Box Turtle Bulletin

Scotty Joe Weaver’s Killer Gets Two Life Sentences

On July 22, 2004, 18-year-old Scotty Joe Weaver’s burned body was found at the side of a rural Alabama road. He had been beaten, strangled, cut, burned and robbed of between $65 and $80. While robbery was first thought to be the main motivation, Baldwin County District Attorney concluded that the crime was actually a hate crime. Unfortunately, Alabama does not have a hate crime law covering sexual orientation, and Scotty Joe Weaver’s murder was not included in the FBI’s hate crime statistics for 2004, representing another example of the gaps in the FBI’s hate crime reporting program.

Robert Porter, 18, Nichole Bryars Kelsay, 18, and Christopher Gaines, 20 were arrested and charged with capital murder. Gaines and Kelsay had been Scotty Joe’s roommates. Last May, Gaines pleaded guilty to capital murder, avoiding the death penalty. Last Wednesday, Porter entered a guilt plea and received two consecutive life sentences. According to his lawyer, he will be eligible for parole in fifteen years.

Prosecutors said a plea agreement is possible with Kelsay, who is awaiting trial.

Ex-Gay Therapist Convicted Of Sexual Assault

Wayne Besen at Truth Wins Out reported today that Christopher Austin, an ex-gay counselor and founder of Renew Ministries of Irving, Texas, was convicted of sexually assaulting a client, a second degree felony of “unlawfully, intentionally and knowingly caused penetration of [pseudonym Stephen Trask].” He was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but received seven years probation and was ordered to pay a $2,500 fine. He is also required to register as a sex offender.

In addition to running Renew Ministries, Austin was a member of the National Association For Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). He even held a seminar at NARTH’s 2004 convention, despite being accused of sexual assault by another client 2001 according to Ex-Gay Watch. Also, Ex-Gay Watch reports that despite the conviction, Austin is still answering the telephone as “Dr. Austin, Counseling Center.”

Tucson Calls For Repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”

I have no idea how I missed this. It took the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network to get me to notice that Tucson, Arizona — my fair city — passed a resolution calling on Congress to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Mayor Bob Walkup (R) and the Tucson City Council approved the resolution which reads in part:

“Military readiness is enhanced when every qualified, capable American, regardless of sexual orientation, is welcomed into our Armed Forces and has his or her talents utilized in the best interest of our national security.”

Tucson is a significant military town, home of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base and Raytheon, a major defense contractor. (Raytheon, by the way, became the first aerospace company to win a perfect score on the HRC’s Corporate Equality Index in 2005.) In addition, Tucson’s sunny weather has attracted a huge number of military retirees — they often try to arrange for their last posting at D-M before retirement.

Nevertheless, Tucson is an incredibly open city for LGBT’s. In 1975, Tucson was one of the nation’s first communities pass anti-discrimination laws based on sexual orientation, and more recently Tucson (Pima Co.) led the state in defeating the anti-marriage amendment.

Tucson’s resolution follows similar measure from Atlanta, Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Saint Louis.

The LaBarbera Award: PFOX’s Regina Griggs

Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX) Executive Director Regina Griggs has long co-opted the status of a persecuted minority by describing a strange parallel universe where homosexuality is perfectly accepted and it’s the ex-gays who experience “discrimination.” Her organization works aggressively against gays and lesbian families at all levels, but if anyone expresses any opposition to her efforts they are labeled as engaging in “discrimination against the ex-gay community.” She’s even positioned “ex-gay” as another kind of orientation. To support this line of argument, Griggs has a long history of blowing criticisms out of proportion to prop up the idea that the so-called “ex-gay community” is a persecuted minority under constant siege.

In her most recent example, Griggs claimed that members of her PFOX organization were “attacked” at the Arlington, Va County Fair:

As happens every year, gay activists disrupted our booth activities. They screamed obscenities, threw our materials from the exhibit table to the ground, insisted we recognize their same-sex “spouses,” demanded that PFOX leave, and hit a PFOX volunteer because he is ex-gay.
…
One gay man went so far as to hit our ex-gay volunteer because he refused to recant his ex-gay testimony. We summoned a police officer, who ejected the gay man off of the fairgrounds. Our ex-gay volunteer decided not to press assault charges against the gay man because he wanted to turn the other check as Jesus had done.

This is not the first year that PFOX has had to summon the police for protection from gay activists.

This story was picked up all around the anti-gay circuit, including Focus on the Family’s Citizenlink webzine and Family News In Focus radio program. But it appears that this incident didn’t really happen. Ex-Gay Watch’s David Roberts did some digging and has the story:

Since PFOX stated that the police were “summoned” and that they “ejected the gay man off the fairgrounds” we decided to check with the Arlington County Police Department…

We contacted the Arlington PD and ended up speaking with John Lisle of the Media Relations/Legislative Affairs Office. He had no initial knowledge of such an incident. After checking briefly, he again said that no one was aware of such an incident. So we sent a copy of the PFOX statement to him at which time he agreed to check more thoroughly. After over two days of research, there was nothing he could add to his statement; no report exists and no one recalls such an incident.

David Roberts also learned that Arlington County Fair officials hadn’t heard of any problems either. In a follow-up story, he reported:

Yesterday, we spoke with Jackie Abrams, Vice Chair of the Arlington County Fair. According to Abrams, no physical altercation occurred, police were never called and no one was ejected from the fairgrounds – she was emphatic and certain. “I was in radio contact with the other board members during the Fair, and definitely would have known if the police had been summoned. It did not happen [her emphasis],” said Abrams. She added that her calls to PFOX, and specifically to PFOX president Regina Griggs, had gone unanswered.

David Roberts also spoke with two eyewitnesses who worked at nearby booths. Each reported an incident of a heated discussion, but neither of them saw anything physical — no shoving, no hitting, no police or fair officials escorting anyone off the property.

In other words, there is no shred of evidence that anything happened the way Griggs describe it. In fact, all evidence suggests that this is just another one of her many attention-grabbing stunts.

This isn’t the first time Griggs has claimed victimhood status for ex-gays. It’s been a long-running theme of hers, and she’s been very diligent in coopting the experience and the language of the gay rights movement. One of her best examples can be found in this letter she sent to the APA last March:

The ex-gay movement is a civil rights movement to ensure the inclusion of former homosexuals in all realms of society and to support the ex-gay community’s equal access to schools on the same level as gays currently enjoy. Ex-gays and their supporters should not have to be closeted for fear of other’s negative reactions or disapproval. They do not think something is wrong with them because they decided to fulfill their heterosexual potential. Nor do they believe others should condemn them for the personal decision they have made for their lives. Because of the abuse heaped upon them by society, former homosexuals experience discrimination at every level.

The PFOX website’s “About” page has more examples where the “ex-gay community” experiences “abuse heaped upon them by society.” And in the most amazing turn of logic, they go so far as to claim that anti-discrimination and hate crime laws which identify sexual orientation as a factor for protection somehow “legitimize intolerance against former homosexuals” — a notion that is both ludicrous and blatantly false. The fact is, these laws protect everyone regardless of sexual orientation — including non-gays of all stripes, ex-gays among them.

But it’s the last point which makes Grigg’s hysterical notions of “discrimination at every level” so particularly outrageous. Terrance Heath recently began a huge undertaking with the LGBT Hate Crimes Project, and if Grigg’s really wanted to understand the face of intolerance, she should look at a few of these examples:

• Michelle Abdill and Rhonda Ellis of Medford, Oregon were shot execution style on December 4, 1995 by Robert Acremant, who wrote a letter to his hometown newspaper saying that it was easier to kill them knowing they were lesbians.

• Gary Matson and Winfield Mowder of Redding, California were murdered on July 1, 1999 by white supremacist brothers Benjamin Matthew Williams and James Tyler Williams, who confessed to killing the couple because they were gay.

• Author Warren, a developmentally disabled gay man from Grant Town, West Virginia, was murdered on July 3, 2000 by two teenagers. After kicking and beating him, they drove him to the edge of town ran over him four times to disguise his death as a hit-and-run.

• Guin “Richie” Phillips disappeared on June 17, 2003. His body was found on June 25, 2003, stuffed in a suitcase in Rough River Lake. During Joshua Cottrell’s trial, Cottrell’s aunt and cousin testified that he planned to kill Phillips because he was gay.

• Michael Sandy died on October 13, 2006 after being hit by a car while trying to escape four attackers. His attackers later said they targeted Sandy because they were seeking gays to attack and rob.

Griggs might do well to consider that a little bit of perspective is in order. There were 1,171 hate crime incidents in 2005 based on sexual orientation. Twenty-three of those crimes were anti-heterosexual. It’s quite possible that a few ex-gays might be caught up in that mix. If so, those crimes are every bit as deplorable as the other 1,148. But to try to compare the “ex-gay community’s” experience with the very real discrimination and harassment that gays and lesbians experience across the country is beyond offensive.

If the “ex-gay community” has experienced abuse and discrimination “at every level,” where are the ex-gays who were kicked out of the military for being ex-gay? Where are the ex-gays who have been fired from their jobs because they were ex-gay? Where is their answer to Daniel Fetty?

The “ex-gay community” should consider themselves blessed that they have no such answer.

But Regina Griggs isn’t interested in counting blessings. Instead, she’d rather count something else. Notice how she ends her rant about the Arlington County Fair:

… Almost every day we are on the front lines suffering harassment and injustices merely because we demand our equal rights.

The public eats up our information because they have never been exposed to factual truth about same-sex attractions. Teens especially are eager for our educational literature. But our brochures and flyers cost money to print. We also have to pay for exhibit fees and travel. If you would like to help with costs, please make a tax deductible donation to …

Nice. Milking a non-event using hysterical hyperbole to raise money. The LaBarbera Award was created to highlight “the most outrageous, offensive, malevolent, crazy, or excessive statement or claim.” Regina Griggs more than earned the award just on her latest drama-queen antics alone. Capping them with a fundraising appeal is just the rhetorical equivalent of running up the score. Congratulations, Regina. You’ll be a hard act to follow.

PFOX is an Exodus member ministry.

Rev. D. James Kennedy Dies

This post has been revised to add information on Kennedy’s ties to the Christian Reconstructionist movement, and to include Wayne Besen’s reaction.

Rev. D. James Kennedy, pastor of the Fort Lauderdale megachurch, Coral Ridge Ministries, died this morning. He was 76.

Kennedy was one of the more notorious, rabidly anti-gay extremists in America. And in his zeal to demonize gay Americans he chose a colorful array of associates. The Miami Herald briefly notes his associations with members of the extremist Christian Reconstructionist movement. Christian Reconstructionist author George Grant once served as Kennedy’s vice president at Coral Ridge, and Kennedy was an avid supporter of Judge Roy Moore. Other Christian Reconstructionist leaders (notably John Rushdoony and Gary DeMar) appeared on The Coral Ridge Hour and ministry sponsored conferences. Kennedy promoted the so-called “Constitution Restoration Act” which would have authorized Congress to impeach judges who fail to acknowledge “God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government.”

Kennedy’s recently-shuttered Center for Reclaiming America for Christ sponsored a series of television commercials in 1998 promoting gay conversion featuring Michael Johnston. Johnston, who is HIV-positive, was later found to have been secretly hosting orgies, taking drugs and practicing unsafe sex without disclosing his HIV status.

In 2004, Kennedy co-wrote What’s Wrong With Same-Sex Marriage with Jerry Newcombe which quotes extensively from discredited “researcher” and Nazi apologist Paul Cameron. In 2005, Kennedy published another book titled Why the Ten Commandments Matter, which features distortions from Cameron’s influential pamphlet, “Medical Consequences of What Homosexuals Do.  And Kennedy’s Center for Reclaiming America posted at least one other article citing Cameron’s “research.”

The Miami Herald adds this reaction from Wayne Besen:

Fort Lauderdale gay-rights activist Wayne Besen calls him something else: “a source of great pain for gays and lesbians, distorting our lives on a national level. The whole ‘ex-gay’ movement we see nationally was jump-started by Coral Ridge Ministries … Kennedy popularized this idea that has caused a lot of suffering for gay people,” that homosexuality could be “prayed away.”

As with Jerry Falwell’s death last May, reactions to Kennedy’s passing are likely to run the gamut from mournful sadness to unmitigated glee. This should come as no surprise. Divisive people often provoke divided reactions, and few were more divisive than Kennedy. For me, there’s no glee. But again, like my first reaction on hearing about Falwell’s death, it’s “one gone, so many more…” My thoughts and prayers go to his family, sure. But the bulk of my thoughts and prayers go to all those he harmed over the course of his career.

Sen. Craig Reconsiders

Last Saturday, Sen. Craig announced his intent to resign by the end of September after being pilloried by the GOP for pleading guilty for a misdemeanor. His crime? Tapping his foot and swiping his hand under a bathroom stall. Last I heard, this wasn’t a crime, and he shouldn’t have pleaded guilty to it. Apparently his new lawyers agree, and now we hear that Sen. Craig may not resign after all.

Sen. Craig was initially stunned by how quickly his “friends” stumbled over themselves to denounce him. (Meanwhile Sen. Vitter’s misdemeanor earned him a round of applause among his Senate colleagues.) Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky), who’s had some rumors he’s had to deny himself, promised a very public ethics committee hearing. But Arlen Specter (R-Pa) told Fox News Sunday, “I’d like to see him fight the case because I think he could be vindicated.” A spokesman for Sen. Craig said Tuesday night, “if the wheels of justice are able to turn quick enough, meaning before Sept. 30, he may — and I emphasize may — not resign.”

And with that, the discusion over the GOP’s double standard remains alive. This is good. It gives everyone (including the Log Cabin Republicans) another opportunity to fully engage this important debate.

Pro-Ex-Gay Preacher’s Daughter Speaks Out

It’s a ‘chicken or the egg’ question; what comes first, anti-gay extremism or a child’s sexual orientation?

It seems almost more than coincidental that there are so many anti-gay activists with gay children ranging from Eagle Forum’s Phyllis Schafly and Operation Rescue’s Randall Terry to ex-gay proponants like PFOX’s Regina Griggs and NARTH’s Charles Socarides. Oddly, none of the anti-gay or ex-gay leaders have ever had a child that succeeded in changing their orientation.

We recently told you about Sal Roggio, the Cumberland County, NJ, preacher who is bringing in ex-gay Greg Quinlan to “explain that homosexuality is a changeable behavior”. Rev. Roggio wanted “folks to come in and know there’s hope.”

I guess it’s really not all that surprising that Sal Roggio’s daughter Sharon is a lesbian. As reported by NBC10 she just couldn’t remain silent in the face of her father’s public crusade.

“I love my father and want only happiness for him,” Sharon Roggio said. “But I cannot stand silent and allow false statements against gay and lesbian people to be made any longer.”

The Boom Closes

What 365gay.com calls the longest running gay club in the country closed last night. The Boom Boom Room was the last gay nightspot in Laguna Beach, the final victim in a wildly out of control gentrification process the gay community helped start there. If I still lived in So Cal I would have been there.

Can we acknowledge cities are dynamic entities, stop pretending Laguna is the gay center of Orange County now and maybe get to work building a new community someplace viable?

I’m sure there are other natives reading this site who will want to discuss.

Jerry Lewis: “Illiterate Fag”?

Jerry Lewis has hosted the grueling day-long Muscular Dystrophy Association Telethon every day year since 1966. When I last saw the telethon during the 1970’s, I was drawn by the morbid fascination of watching a man slowly deteriorate over the course of the twenty-two hour broadcast, wondering if he would slip up and do something embarrassing on live coast-to-coast television. I was always disappointed, but that was usually offset by the record-breaking donations it generated each year.

Lewis was filling airtime by clowning around with the camera. He pointed to another camera, saying, “Oh, your family has come to see you. You remember Bart, your oldest son.” And he moves on to the next camera. That’s when to some ears at least, he introduced that camera as “Jesse, the illiterate fag… No…” And then he quickly moves away as the audience groans.

I should point out that he might have said “fat…” instead of “fag…” Honestly, it’s hard to tell. The sentence was clearly left unfinished either way. You can see the video for yourself here.

I don’t know whether this is an Isaiah Washington moment or a misfired stab at a Don Rickles joke. I’m willing to cut him a little slack (he’s of a certain generation, it was the eighteenth hour, he’s clearly not as sharp as he once was, he might not have actually said “fag”), but I do think he needs to address this.

And I suspect he probably will. I predict that he’ll release a statement sometime in the next 24 to 48 hours, either denying that he said what we think we heard, or apologizing for an ill-considered joke. Or maybe some kind of a combination of the two. What do you think?

Meanwhile, the MDA telethon raised $64 million yesterday, besting last year’s telethon by $3 million.

Update: This was faster than I expected:

“I obviously made a bad choice of words. Everyone who knows me understands that I hold no prejudices in this regard,” he said. “The success of the (telethon) and all the good that will come from it shouldn’t be lost because of one unfortunate word. I accept responsibility for what I said. There are no excuses. I am sorry.”

The Love That Will Finally Speak Its Name

That’s the title of a column in Newsweek by Loraine Barr who at 88 decided that it was finally time to publicly acknowledge the truth of her 44-year relationship:

Finally, after almost nine years since my beloved partner’s death, I am able to do what I could never have braved in earlier years: present myself herewith to the world as a lesbian, along with all the women who ask to be judged by the full facet of our characters.

Why am I now able to speak the unspoken? A friend at the retirement community where I live recently came out in the local and national newspapers. When I saw her do that, I thought, for heaven’s sake, nobody can fire me, I’m 88 years old, my parents are gone.

Still, I was frightened. It took me several days to put this essay in the mailbox. I owe a lot of credit to people who are comfortable enough in their own skins to say, “This is who I am.”

Shall I be haunted for trying to tell my story now, when many might still not wish to address it, or shall I, perhaps, be congratulated?

Don’t worry Ms. Barr, congratulations are definitely in order. Welcome out.

Problems With Comments?

Web sites like this one get a constant stream of “comment spam” — bogus, computer generated comments with links to porn sites, Viagara vendors, penile enhancement scams, and questionable stock tips. This web site runs an anti-spam module which does a pretty good job of filtering out dozens of bogus comments each day.

Unfortunately, legitimate comments sometimes gets caught in the dragnet from time to time. I found three such comments in the past two days alone. When I find them I release them as soon as possible, but I don’t always catch them. If your comment doesn’t appear right away, please e-mail me and I’ll try to get to it as soon as possible.

Ex-Gay Watch Catches PFOX

I’d previously posted on PFOX’s rather hysterical claims a homosexual activist assaulted an ex-gay at the Arlington County Fair. At the time I noted only suspect websites catering to the religious right were reporting on the supposed incident.

Bravo to editor Dave Roberts at Ex-Gay Watch for undertaking an investigation. Roberts contacted the only gay organization with a booth at the fair, the Arlington Gay and Lesbian Alliance. He also contacted the fair’s event manager and the Arlington County Police Department and strangely no one had heard of such an incident. Roberts wrote:

We contacted the Arlington PD and ended up speaking with John Lisle of the Media Relations/Legislative Affairs Office. He had no initial knowledge of such an incident. After checking briefly, he again said that no one was aware of such an incident. So we sent a copy of the PFOX statement to him at which time he agreed to check more thoroughly. After over two days of research, there was nothing he could add to his statement; no report exists and no one recalls such an incident.

This graphic in GoodAsYou‘s typical sense of humor seems to sum things up best.

Sen. Craig To Resign

I’m still trying to figure out how anyone can have a “wide stance” when their trousers are gathered about their knees. That’s okay though. I won’t have to think about it any more. News media everywhere are reporting that Idaho Sen. Larry Craig will resign tomorrow, leaving the GOP’s double standard intact. I’m glad he’s resigning, but the GOP’s business isn’t done. Wouldn’t you agree?

Gay Is Good: Frank Kameny’s Memorabilia At The Smithsonian

The Smithsonian’s Museum of American History is closed and undergoing renovations, but that’s not stopping them from putting on ambitious and expansive shows at other venues. One such exhibit is the “Treasures of American History” at the National Air and Space Museum.

And one part of this exhibit is titled “Gay is Good” and features several items from Frank Kameny’s recently donated archives and memorabilia, includes picket signs from 1965 and “Gay is Good” buttons from around 1968. These items join Thomas Jefferson’s small, portable, folding desk upon which he wrote the Declaration and the inkwells Abraham Lincoln used to write the Emancipation Proclamation — all of which played key roles in the formation of our national values of freedom and equality for everyone.

Frank Kameny is a living hero of the American gay rights movement. It all began when he was dismissed in 1957 from his position as an astronomer in the Army Map Service because of his homosexuality. Federal civil service rules at the time prohibited gays from federal employment, and security clearances were routinely denied to anyone who was found to be gay. He became the first to appeal a firing on the basis of homosexuality. The ACLU represented him at the Court of Appeals, but they refused to go further when he lost. So he wrote his own appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, filing it on January 21, 1961. The Supreme Court took only two months to turn it down.

In 1961, Frank and Jack Nichols co-founded the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., aggressively pressing for equal treatment of gay employees in the federal government. They also began their work to overturn anti-sodomy laws across the country and to remove homosexuality from the American Psychiatric Association’s list of mental disorders, both of which served as justifications for ongoing discrimination against gays and lesbians. The APA was not very receptive to working with the Society however, writing in 1963, “it is not in the best interests of the APA to meet with you, nor to publicize your meetings.” Meanwhile there was a move in Congress in 1963 to prevent the District of Columbia from registering the Mattachine Society as a nonprofit organization.

But that didn’t deter the nascent gay rights movement. Frank and other members of the Mattachine Society participated in the very first gay-rights picket in front of the White House in 1965. And in 1973, he was on a panel of the APA’s symposium on homosexuality when Dr. John E. Fryer appeared as “Dr. H. Anonymous.” This ended up being a key moment leading to the APA’s elimination of homosexuality as a mental illness. That was quite a turnaround from a mere ten years earlier when the APA refused to meet with him.

In 1968 Frank coined the phrase “Gay is Good,” inspired by the popular “Black is Beautiful” slogan. “Gay is Good” may appear rather simple today, but it was a particularly significant slogan for 1968 when homosexuality was still considered both a mental illness and a criminal act. Today, in a private message reprinted here with his kind permission, Frank reflects on his slogan:

I’ve said, for a long time, that if I’m remembered for only one thing, I would like it to be for having coined “Gay is Good.” But never did I expect that that would make its way to the Smithsonian. I feel deeply contented.

You can find more information about Frank’s contribution to gay rights in America at his web site, the Kameny Papers. Not only was he a great gay rights leader, he also ended up being a great archivist. It seems as if he never threw anything away and we’re all the richer for it. Now his legacy is a part of our national patrimony. And as this video from The Kameny Papers website shows, his struggle — and ours — is part and parcel of the larger struggle to bring America’s promise of equality to fruition for everyone.

First Same-Sex Marriage Occurs in Iowa

In the tiny window between Judge Hanson declaring the gay marrage ban in Iowa unconstitutional and his stay on issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, Tim McQuillan and Sean Fritz got married. Per the Des Moines Register:

The couple — Tim McQuillan and Sean Fritz, both Iowa State University students — obtained a marriage license at the Polk County recorder’s office and got a judge to sign a waiver allowing them to marry today rather than wait three days, as is required by law.

They were married by the Rev. Mark Stringer of First Unitarian Church in Des Moines at 10:32 a.m. Before the ceremony, Stringer said, ” Awesome. It’s a long time coming.”

It remains to be seen whether this marriage will be registered, invalidated, or something in between.