Box Turtle Bulletin

Spanish Bull

Do you recognize this?

“Padre abraza tu hijo ahora que puedes, porque si no mañana quizá lo abrazará otro hombre.”

A Protestant minister in Spain, Marcos Zapata, made that statement at at seminar “How to Raise Heterosexual Children.” In English, it’s “Father hug your son now while you can, because if not, tomorrow another man will.” — a paraphrase of Joseph Nicolosi’s standard stump speech. Not only is NARTH going international, but it looks like Exodus International is living up to its name as well. This article indicates that Zapata has been well inculcated in the language of Exodus. Spanish gay rights activists have asked the Galicia regional government to investigate.

Peter LaBarbera Updates His Pathetic Mess

After we reported on LaBarbera’s disgusting twist of a Cicero, Illinois assault, we now learn that he decided to retract his original story:

NOTE TO READERS: When we made our initial comments on our story, we were relying on what turned out to be a sloppy and erroneous Chicago Tribune story (see bottom), and we had not seen the Chicago Sun Times story on this crime, which conflicts with the Tribune account. I apologize for reporting this so quickly and for foolishly relying on a single Chicago media story for accurate news (not a good idea).

It’s not a good idea to rely on LaBarbera for “the truth” either. Anyway, his sole “evidence” that the attacker is gay now gone. But when your name is LaBarbera, who needs evidence anyway?

Regardless, what we still have with this case is a maniac who sexually assaulted another man, while later claiming to hate “faggots.” Strange. Most men would never think of sodomizing another man, and last I heard anal sodomy was seen as the defining act of male homosexuality.

So, we come back to this: if this criminal — who is so crazed that his own mother put out an order of protection against him — is a violent “gay-basher,” then he’s one with a homosexual problem.

Right is wrong, black is white, and he’ll stick to his story even when the evidence evaporates. News flash for LaBarbera: You don’t have to be gay to sodomize someone with a broom handle. That’s not a “defining act of male homosexuality” any more than raping a woman with a beer bottle is a “defining act of heterosexuality.” But saying so is a defining act of stupidity. What a pathetic creature. If only we had an award to give him…

Kay Warren’s Fight Against Aids

Kay Warren, wife of the pastor and author Rick Warren, has written a new book, Dangerous Surrender, encouraging conservative Christians to join the fight against the spread of HIV and AIDS.

Like many who have spent the last 25 years hearing how AIDS is God’s judgment against gays, I am cautious in endorsing Warren’s efforts. Part of me feels that if it takes a trip to Africa to see dying heterosexuals in order to stir your compassion, then I am inclined to think your “help” comes with too many strings attached.

Mrs. Warren is aware that conservative involvement is met with skepticism. And I believe her words illustrate both an awareness of the problem as well as a practical solution.

Did Jesus ever ask anybody, “How did you get sick?” We get stuck on the “How did you get sick? How did you become infected?” We look with everybody with HIV and assume they did something wrong and that’s why they’re sick. You will not find Jesus asking, “How did you get sick?” He just said, “What can I do? How can I help you?”

First, we need to get God’s heart on how he feels about people who are sick. Second, we need to model our ministries after the way Jesus treated people. Third, we need to come alongside and build relationships with people that says it doesn’t really matter to me whether you put yourself at risk or you didn’t put yourself at risk. The point is I’m going to care for you. My response is going to be the same.

Warren has also come up with a practical program for reducing or eliminating the spread of the virus:

If you want to S.L.O.W. down the spread of HIV:

S Support the correct use of condoms every sexual encounter.
L Limit the number of partners, because studies have also shown that the greatest risk is in multiple partners.
O This is very controversial. Offer needle exchange. Studies have shown that in some places clean needles can slow down the transmission of HIV.
W Wait for sexual debut. Studies have shown that the younger a person is at their his or her sexual encounter, the more likely it is that he or she will be infected with HIV. So if you can encourage people to wait until they’re older, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, before they have their first sexual encounter you can slow down the spread of HIV.

I have an even higher goal: I don’t want to just manage HIV. My goal is to end HIV. I want the world to be rid of this evil virus.

So to STOP it requires a different strategy.

S Save sex for marriage.
T Teach men and boys to respect and honor women and girls. If men continue to treat women with such disrespect, HIV will be on our planet for a long time to come. So there’s a discipleship element.
O Offer treatment through churches. We think that those things that I told you about, those six things that churches can do, when the church is involved, it can stop the spread of AIDS.
P Partner with one person for life.

While the SLOW approach is pragmatic and relies on tested methods, I find much in the STOP half of this that smacks of heterosexism. Her program is geared solely to address heterosexual contraction of HIV and ignores the existance of gay men and women.

It is of no value whatsoever to tell a young gay man that he is to wait for marriage while simultaneously railing at him that allowing him to marry would destroy the foundations of society. And lessons on how to respect women are not going to give him tools on how to avoid infection.

Yet as the conservative church has been so very reluctant for so very long to provide the slightest care for those with HIV or AIDS, I welcome even this exclusionary approach. I am hopeful that Kay Warren’s STOP program is simply ignorant of the realities of same-sex attraction and are not a continuation of the church’s long history of barring its door to those who find themselves gay.

Perhaps in her new book she better lays out her beliefs. Until then I’ll gladly give her the benefit of the doubt and welcome the vast resources that conservative Christianity can bring to those suffering.

Possible Anti-Gay Serial Killer In Chicago?

Two recent murders of openly gay African-American men are leading some activists in Chicago to wonder whether there’s a connection between the two:

On November 17, 24-year-old Larry Bland was shot to death in his Englewood home. Bland, a security guard at Northwestern Hospital was shot more than once after struggling with a man who had entered the house through an unlocked basement door.

Then on December 23, 47-year-old Donald Young, the choir director at Trinity United Church of Christ, was shot multiple times in his South Side apartment. His roommate found his body.

“We’re calling on the police department to let the community know what’s going on,” said Marc Loveless of the Coalition for Justice and Respect. “Are we under attack? Is this a serial killer?”

So far, police aren’t willing to draw a connection between the two. They also say there’s no evidence so far to suggest the crimes are hate crimes. But in a neighborhood where gays and lesbians are very unwelcome, the two men’s sexuality is muddying the waters for some. Lynn Bland, Larry’s brother remarked, “Englewood? Come on. That’s why a lot of gay guys won’t come out, because they fear for something like this to happen,”

What A Difference A Year Makes

Tom Anderson’s Fifth Estate club in Scottsdale, Arizona, made news earlier this year for banning a transgender woman from his night club. The woman, Michele DeLaFreniere, filed a discrimination complaint with the Arizona Attorney General’s Office. That dispute simmered for about a year until last November, when Anderson agreed to lift the ban if DeLaFreniere would drop her complaint.

Now Anderson has closed the Fifth Estate, and tonight that location will see the premiere of the Forbidden Night Club, Scottsdale’s newest gay bar:

Owner Tom Anderson said he made the transition in an effort to “change Scottsdale.” The city saw a number of high-profile anti-gay and hate crimes this year, said Sam Holdren of Equality Arizona.

Florida Republican Gov. Crist Won’t Push Anti-Marriage Amendment

The signatures are in and the campaign is on. Florida will be voting on a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages — marriages which are already banned under state law. The Florida Republican Party put up nearly three-fourths of the funding to gather signatures, funding which abruptly ended when Gov. Charlie Crist took office and instructed the state GOP to not contribute any further. And now that the proposal has been certified to appear on the ballot, Gov. Crist has declined to offer his endorsement:

And even though he signed a petition to support the same-sex-marriage ban while he was running for office, he says he’s not interested in pushing the issue anymore.

“It’s not something that moves me,” he said last week.

Blame the Altar Boys – They WANTED It!!

This one comes in a bit of a circuitous route (via PageOneQ‘s reference to a translation site) so I can’t swear to its accuracy.

However, the Catholic Bishop of the Canary Island of Tenerife seems to think gay folks are bad for society.

“Homosexuality harms society, and we will pay for it,” he said, adding that most homosexuals lived out their sexual leanings as if they were addicts.

No big surprise. The Church under the current Pope seems to be constantly looking for ever more outrageous things to say.

But Bishop Bernardo Alvarez has an all new take on what I assume is his response to the scandals surrounding priests molestating children and the Church covering it up. Usually it’s simply “defend the Church, blame the homosexuals that snuck into the Church.” Alvarez’ position is even more ignoble.

The bishop further stated that there are minors who desired sexual abuse and even sought it out. “If one isn’t careful, they could even provoke it,” Alvarez said. “Sexuality is more complicated than one suspects.”

So now it’s not just the Church that is innocent, it’s also the molesting priests. The ones to blame are those oversexed Lolitas, male or female, that provoked the priests.

Sure there are sexually provocative youth. No question. There are even precocious minors that are sexually active younger than thirteen, Spain’s age of consent. But isn’t it the adult’s job to set appropriate boundaries?

Possible Hate Crime Assault In Chicago

It appears that an horrible hate crime near Chicago a few days ago, and already one anti-gay extremist is positively dripping with glee as he takes a shot at twisting it to his advantage.

According to the Chicago Sun-Times:

Felipe Rivera, 43, is charged with a hate crime as well as aggravated criminal sexual assault and other offenses, said a spokesman for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office. If convicted, he could face more than 30 years in prison, a source said.

… “Mr. Rivera got upset apparently because he believed the victim, No. 1, didn’t respond to a female and then, No. 2, somehow winked at him — made what he perceived as a sexual advance,” said Cicero police spokesman Dan Proft.

According to police, Rivera punched the unnamed victim in the face and was asked to leave the party. According to another report, Rivera offered to pay the victim $50 for sex, an offer that the victim refused. Rivera then waited outside for the victim to leave the party, and then followed him to the outer staircase of a basement apartment, where he raped him, punched the victim in the head rendering him semi-conscious, and then sodomized him with a metal broom handle.

Rivera then confessed the entire crime to the police, saying he did it “because he hates f – – – – – s, and this is what they get,” according to police spokesman Proft. Proft also said that Rivera claimed that the whole reason he did this is because the victim winked at him, which the victim denies.

Rivera then went to his mother’s home. His mother — his mother! — called the police on him because she has a protective order against him. Even his own mother won’t have anything to do with him. But Peter LaBarera sees Rivera as being unjustly accused of committing a hate crime — all because of a mere allegation that Rivera offered $50 for sex.

What LaBarbera doesn’t seem to understand however is that 1) we don’t know whether Rivera really made the offer, 2) we don’t know Rivera’s sexual orientation (was the offer real or a taunt?), and 2) Rivera’s orientation has no bearing on whether this is a hate crime or not. If a Black man who holds White supremacist views (and believe it or not, a very few of them exist) attacks an African-American solely because of his race, then it’s a hate crime.

But I guess one thing we can be sure of. We certainly know who LaBarbera sees as the victim in this case.

Update: LaBarbera’s evidence for Rivera’s supposed homosexuality evaporated, but he’s sticking to his story anyway.

That Didn’t Take Long

A tiger escaped its enclosure in the San Francisco zoo and killing one young man and seriously mauled two more on Christmas Day, just as the zoo was about to close. Our friends at Westboro Baptist had their press release ready to go the very next day:

Uh, happy Feast of St. Stevens (a.k.a Boxing Day)…

Be a Manly Man in 2008

Do the ex-gays really set out to be parodies of themselves?

There’s a new movement to make church-going men more masculine. Michael Brewer, an ex-gay for 15 years, is going about telling these men about how he’s become oh-so-straight due to his clothes, watching sports, and manly activities.

You see, if you identify as a man, you’ll be hetero.

Oh, it’s well worth reading. It’s almost as good as a Britney Spears story or an episode of Janice Dickenson’s Modeling Agency. You’re not sure whether to laugh, feel pity, or think it’s all staged.

I had asked one brother to teach me some carpentry, he said no so I went to a different brother who is also a carpenter & asked if he & I could do a project together – yes! We built a bookcase for me together and that brother patiently answered my many questions about woodworking as our relationship developed!

OK, it’s probably not fair for me to mock too heavily! Sure my first job was helping in the family housing construction company, but I’m sure that a bookcase is a very manly project! For some!

Now I invite our gay readers to suggest what fun “masculine” activities they enjoy (or feminine activities for our Girly Girls) and whether they make you feel more hetero. And our straight readers might want to let us know if their non-gender conforming activities are leading them to try a little walk on the wild side.

Or maybe you have a Manly Man resolution for the new year.

Dan’s Christmas Past Wish List

Letter to Santa from Christmas Future

Dear Santa,

I have to admit that I’m not very good at writing these kinds of letters. It’s not that there aren’t things I want for Christmas, but the kinds of things I’m usually tempted to ask for aren’t the sort of things that elves are equipped to deliver. You know, things like world peace and brotherhood among all people, stuff like that.

I remember the last time I wrote a Santa letter was probably back in ’14, or ’15 or so, when I thought things were getting kinda boring and complacent in this country. It’s not that things were going swimmingly well, but that we were losing our energy. It seemed we were tired of arguing over the same things year after year. The culture war had taken its toll and people were looking for peace wherever they could find it.

Little did we know that by January of 2017, we’d be looking at the start of the Rick Scarborough administration and the newly formed Christocrasts muscling their way into Capital Hill. Good Lord, what a disaster! I’m just glad it was mercifully short. I don’t think we would have survived a whole term of that mess, let alone a second one.

And so here it is, 2027, and even though president Afleck’s second term is about to enter its last full year, we’re just now starting to see things getting back to normal. Normal, I’ve learned, may be relative, but it’s also not too bad.

It just goes to show, you should always be careful what you wish for. That’s a lesson we all should learn.

It’s like when the Castro neighborhood of San Francisco emptied itself of its gay and lesbian population due to assimilation. There were an awful lot of people lamenting the end of gay culture and were looking for a way to preserve some remnant of it. For posterity, I suppose. But I still can’t get over the sheer stupidity of having Universal Studios buy up all the property so they could turn it into “Castro USA!” If I could ask for anything, it would be for the whole thing to end up in bankruptcy court with its chorus line of Harvey Milk impersonators and all.

But like I said, these aren’t the kinds of things that traditionally emerge from elfin workshops. If I had to stick to those sorts of things, I guess I could ask for a real disco ball now that disco is making it’s fourth comeback. I’ve decided I’m not going to pretend that I’m too good for it like I did the first three times it came around. Or I might ask for a ’18 Ford Crown Victoria. Not that Crown Vics were ever my style, but who knew people would get so teary-eyed over the last production gasoline-powered car in North America?

But if I had all the material tchotskies in the world, I still wouldn’t feel satisfied. And I guess that brings me to my real point in all this. Christmas isn’t about personal satisfaction, is it? We can lament our lack of material goods, and we can decry the current state of culture or politics, But no matter how bad they may be they’re still only a symptom of a much larger issue.

So if there was just one thing I’d really want to ask for, it’s something to take care of that big picture problem: for everyone to treat each other the way they would want to be treated. It’s such a simple request. Not to get too preachy here, but “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” is a pretty good rule to live by. And that fits no matter who you are or what side of any issue you’re on.

Just think, if everyone were to take it to heart (and I include myself in this), imagine how much better off we all would be. And think of how much heartache, anger, and strife we all could have avoided in our lives — not just as individuals, but as a nation. We wouldn’t have avoided the culture wars, but we might have been able to find a third way through it if we had remembered that simple little rule.

So in the end, that’s really all I want for Christmas. The Golden Rule. Come to think of it, that’s what I ever wanted. Good luck with that one, Santa. I’m afraid that’s something we’re going to have to work on ourselves.

Maybe it’s time to start a list of New Year’s resolutions instead.

Timothy’s Wishes For The Christmas Present

Mike Huckabee and the Christian Reconstructionists

It’s been widely reported that former Arkansas governor and GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee flew down to Houston earlier this week for a fundraiser hosted by Steven Hotze. In today’s column, Robert Novak identified Steven Hotze as “a leader in the highly conservative Christian Reconstruction movement.” According to Novak, that fundraiser’s host committee had an unusual make-up:

State Rep. Debbie Riddle was the only elected official on the host committee, most of whose members were not familiar names in Texas politics. David Welch is executive director of the Houston Area Pastor Council. Jack Tompkins heads a firm providing Internet services to the Christian community. Entrepreneur J. Keet Lewis is an active Southern Baptist.

A better-known committee member was Baptist minister Rick Scarborough, founder of Vision America. In endorsing Huckabee on Nov. 1, Scarborough said, “I acknowledge that Huckabee is not the perfect candidate” but one “who will listen to wise counsel.”

According to Novak — who is not exactly a flaming liberal himself — until Huckabee’s problems with his fellow Southern Baptists had been that they didn’t think he was conservative enough! A pretty amazing assessment given his many statements on AIDS and homosexuality which have come to light recently (and which Huckabee has refused to back away from, a move which earned him a LaBarbera Award). But as strident as his pronouncements may be, they hadn’t been orthodox enough to fully satisfy the Christian Reconstructionists. But now that he’s receiving donations from them, it looks like things have changed between them.

For those who don’t know, Christian Reconstructionists are the guys who want to replace civil law with Biblical law, which makes them the Christian equivalent to Muslims who advocate for Sharia law. To give you an idea of what these people are about, the Cato Institute posted a snippet of a 1986 statement that was signed by Steven Holtze:

We affirm that the Bible is not only God’s statements to us regarding religion, salvation, eternity, and righteousness, but also the final measurement and depository of certain fundamental facts of reality and basic principles that God wants all mankind to know in the sphere of law, government, economics, business, education, arts and communication, medicine, psychology, and science. All theories and practices of these spheres of life are only true, right, and realistic to the degree that they agree with the Bible.

This statement is virtually identical to some of the messages presented by American pastors at the most recent Watchmen On the Walls conference last November. Other signatories to the statement include D. James Kennedy, Tim LaHaye, George Rekers, Don Wildmon, and R.J. Rushdoony.

Rushdoony is considered the father of Christian Reconstructionism. His 1973 book, The Institutes of Biblical Law, serves as a foundational document for Christian Reconstructionists. In the Institutes, Rushdoony called for the replacement of civil law with Biblical Law, including the legalization of slavery (because the Bible approves of it) stoning as punishment for a long list of Biblical offenses including homosexuality (because the Bible calls for it). Rushdoony defended these beliefs right up until his death in 2001. Scarborough recently declared that his is neither a Republican nor a Democrat, but “a Christocrat.”

Huckabee recently told an audience at Liberty University that God was responsible for his recent rise in the polls. And we’ve noted before that Huckabee has been voicing a rather strange theology lately. Does that theology now include theonomy and the Christian Reconstructionist theology of those whose support he’s seeking?

Ho-Ho-Homo No Mo

Here’s a touching and true Christmas story from performance artist and ex-gay survivor Peterson Toscano. It’s not Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, but the Isle of Misfits certainly comes to mind. Here’s Christmas at the Homo No Mo Halfway House.