades in Bangalore and New Delhi. Several hundred people turned out at each of the three events.

The marches came days before the Delhi High Court is expected to hear arguments on overturning a law against homosexual sex that dates to the British colonial era.

Anti-Gay Violence in Europe

This weekend is the pride celebration for several cities in Europe. And while pride events are a celebration of rights achieved, they did not all go off without a hitch.

At the first pride parade in Brno, Czech Republic

At least 20 persons were hit by tear gas used by anti-gay activists about 20 minutes after the end of Czech homosexuals’ march at the namesti Svobody square and the Masarykova street in Brno today.

The police and neo-Nazis clashed after the end of the homosexuals’ Queer Parade, the first of its type in the Czech Republic.

In Sofia, Bulgaria

One militant protester threw a petrol bomb near the marchers, while others hurled eggs and some carried clubs, police and a Reuters eyewitness said.

About 60 people were arrested, police said. No one was hurt.

In contrast, the Jerusalem pride march was significantly less violent than in previous years.

At a counter-protest in one of Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox neighbourhoods several hundred men gathered wearing ash on their foreheads and burlap sacks over their black suits in a Biblical ritual of repentance.

Some demonstrators held holy books, rocked back and forth and prayed, while others raised banners in English reading “Shame,” “The Supreme Court is destroying the Holy City” and “Don’t sodomise Jerusalem.”

Presbyterians Allow Ordinations

According to the LA Times, the Presbyterian Church (USA) has taken a step towards full inclusion of gays and lesbians into the church.

Leaders of the Presbyterian Church (USA) overturned a long-standing ban on the ordination of gays and lesbians Friday, providing yet the latest example of a religious denomination struggling with how, and whether, to incorporate homosexuality into church life.

This change however must be approved by a majority of regions called presbyteries.

The General Assembly voted in favor of the ordination measure 54% to 46%, but its decision must still be approved by a majority of the nation’s 173 regional presbyteries over the next year. Several prominent church leaders predicted it would fail.

Conservatives are predicting that individuals and churches will leave the denomination rather than be part of a body that allows gay ministers. To my way of thinking, gay and lesbian Presbyterians who are willing to fellowship with those who dispise them are far closer to showing the heart and message of Christ than are those who would leave rather than fellowship on an equal status with a gay person.

Wingspan Statement on Arizona Senate Debacle

Jason Cianciotto, Wingspan’s Executive Director, reacted to yesterday’s shameful Senate vote with this statement:

In 2006, Arizona voters became the first in the nation to defeat an anti-marriage ballot measure. Today, our State Senate, led by President Tim Bee, rejected that democratic process in an attempt to distract voters from issues that truly have an impact on families, including the rising costs of food, gas, and healthcare.

Senator Bee is grossly mistaken if he thinks he can ride an anti-family agenda to victory in his campaign to unseat Gabrielle Giffords in Congressional District 8 — analysis of voting data from 2006 revealed that voters there rejected the first anti-marriage amendment by a 10 point margin, with 54.6% voting against Prop 107 and only 45.4% voting for it. This was an even wider margin than statewide results (51.8% vs. 48.2%).

The time has come for elected representatives and the anti-gay industry in Arizona to be held accountable for harming Arizona families. I came back home to Arizona two months ago ready for this fight. A political sea change is approaching this November, and our legislature is in store for a rude awakening. Just as we did in 2006, a broad coalition of Arizonans — young and old, men and women, gay and straight — will come together and defeat this ballot measure, again.

HIV Infected Humans Much Earlier Than Thought

HIV-1, the prevalent strain of Human Immunodeficiency Virus infecting people around the world was first thought to have entered the human bloodstream at around 1931. Now a second human tissue sample stored at a hospital in Kinshasa in 1960 has pushed the date back more than two decades:

Marlea Gemme… analyzed HIV-1 genetic material obtained from lymph tissue collected in 1960 from the University of Kinshasa pathology department in the Democratic Republic of the Congo–only the second HIV sequence predating 1976 deciphered to date. Thus far, she has sequenced about 1000 DNA bases, which she has compared with the previously reported sequence of HIV-1 extracted from a frozen blood sample from 1959. Since it entered into humans, HIV-1 has been evolving into different substrains–but the 1960 and 1959 sequences were much more divergent than expected, Gemmel reported at the meeting. “It reflects a long past of diversification before 1960,” she said.

By comparing the two sequences with more recent ones, Gemmel was able to show that HIV-1 first entered humans about 1908, not 1931, as earlier analyses with just the 1959 sample found. Her analysis also indicates that the virus existed in low levels in humans until the middle of the 20th century. “That matches the rise of population centers,” Gemmel explained, suggesting that urbanization around that time paved the way for the AIDS epidemic.

There is increasing evidence that AIDS has existed in some very remote parts of Africa for several decades before exploding in Kinshasa and other large cities in the 1970s and in Europe and America in the early 1980s. You can read more about the history of AIDS in our report, Opportunistic Infection, which we will now have to update to include these latest findings.

Arizona Senate Breaks Own Rules To Pass Anti-Marriage Amendment

The Republican-controlled Arizona Senate late yesterday broke its own rules to shut down debate and force a vote to place a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage on the ballot.

According to Equality Arizona and the Arizona Daily Star, Sen Paula Aboud (D-Tucson) was engaged in a debate with Sen. Ken Cheuvront (D-Phoenix) on another tax bill in a move similar to a filibuster according to the Senate rules. During the debate, Majority Leader Thayer Verschoor (R-Gilbert) and Majority Whip John Huppenthal (R-Chandler), among others, devised a scheme with committee chairman Jack Harper (R- rural district 4) to violate the rules of the Senate and the rights of Senators Aboud and Cheuvront.

Barbara McCullough-Jones and Sam Holdren of Arizona Equality describe what happened next:

In the middle of their discussion, Senator Harper turned off the microphones of Senators Paula Aboud (D-28) and Ken Cheuvront (D-15) and called on the Majority Leader to make a motion. Then, when Senators Aboud and Cheuvront loudly called for a Point of Order several times, even walking to the front desk where Senator Harper sat, he deliberately ignored their calls. To add insult to injury, these people attempted to justify their actions, even after the Senate President and other Senators admonished them for deliberately breaking the rules. Tonight’s actions of these and other Senators have forever tainted that body, and it’s important that we all let the people of Arizona know how these individuals acted so unethically.

The chamber broke down into chaos for the next twenty minutes when]the matter was finally brought before Senate President Tim Bee (R-Tucson) for resolution. Bee, who had been trying to keep the proposed amendment off the calendar, lambasted the Center for Arizona Policy (CAP), the right-wing lobbying group behind the marriage amendment, for what he described as their divisive tactics, hostility, coercion and threats. He then publicly buckled under the pressure and became the constitutionally-mandated sixteenth vote to placed the measure on the ballot.

Sens. Aboud and Cheuvront are the only two openly gay members of the Arizona Senate. After the shouting was over, Sen. Aboud spoke again to the Senate:

“I just don’t understand how my personal, private relationship between two people affects anyone else in this room?

“Get your love off my back,” Aboud said. “Is your relationship with your family so fragile that you’re threatened by me?”

Today was a shameful day in the Senate’s history under Bee’s weak leadership. Bee is running for Congress to try to replace Gabrielle Giffords (D-Tucson) in a congressional district which voted against the 2006 attempt to write discrimination into the constitution by a wider margin than did voters statewide (45.4% to 54.6% in CD8, versus 48.2% to 51.8% statewide). During his term in the Senate, Bee represented a district which also defeated Prop 107 a margin wider than the statewide tally (47.5% to 52.5%).

Yesterday may well have marked the end of Bee’s political career. And with his shameful display of cowardice under pressure, it is an end well deserved.

Kolbe and Bee

“Tim Bee has demonstrated his toughness and his compassion, his ability to lead while at the same time listening to others. These are skills few people in public life have. We need Tim Bee working for us in Congress.” — Jim Kolbe (left), the gay former U.S. Congressman for the district Tim Bee is running in and the campaign’s “Honorary Chairman.”

Tim Bee was the sixteenth vote in the Arizona Senate’s shameless vote to put the anti-marriage amendment on the ballot yet again. Bee is running for the congressional seat that Kolbe once held. Kolbe voted for DOMA in 1996, a vote that led to his outing. I have heard him speak passionately against Prop 107 in 2006.

So what does Kolbe have to say about this? Is he ducking back into the closet again?

[Hat tip: Tucson Observer]

Arizona Senate Passes Anti-Marriage Amendment

We just received word that late this evening that the Arizona Senate was able to scare up the sixteen votes needed to put a proposed constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage onto the ballot.

Tucson’s District 30 Senator and Senate President Tim Bee was the sixteenth vote. He will be running against incumbent Gabrielle Giffords in November for the Congressional District 8 house seat. Voters in CD8 voted against the 2006 Arizona amendment, with 52.5%54.6% voting against Prop 107 and only 47.5%45.4% voting for it. That was a wider margin than the state-wide result of 51.8% against and 48.2% in favor.

Update: I had my figures crossed. I originally posted the results for Sen. Bee’s Senate district, not the Congressional district he is currently running for. As you can see, voters in the Congressional district defeated Prop 107 by a wider margin still. I apologize for the error.