Box Turtle Bulletin

Ex-Gay Therapy: “Like Throwing Spaghetti At A Wall”

A new paper by NARTH president A. Dean Byrd, past president Joseph Nicolosi, and Richard Potts was supposed to show what therapeutic techniques former clients of ex-gay therapy found effective. But what the paper really showed was how effectively those former patients absorbed and accepted the ex-gay movement’s distortions of human sexuality.

Daniel Gonzales, a former patient of Dr. Nicolosi shares his reaction.

You can read our analysis of the Byrd, Nicolosi & Potts paper in our latest report, “Repeat After Me:” The Reparative Therapy Echo Chamber.

Click here to read the video transcript

United Methodist Church May Change Policy on Homosexuality

The United Methodist Church meets every four years in a General Conference. Currently they are meeting in Fort Worth, TX.

A legislative committee of the UMC met for about seven hours on Monday and came up with a proposal to change the church’s statements on homosexuality. Though they began as liberals and conservatives, they reached concensus as centrists.

The Ledger reports on the proposal

The church’s current policy declares, “The United Methodist Church does not condone the practice of homosexuality and considers this practice incompatible with Christian teaching.” A legislative committee has proposed a sweeping change to that policy, taking a neutral stance, calling “all members of our community of faith to commitment, integrity and fidelity in their sexual relationships.”

The proposal also acknowledges the strong disagreements within the church and asks “the Church, United Methodist and others, and the world, to refrain from judgment regarding homosexual persons and practices until the Spirit leads us to new insight.”

Almost 1,000 delegates will vote today whether to accept the proposal of the committee. In 2004 a different proposal to soften opposition was defeated 55% to 45%. Supporters of the change are hopeful but not yet confident in a positive vote this year.

Regardless of the outcome of the vote, this conference has already yielded results that can only be seen as promising for those who believe in full inclusion within the church.

The Star-Telegram reports that the ideological center of the Judicial Council has shifted to one that could be supportive of LGBT Methodists.

Five newly elected members to the United Methodist Church’s Judicial Council — the denomination’s “supreme court” — could change the dynamics of the nine-member council on such issues as homosexuals in leadership roles, denomination insiders said Monday.

The council previously had a 6-3 conservative majority. But only one of the council members elected Monday is conservative, joining the sole conservative member remaining on the council, said Mark Tooley, director of the UMAction program of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a conservative and evangelical organization.

Time will only tell whether about the Council’s decisions. However, as homosexuality was a central dispute in the fight over the Council members, this may be a hopeful indicator for today’s vote.

Heterosexual Incestuous Sex Slave

In the Box Turtle Bulletin’s The Heterosexual Agenda: Exposing The Myths, Jim Burroway satirically illustrates how heterosexual militant activists are destroying society.

Here’s yet another example.

Josef Fritzl locked his 18 year old daughter in the basement so he could continue having sex with her… in 1984. She, and the children he subsequently fathered, have been there since. Upstairs, his wife never noticed.

Which all goes to show just why you can’t trust heterosexuals with marriage or children.

Blatant Discrimination in Memphis School

The Hollis F. Price Middle College High School is undoubtedly a successful school. As a collaboration between the Memphis school district and LeMoyne-Owen College, it provides an opportunity for gifted African-American students to earn credits towards their college degrees while still in high school. And by selecting only 150 of the district’s best students, it avoids many of the problems that plague public schools: fighting, truancy, and falling educational standards.

And Hollis F. Price has admirable stated ideals and intentions including

We believe that every member of our learning community has value and worth and has the right to be respected.

and

All students enrolled at Hollis F. Price Early Middle College are able to participate in many of the approved and available high school and college organizations and activities.

But in her effort to provide an ideal educational environment, Principal Daphne Beasley went way beyond what is appropriate or even legal.

Seeking to eliminate public displays of affection, Beasley asked that students and teachers report suspected romantic couples to her. She then compiled a list and posted it where teachers and other students could read it.

Although this is disturbing in itself, Beasley left all measure of reasonableness when a pair of boys hit her list. Although both boys were A students, had never displayed any public affection, and were an asset to any learning institution, that didn’t stop Beasley from seeking to humiliate them. Memphis Eyewitness News reports

One of the young men, Nicholas, an 11th grader who just made the Dean’s List, spoke with Eyewitness News Everywhere.

“It was actually frightening,” he says, “to see a list with my name on it where not just other teachers could see but students as well.”

Nicholas says his teachers and other students treat him differently as a result of Principal Beasley’s decision and that he and Andrew have both had to deal with verbal assaults. Nicholas was also not allowed to go on a trip to New Orleans to help rebuild homes because, as one of his teacher’s explained, he would “embarrass” the school by engaging in gay affection.

“I really feel that my personal privacy was invaded,” Nicholas says. “I mean, Principal Beasley called my mother and outed me to my mother!”

The ACLU stepped in to support the boys and their mothers. Their letter to the school board clarifies some of Beasley’s motivation.

Specifically, we have been informed that during their telephone call about Nicholas’s inclusion on the “list” as being part of a gay couple, Principal Beasley told [Nicholas’ mother] that she did not like homosexuals and found it hard to deal with homosexuality. Principal Beasley, according to [Nicholas’ mother’s] contemporaneous notes, then informed her that homosexuality would not be tolerated at Hollis F. Price and that she was glad that she didn’t have any kids so she wouldn’t have to deal with these kinds of problems.

Ms. Beasley clearly does not believe that her school’s “all students” statements include gay students, no matter how well behaved. Such an attitude is not conducive to an unbiased and discrimination-free learning environment, and either Principal Beasley should lose it or she should find some form of employment in which she doesn’t have to deal with persons that she does not like.

Hutcherson Brags About Disrupting School

On his church’s website today Rev. Ken Hutcherson posted the following:

Tuesday, 29 April 2008

Praise for the Day of Silence outcome! Whether they blame me or credit me, the fact of the matter is over 600 students, almost half the student body at Mt. Si were kept home by their parents on the Day of Silence. The school officials must realize they have some very unhappy parents.

Last night I met with the NAACP. Please pray for wisdom for them as they discuss what their move will be in response to the Mt. Si MLK Day debacle.

Please pray for me as I travel to Southern California today and as I return home on Saturday.

Pastor Hutch

Like most braggarts, Hutch assumes that his actions are larger than they are.

Though he says students were “kept home by their parents”, even the most casual observer knows that many of these students just stayed away because it was a spring Friday and they could get away with treating it like a holiday.

And assuming that those who stayed away from Rev. Hutcherson’s bullhorned abuse are actually supporters of his message is downright delusional. Only 100 people turned up for his protest and there’s no indication that any of them were students.

But I do agree that there are undoubtedly unhappy parents of Mount Si students. I’m sure quite a few wish that Rev. Ken Hutcherson had decided to take his ministry to some other part of the country and left their school alone.

Was the “Day of Truth” a Day of Silence?

The Day of Truth, the ADF’s anti-gay response to the Day of Silence, was yesterday. If it happened.

In the days leading up to the Day of Silence, it seemed that the conservative Christian right only mentioned the DOT as an afterthought and seemed more interested in getting kids to stay home. Perhaps they believe it easier to get a teenager to play hookie on a spring Friday than it is to get them to wear a t-shirt and pass out material condemning their classmates.

In any case, I’ve not yet seen any news coverage of this event, even from religious media.

Also missing is any comment as to whether Alexander Nuxoll wore his “Be Happy, Not Gay” T-Shirt either on the Day of Silence or the Day of Truth. Perhaps his ardent desire to be obnoxious is more sincere when in court with the ADF than it is when facing his classmates.

See also:
T-Shirt Wars: A Temporary Victory for the Mean Spirited
T-Shirt Wars: Appeals
Arizona House Passes Bigot Protection Act
Anti-Gay T-Shirt Wars

Australia Introduces Rights for Gay Couples

When the Labor Party came to power in Australia last year gay citizens expected them to live up to campaign promises made to enact recognition of same-sex couples. Until recently, they saw little progress.

The efforts of the Australian Capital Territory to enact civil unions were met by aggressive hostility by the federal government. The biggest objection was that the ACT proposed civil unions would allow a ceremony – something viewed as too similar to marriage.

Now, however, it appears that the Rudd government is willing to live up to its promise for limited rights, similar to those of de-facto couples and will effect about 100 areas of law. (Sydney Morning Herald)

The federal Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, will announce today that the necessary legislation will be introduced when Parliament resumes next month for the winter sittings.

The measures do not amount to gay marriage; they afford gay couples the same treatment as heterosexual de facto couples in areas such as tax, superannuation sharing and social security.

Although the article does not clarify the methods by which the couples would be determined, it will likely be by registered partnership in a method similar to that employed by Tazmania.

Good News for Gay Presbyterians

In 2005, Rev. Jane Spahr was brought up on charges for officiating at the celebration of gay unions. In 2006, a regional church court found that she had not acted appropriately.

The AP reports that the highest court of the Presbyterian Church (USA) has overturned the regional court’s decision.

The highest court of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has found that a Northern California minister did not violate denominational law when she officiated at the weddings of two lesbian couples.

The ruling announced Tuesday by the Louisville, Ky.-based court overturns a decision against the Rev. Jane Spahr last year. A regional judicial committee had found Spahr guilty of misconduct and gave her a rebuke — the lightest possible punishment.

The church’s high court found that the ceremonies Spahr performed were not marriages, so she did not violate the church’s constitution.

The panel reiterated the church’s position that Presbyterian ministers can bless same-sex unions as long as the ceremonies don’t too closely mimic traditional weddings.

Colorado Springs Gazette Defends Paul Cameron

This was shocking. Two weeks ago, the Colorado Springs Gazette defended Paul Cameron against the Southern Poverty Law Center’s naming his Family Research Institute a hate group:

The story about elevated hatred included a list of Colorado hate groups, as identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center – a thoroughly discredited organization that labels organizations with opposing political philosophies as hate mongers.

The new Colorado list includes the Colorado Springs-based Family Research Institute. The conservative fundamentalist organization is headed by Paul Cameron, a psychologist and reviewer for the British Medical Journal, Psychological Reports and the Journal of the Canadian Medical Association. The organization’s mission is “to generate empirical research on issues that threaten the traditional family, particularly homosexuality, AIDS, sexual social policy, and drug abuse.”

There’s no question about it: The Family Research Institute opposes homosexuality, and goes out of its way to discourage and besmirch it. It’s controversial, ideological, politically incorrect and unpopular. But is it a hate group, like the Ku Klux Klan or a Nazi skinhead club? Far from it.

Far from it? Really? Cameron has more in common with a Nazi skinhead club than the Gazette seems to realize. Perhaps the editors of the Gazette needs to look over his 1999 article in which he admires how Nazi Germany (and specifically Rudolph Höss) “handled homosexuals” in Dachau and Sachsenhausen.

Instead of casting aspersions against the Southern Poverty Law Center and coming to the defense of a man who proposes similar draconian “solutions” for homosexuality in this country, the Gazette ought to consider engaging in a practice we like to call journalism. A hate group like a Nazi skinhead club? It’s exactly like a Nazi skinhead club.

The editorial board of the Colorado Springs Gazette is the latest to join our growing list of Cameron supporters. And I’ll once again ask the question I ask everyone who joins the list: Do the Gazette’s editors agree with Cameron’s draconian agenda?

Hat tip: Mike Airhart.

It’s Not Just Birmingham

While you’re not likely to have 911 called on you in most cities, there are very few places in the world where gay couples can feel comfortable with themselves to the same degree as straight people.

Expressions of violence (at the 3:30 mark) however, are especially chilling and not as uncommon as we’d like to think.

Also, notice the difference in reactions when it’s two women kissing. But even there, it’s not always safe in every community.

Today in History: A Notorious Nazi Doctor

Dr. Carl Peter Værnet was born on this date on April 28, 1893 in Denmark. During World War II, he became a Nazi SS major, serving as a doctor at Buchenwald concentration camp. There, he performed medical experiments on inmates who were convicted under Germany’s notorious Paragraph 175 — the statute against male homosexuality.

According to Richard Plant’s The Pink Triangle The Buchenwald inmate roster in December 1943 listed 169 homosexuals. In March, that number was down to 89. Værnet experimented in 17 of them between June and December 1944. Camp methods show that methods include castration and injection with hormones:

Since surviving entries are spotty, if not nearly illegible, one can only conclude that on October 1, 1944, a group of seven homosexuals was operated on, and a second group, consisting of eleven more, on October 10. Additional test may have been administered because Værnet visited Buchenwald again in December. … Some subjects became ill; some, so it seems, must have died, because new names appear on the rosters of those actually castrated. Værnet carefully filled out order forms for chloroform, bandages, and new medical instruments, and handed out instruction sheets explaining how Buchenwald physicians should continue the castration-hormone tests without him. No final report has survived that notes the results of the experiments on the castrated men.

After the war, Værnet was captured by the British and handed over to Danish authorities. At some point, he was transferred to a hospital after claiming to suffer from a heart ailment. He told doctors there that his problem could only be treated in Sweden. Despite being accused of war crimes, he was allowed to go to Sweden, where he contacted a Nazi escape network and fled to Argentina where he worked in the Ministry of Health. He was never tried for his crimes. He died on November 25, 1965. His grave was located in Argentina’s Britanico Cemetery in April, 1998.

Christian Youth Group Participates in Day of Silence

Warren Throckmorton has a letter from a student at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC. She, and the Campus Crusade, participated in the Day of Silence and found it to be rewarding and illuminating.

To those of you reading, I wish I could tell you in person because this day deserves more than a short summary. Yesterday, the LGBT community saw something revolutionary- they saw Christians loving them and more than that, they saw the love of Christ. What would happen if next year, hundreds of Christian students walked around with duct tape in silence?

I have to tell you about how I felt yesterday walking around in silence with duct tape. I felt humiliated at times, and other times proud. You see, everywhere I went, people stared. I felt like a leper, completely stigmatized from people. In fact, I was experiencing what the LGBT community has experienced for decades.

As I was walking to my dorm, I realized why 30% of LGBT students report having missed one or more days of school per year out of fear. Walking by a dorm, someone opened their window and yelled a derogatory statement to me. I was scared. There was such anger in his voice that I was fearful to walk by the dorm again later that day. I was reminded of Lawrence King, a 14 year old who was murdered because of his homosexuality just two months ago.

I am appreciative of the participation of this young woman and others like her who were challenged by the Golden Rule Pledge to join in standing up against violence. I would also love to hear the experience of any gay people who had Golden Rule participants join them.

Petition Before UMC to Censure James Holsinger

When last we heard from Dr. James Holsinger, President George Bush’s Surgeon General Nominee, it looked like his nomination was stuck in limbo. This came after Box Turtle Bulletin examined Holsinger’s 1991 white paper for the United Methodist Church’s Committee to Study Homosexuality, a paper which significantly misrepresented the bibliographic sources that he cited.

I forwarded a copy of our findings to several Senators on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee which held hearings on Holsinger’s nomination. Coincidentally or not, some of our findings appeared to make their way into the hearing. Needless to say, things did not go very well for Dr. Holsinger.

Since then, allegations have arisen of Dr. Holsinger’s possibly questionable financial dealings and conflicts of interest involving grants to the University of Kentucky’s Chandler Medical Center (while Holsinger was its Chancellor) from the Good Samaritan Foundation (while Holsinger was a trustee of the GSF board). According to these allegations, the grants were drawn from $20 million earned from the 1995 sale of the United Methodist Good Samaritan Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, to a for-profit corporation. According to complaints, the hospital was the property of the Kentucky Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, and GSF should have handed the money over to the church.

The United Methodist is currently meeting in Fort Worth, and among the business before its various committees is a petition to censure Dr. Holsinger for his involvement in the Good Samaritan Hospital sale. The petition was submitted by Rev. Andrew Weaver, Ph.D. of Brooklyn, NY, and will go before the Judicial Administration Committee.

I spoke with Rev. Weaver over the phone, and he acknowledged that if Holsinger was censured, it would be a very unusual event in the church. He also pointed out that the allegations against Holsinger were also unusual, going against the “trust clause” which he described as being an important part of UMC property governance going back to the days of John Wesley himself, who set up the system of trustees for the governance of chapels and organizations. According to Rev. Weaver, Dr. Holsinger’s actions on the GSF board were contrary to these principles.

Here is the full text of the petition:

Whereas, James W. Holsinger, MD, was elected to our church’s Judicial Council in May, 2000, and has been president of the Judicial Council since 2004, and

Whereas, the duties of the Judicial Council include “determining the legality of any action taken by any body created by or authorized by the General Conference” and the General Conference has therefore recognized as a matter of critical importance that members of the Judicial Council avoid conflicts of interest, as illustrated by the prohibition on service on other boards and agencies of the church, and

Whereas, following election to the Judicial Council in May 2000, Dr. Holsinger joined the board of trustees of the Good Samaritan Foundation (GSF) of Lexington, Kentucky, in July 2000, knowing that GSF had, three months earlier, in May 2000, become the subject of litigation by the Kentucky Conference of the United Methodist Church, and

Whereas, two former members of the Judicial Council who worked with Holsinger from 2000-2004, Sally C. Askew, Esq., and Sally B. Geis, Ph.D., stated that Holsinger never mentioned having joined an organization that was being sued by a constituent body of the United Methodist Church, nor did he at any time address possible conflicts of interest involved in being a member of the UMC’s Judicial Council while engaged in significant litigation against the UMC, and

Whereas the essence of the lawsuit between the Kentucky Annual Conference and the Good Samaritan Foundation related to church property ownership issues, and the Court found there was an “express trust” on behalf of the United Methodist Church, based on the surrounding facts and circumstances, and safeguarding property trust being a central duty for United Methodist leaders to protect, and a topic of Judicial Council decisions, and

Whereas, the GSF trustees which Dr. Holsinger, member and subsequently chair of the Judicial Council, joined, and of which he became chair in 2003, were in violation of their fiduciary responsibilities as trustees of United Methodist hospital property in the amount of $20 million realized from the sale in 1995 of 330 bed United Methodist Good Samaritan Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, to a for-profit corporation, and which trustees refused to hand over the proceeds to the rightful owners, the Kentucky Annual Conference (KAC) of the UMC, and

Whereas, according to court records, the foundation’s trustees refused to tell the KAC what happened to the $20 million from the sale of the UMC hospital for nearly five years and as late as June of 2006 the lay and clergy members of the KAC felt compelled to pass a resolution formally seeking necessary “[i]nformation on assets, income earned, tax issues…investment practices, conflicts of interest, and other information” from the foundation, and

Whereas, despite his Judicial Council responsibilities as one of the highest elected officials of the United Methodist Church, and in apparent ignorance of Methodism’s commitment to building dozens of hospitals in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to provide care for the poor and indigent Dr. Holsinger in a letter to GSF grantees questioned the motives and integrity of the UMC, publicly stating his belief that the UMC was “only interested in the Foundation’s money, not its cause” [health care for the poor and disadvantaged], and

Whereas, Dr. Holsinger was not a bystander in these events, but the dominant personality among the trustees and the driving force in the prolongation of the lawsuit, as evidenced by the lawsuit’s rapid conclusion two weeks after Dr. Holsinger’s resignation from the trustees in May, 2007, and

Whereas, during the period of this litigation, Dr. Holsinger was affiliated with the University of Kentucky as Chancellor of the Chandler Medical Center from 1994-2003, and the University of Kentucky’s programs in medicine, nursing, dentistry and public health were awarded 63% of $8,430,363 in grants awarded by GSF from July 1, 1997 through June 30, 2006 including the endowment of two academic chairs valued at a million dollars each, despite GSF’s own policies that, “[major organizations” such as “[h]ospitals, [c]olleges and [u]niversities are not eligible as a general statement,” although exceptions could be made by the trustees, and

Whereas during the time Dr. Holsinger was chair of the GSF trustees, additional conflicts of interest were permitted by other trustees, as admitted by GSF in a May 23, 2005 letter to the Kentucky Annual Conference namely that three GSF trustees who worked at Lexington-area financial institutions were involved in managing or had previously managed the assets of the foundation while serving on the board., and
Whereas the Kentucky Annual Conference told the GSF that it was “unconscionable” that after a decade this gross conflict of interest continued and that the funds were still not being professionally managed by experts with no personal relationship to the board putting Dr. Holsinger in violation of the standards of ethics set by the UMC for trustees of church organizations, and in gross violation of the basic tenets of accepted ethical conduct , and

Whereas, the litigation by GSF against the United Methodist Church, much of it under Judicial Council president Holsinger’s tenure squandered $1,083,133 in legal fees from July 1, 1997 through July 1, 2006, which Dr. Holsinger had a duty to protect for the benefit of GSF’s beneficiaries,
Therefore, the General Conference of the United Methodist Church:

1. Censures Dr. James Holsinger for conduct which we consider to be in grave conflict with his duties as member and president of the Judicial Council, conduct which has dissipated United Methodist resources, which has brought disrepute to the church, and which constitute “relationships and/or behavior that undermine the ministry” of United Methodists;

2. Calls for heightened commitment by all Judicial Council members to ethical standards of conduct, especially regarding conflicts of interest, for full disclosure of pre-existing potential conflicts of interest and for commitment not to enter into new responsibilities after election to the Judicial Council which may conflict with their Judicial Council duties;

3. Calls for all Boards of United Methodist affiliated institutions and agencies to review their by-laws, affiliations and legal documents to assure compliance with Disciplinary paragraphs 2501, 2503, and 2506 and to minimize the potential for conflicts such as KAC V. GSF;

4. Calls for the Judicial Council newly elected in 2008 to review all Judicial Council decisions during the time of Dr. Holsinger’s tenure, recognizing that such decisions are final, but nevertheless reporting to the General Church its findings as to whether any decisions now appear questionable in light of Dr. Holsinger’s conflicts of interest and his litigation against the United Methodist Church while serving as a high elected official.

Today In History: Eisenhower Signs Executive Order 10450

Fifty-five years ago today, on April 27, 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10450, which mandated the firing of all federal employees who were determined to be guilty of “sexual perversion.” Over the next two decades, thousands of gays and lesbians would loose their jobs solely because of their sexual orientation.

This was the culmination of an anti-gay witch hunt which began three years earlier. In February of 1950, Undersecretary of State John Peurifoy, testifying before the US Senate Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Department, revealed that 91 employees “in the shady category” had resigned since 1947. Republican Senators took that admission to allege that President Harry Truman’s administration’s employment of “sexual deviants with police records” was recklessly endangering the country’s national security.

It just so happened that Joseph McCarthy was a member of that committee. He had just given give his famous Wheeling Speech a few weeks earlier, claiming to have “a list in my hand” of 205 communist employees at the State Department. The Homosexual Scare now joined the nascent Red Scare as twin threats to American liberties. By April, McCarthy pressured the Civil Service to begin rooting out gays and lesbians from federal offices. By June, he persuaded the Senate to authorize a full-range investigation of homosexuals “and other moral perverts” in the civil service. The Senate Appropriations Committee responded with a rushed report a few months later, saying “one homosexual can pollute an entire government office,” and “to pussyfoot or take half measures will allow some known perverts to remain in government.”

By the end of 1950, anti-homosexual hysteria was in full swing. The Republican Party’s national chairman sent a warning to 7,000 party members that, “Perhaps as dangerous as the actual Communists are the secret perverts who have infiltrated our government in recent years.” On Christmas Day of that year, Time magazine opined that all homosexuals should be fired from the federal government. The hysteria raged for the next three years as McCarthy presided over countless hearings on the imagined threat of homosexuals and communists in the government. Ironically, it would be McCarthy’s chief council, Roy Cohn, who would draw fire during the Army investigations of 1954 over rumors of his own homosexuality. (Cohn would later die of AIDS in 1986.) This played a small but key role in McCarthy’s eventual downfall.

Clamor over the twin menaces raged for the next three years, culminating in Eisenhower’s 1953 Executive Order which declared all homosexuals to be “security risks,” regardless of whether they were actually disloyal or not. It didn’t matter how low or innocuous their position was; their mere presence in a government office was deemed a threat. Following Eisenhower’s executive order, more than 640 federal employees would lose their job because of allegations of homosexuality over the next year and a half. Unknown numbers of others resigned quietly. State and local governments and government contractors followed suit, tossing countless more innocent Americans out of their jobs.

Unintended consequences are funny things though. In 1957, a young astronomer by the name of Dr. Franklin Kameny was fired from the Army Map service because of his homosexuality. After all of his court appeals were denied, he founded the Washington, D.C. Mattachine Society. He and Daughters of Billitis founder Barbara Gittings organized the first gay rights demonstrations in front of the White House, State Department and Philadelphia’s Independence Hall in 1965 to demand an end to the federal employment ban. This demand remained a key component of the whole gay rights movement from the 1950’s through the 1970’s. Much of today’s modern gay rights movement has its roots buried deep in the anti-gay and anti-red hysteria of the 1950’s and Executive order 10450.

The Civil Service ban on gays and lesbians would continue for the next two decades. In 1973, a federal judge ruled that a person’s sexual orientation alone could not be the sole reason for termination from federal employment. But even with that ruling, it wasn’t until July 3, 1975 when the Civil Service Commission finally announced that they would consider applications by gays and lesbians on a case by case basis.

Hutcherson’s Bullhorn

Rev. Ken Hutcherson’s response to the disruption caused by students sitting silently.

Picture from the Seattle Times.