Box Turtle Bulletin

Why There’s No Podcast Today

Hey this is Daniel, my first two ideas for guests fell through and then I had to work overtime on Tuesday night so I haven’t got a show ready just yet but check back in the next couple days when I’ll be putting up an interview with Jim Burroway who attended Love Won Out Phoenix to talk about his experience.

Student Turns Act Of Hate Into Message Of Tolerance

What do you do when your VW Bug is vandalized with anti-gay graffiti?

Show it off like a badge of honor.

Defendant Pleads Guilty in Scotty Joe Weaver’s Murder

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:

“In Alabama, we have very little violent crime against race. We’ve gone past that in our state,” said Baldwin County District Attorney David Whetstone. “We’re not there yet in lifestyle changes. We haven’t arrived yet to more acceptance.” …

“We have very specific evidence that indicates part of the motive involved his sexual orientation,” said Whetstone.

Whetstone noted that the wounds on Scotty Joe’s body indicated “overkill,” a common feature of anti-gay hate crimes.

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.

Gaines appears to have been the most cooperative of the three defendants. Shortly after his arrest, Gaines’ lawyer at that time said that Gaines told him that Porter “spoke openly of wanting to kill the guy because he was gay.”

Yesterday, Christopher Gaines pleaded guilty to capital murder. A shortened jury trial will begin Monday to determine whether he receives the death penalty or life without parole. It’s uncertain whether he will testify against the other two defendants when they stand trial later this year.

Alabama’s hate crime law doesn’t cover sexual orientation, but prosecutors said it would be a factor in determining if they would seek the death penalty. 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.

Indiana Teacher Humiliated By School Board

This is one of the more sickening displays I’ve seen in a long time.

You may remember Amy Sorrell, the Woodlan, Indiana high school teacher and school newspaper adviser who was placed on administrative leave after allowing a student to publish an op-ed advocating tolerance toward gay and lesbian students. The Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette has a follow-up report (with the disgusting headline, “Sorrell’s job saved by compassion“) on a settlement that allows Sorrell to keep her job. She will be transfered to another high school and barred from teaching journalism for three years.

East Allen County Schools officials on Friday aggressively defended their actions during the last three months regarding the suspension and near-termination of Woodlan Junior-Senior High School journalism teacher Amy Sorrell. …

Superintendent Kay Novotny said the settlement was made because the administrators are compassionate.

“EACS senior administrators have been able to set aside their frustrations with the spin applied to this situation to give Amy Sorrell a second chance to prove, despite her relative youth and obvious inexperience, that she can make as great a positive mark on EACS education as the administrators whose reputations her comments and actions have helped tarnish,” she said.

Sorrell, like most school teachers, has limited financial means and cannot afford to lose her job.  That financial dependency no doubt lead to the most humiliating part of the settlement: She was forced to provide cover for the administration’s inept handling of the controversy by issuing an apology stating that none of her actions or comments “were intended to suggest that administrators… have been motivated by intolerance toward homosexuality.”

But did Novotny accept that humiliating apology gracefully? What do you think?

“(We) assume that her statement of apology was sincere and heartfelt and not some shallow, insincere statement made, with her fingers crossed behind her back, in order to save her job,” Novotny said.

Shameless. That woman is absolutely shameless. It’s incredible that an announcement of a settlement would be delivered with such continuing belligerence towards Sorrell.

Sorrell’s attorney, Patrick Proctor, described the school board’s position perfectly:

“They are blaming Amy for how they’ve been portrayed in the media, but they still haven’t accepted responsibility for any of their own conduct, and if there was anybody that was in a position to repair their own public image, it’s them,” Proctor said. “All they would have to do is issue a formal policy on tolerance regarding homosexuality and free speech, but throughout this they’ve failed to do that.”

Meanwhile, Megan Chase’s original essay won a superior award at Ball State University’s J-Day for student journalism.

“And You Blog Like A Girl, Too”

At least that’s what this test told me.

He Was For Them Before He Was Against Them

Rudy Giuliani used to support civil unions. But now that the New Hampshire legislature has approved civil unions for that state and New York Gov. Spitzer announced plans to introduce a marriage bill in that state, Giuliani has changed his mind.

A Brutal Beating Death In Indiana

Three suspects have been charged in the brutal beating death of 35-year-old Aaron Hall in Crothersville, Indiana. Garret Gray, 19, and Coleman King, 18, are charged with murder, and Robert James Hendricks, 21, was charged with assisting a criminal.

According to Jackson County Sheriff’s Detective Robert Henley, the suspects told police that they beat Hall because he made an “obscene motion and homosexual suggestion” to King. That’s when King “went crazy on Hall,” and started beating him with fists. Gray joined in, and at one point King removed his boot and started hitting Hall with it.

The beating continued for several hours. At one point, Gray and King paused to take pictures of themselves with their arms around Halls beaten body. The photo showed Hall with a swollen lip, a black eye, and appeared badly beaten. They sent that text message photo to Gray’s friend, who later called police

Afterwards, Hendricks helped King and Gray to drag Aaron Hall out of the house by his feet, with his head hitting the stairs on the way out. They loaded him into Hendrick’s truck and dumped him in a ditch. According to one report, Hall was still alive but his breathing was labored. Days later, King, Gray, and Hendricks retrieved Hall’s body from a nearby field, wrapped it in a tarp and hid it in Grays garage.

Police found Hall’s body in the garage on Sunday.

A Chat With Peterson Toscano On “The Ex-Gay Survivor’s Conference”

In today’s broadcast Daniel chats with Peterson Toscano about the Beyond Ex-Gay conference planned for Irvine, CA in July. Daniel also highlights an upcoming PBS special on the Mormon church which includes exgay issues. Lastly learn about the host church for the recently announced Love Won Out conference to be held in Portland, OR in August.

But Wait! There’s More About Paul Cameron…

It’s hard to keep up with all of this. First this morning came Dr. Warren Throckmorton’s devastating analysis of Cameron’s “Scandinavian Gay Lifespan” study. Now he has posted another response from Danish epidemiologist Morton Frisch. He notes the same problem that I cited with Cameron’s Danish samples — they only began registering same-sex partnerships in 1989. That sample cannot be compared to the heterosexually-married cohort that has existed since forever. Dr. Frisch concludes his remarks this way:

Although the Camerons’ report has no objective scientific value, the authors should be acknowledged for providing teachers with a humorous example of agenda-driven, pseudo-scientific gobbledygook that will make lessons in elementary study design and scientific inference much more amusing for future epidemiology students.

Warren Throckmorton’s Response To Paul Cameron

There has been some new developments in regards to Paul and Kirk Cameron’s “Scandinavian Gay Lifespan” study. This was the study that Paul Cameron presented in a poster session at the Eastern Psychological Association’s convention in Philadelphia last March. His subsequent press releases later drew a sharp condemnation in an official statement from the EPA’s president, Dr. Phil Hineline, in response to my inquires.

Dr. Warren Throckmorton has carried the ball further. As I mentioned before, he contacted Danish epidemiologist Dr. Morton Frisch, who responded with a strong rebuke of the Camerons’ methods and conclusion. This prompted Dr. Kirk Cameron, Paul’s son, to mount a rather weak defense (in my opinion) in a letter he sent to Dr. Throckmorton. (This is, as far as I know, the first time we’ve heard from Kirk directly. His father typically handles such communications.)

In that defense, Kirk continues to defend the “gay obituary” methodology without actually addressing its many weaknesses — except one. He does mention the problem of closeted gay men and women, but dismisses it this way:

It was partly because of the uncertainties in self-report that we decided to examine other kinds of data. Obviously, obituaries depend upon human reporting but are not ‘self-reports.’ To keep one’s past sexual behavior secret after death can be difficult unless no one else knows, presumably even one’s own partners. As Ben Franklin wisely said, “three can keep a secret, but only if two of them are dead.”

Is this to mean that when a closeted individual dies, his or her former lovers are going to come out of the woodwork and place an obituary in the Washington Blade?  Does that even mean that the Blade will accept such an obituary?  Remember, they don’t even publish a general obituary section.

Nevertheless, Cameron the younger has the audacity to conclude:

Further, careful examination of our work and of the charges against us reveals that — while no one is perfect, including us — we have performed our work with scientific integrity and honesty.

Today Dr. Throckmorton has responded to Cameron’s letter with a thorough analysis of the Camerons’ paper. In it, he highlights a long stream of unsubstantiated assumptions and glaring weakness, all of  which builds toward what is both an unproven conclusion (that registered-partnered gays in Scandinavia die some twenty years younger than their heterosexual counterparts) and a decidedly unscientific publicity campaign:

To conclude, I have many objections to this study as well as the way you portrayed the results in the media. You define multiple assumptions which must be true in order to establish central tendency which I do not believe are reasonable to assume. The news releases convey a confidence in your findings which seems quite unscientific.

Further, I object to what appears to me to be your effort to establish the homosexually inclined as a distinct, monolithic group of people. It seems to me that gays and lesbians are quite diverse in their behavior and values. Being same-sex attracted tells me very little, if anything about the way one lives or the activities one chooses. One might find some small effect size for a risk factor, say depression, but that cannot say much about a “typical” homosexual. I think it fine to crusade against sexual promiscuity, risky sexual behavior, drug abuse, smoking, using seat belts, etc. You will have many people join you, both same-sex attracted and opposite-sex attracted. However, to say that being in a class of people is to expose oneself to risk via membership in that class is a misleading use of measures of central tendency, in my opinion. Hogg et al’s statement seems worth repeating here:

“It is essential to note that the life expectancy of any population is a descriptive and not a prescriptive measure. Death is a product of the way a person lives and what physical and environmental hazards he or she faces everyday. It cannot be attributed solely to their sexual orientation or any other ethnic or social factor. (Hogg et al, 2001, p. 1499).”

You can read Dr. Throckmorton’s splendid analysis here.

Christine Bakke on “Good Morning America”

Former “ex-lesbian” Christine Bakke, whose story was featured in this month’s Glamour, appeared on ABC’s Good Morning America Monday. You can see her interview here.

Most stories of former ex-gays have come from men. Through her own web site and in her work as co-founder of Beyond Ex-Gay, Christine is adding a seldom-heard voice that brings unique perspectives to the issue. And if you really want to hear the voice of someone who has “found freedom,” you can find it in Christine.

Spitzer “Checking Off A Box”?

The New York Times this morning carried an editorial which sums up my concerns about Gov. Spitzer’s announcement that he will introduce a bill to legalize gay marriage in the Empire state:

Mr. Spitzer would be the first governor in the nation to introduce a gay marriage bill. But if he is going to make a real difference, rather than simply checking off a box to fulfill a campaign promise, he will have to fight for the law vigorously.

Spitzer already had a very full and difficult legislative agenda even before he announced this bill, which he didn’t list as among his legislative priorities during his State of the State message. Only time will tell if this is a pandering move or the real thing. We’ve seen too much of the former before among politicians, so a dose of caution and skepticism is warranted. The proof will be in the follow-through.

Tolerace Too “Controversial” For Indiana School District

Who knew that when Megan Chase, a sophomore at Woodlan Junior-Senior High School in northeast Indiana, wrote this Jan. 19 opinion column for the school newspaper, that there would be so much controversy? All she wanted to do was to stand behind a friend who had come out to her:

Would it be so hard to just accept them as human beings who have feelings just like everyone else? Being homosexual doesn’t make a person inhuman, it makes them just a little bit different than the rest of the world. And for living in a society that tells you to always be yourself, it’s a hard price to pay.

Megan Chase didn’t think advocating for the Golden Rule in treating people kindly would be “any big deal.” Neither did her newspaper adviser Amy Sorrell. But these simple words of tolerance have torn an entire community apart. Soon after this column appeared in The Tomahawk, Sorrell was placed on administrative leave and the school district has recommended that she be fired. The school board is expected to vote on her firing on May 1.

At issue is whether Sorrell should have alerted the principal about the upcoming column. She had shown the principal four stories about teen pregnancy, including an editorial advocating teaching safer sex practices over abstinence education because she thought that “was going to cause the stir.” But she didn’t obtain prior clearance for the tolerance article because she didn’t think there would be anything controversial about tolerance.

It’s one thing to believe that gay marriage, adoption rights, and other political arguments to be controversial, but tolerance?

The sad thing about all of this is that right now, a high school sophomore has learned that writing about the Golden Rule can get your teacher fired. And what’s worse is that somewhere in Indiana right now, there is a boy whose just come out to his friend, and as a consequence of his coming out, he has seen his own home town erupt with outrage when someone suggested that they ought to treat him kindly. What kind of message is that to teach our kids?

New York Governor to Introduce Gay Marriage Bill

The New York Times reports that Gov. Eliot Spitzer plans to introduce a bill to legalize same-sex marriage. This move would fulfill a campaign promise to introduce such a measure. At this point, it appears that the proposal is a longshot:

If Mr. Spitzer does propose a bill, it is unclear how much muscle he will be willing — or able — to put behind it. The priorities he has outlined — such as overhauling the state’s campaign finance laws and introducing a constitutional amendment to require nonpartisan legislative redistricting — already pose a considerable challenge. That would leave Mr. Spitzer with little political bandwidth that would allow him to build support for another controversial bill.

Washington State Enacts Domestic Partnerships

Charlene Strong experienced a terrible horrer last December when her partner, Kathryn Flemming was trapped by rising water in her basement studeo in Seattle. Strong was initially barred from her partner’s hospital room, and after her partner died, she was barred from  planning the funeral.

Today, Sharlene Strong looked on as Washington state governor Chris Gregoire signed domestic partnerships bill into law which gives gay and lesbian couples just a few of the rights that come with marriage. These rights include  hospital visitation rights, the ability to authorize autopsies and organ donations and inheritance rights when there is no will. The new law takes affect in July.

Meanwhile, civil union bills continue to wind their way though the Oregon and New Hampshire legislatures. A civil union bill passed the Oregon house, and awaits action by the Senate. Gov. Ted Kulongoski is expected to sign it. In New Hampshire, Gov. John Lynch announced that he will sign that state’s civil unions bill if it passes the Senate. And in Colorado, Gov. Bill Ritter has pledged his support for a gay adoption bill over the objections of the Catholic Conference of Colorado and Focus on the Family.