Box Turtle Bulletin

Paul Cameron Is Quoted In The Christian Post

A reader passed on a tip of Paul Cameron’s latest missive being picked up by the Christian Post. I wanted to write a little blurb about it, but The Real World intervened and I didn’t have time. Fortunately, Timothy Kincaid at Ex-Gay Watch posted a much better rundown on this than I would have, with an interesting link to the International AIDS conference taking place in Toronto.

Now that Cameron’s “homosexual pedophilia” claims have been picked up by the Christian press, it’s only a matter of time before it shows up in a mainstream venue. When it does, whether it’s a news story or a letter to the editor in your local paper, remember where you can find the real scoop about his bogus findings. And for a more in-depth examination of the supposed link between homosexuality and child sexual abuse, read our report Testing The Premise: Are Gays A Threat To Our Children?

Briefly Noted

The Pension Protection Act of 2004 provides benefits for gay and lesbian couples • A possible attack on a gay bar in London • A camp for GLBT teens in Michigan • A teen in Concord, New Hampshire writes about his experiences in typical teenage fashion.

• President Bush signed the Pension Protection Act of 2004, calling it “the most sweeping reform of America’s pension laws in over 30 years.” The law includes a provision that will allow “nonspousal beneficiaries,” including same-sex partners, to roll over inherited retirement plans tax-free if their partner dies. This is a huge boon, as taxes can eat as much as half of the total balance otherwise.
• A gay bar in London, Comptons of Soho, was evacuated last night when a “noxious substance” was released. People are understandably jittery. A nail bomb shattered the nearby Admiral Duncan in 1999, killing three.
• The Detroit Free Press reports on Camp OUT, the first state-licensed camp for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and allied youth in Michigan. “At this camp — the location of which is not being named for the safety of the campers — there is no harassment. This camp is a safe haven, a place where these teens, all but one of them from Michigan, are free to be themselves.”
• Dude, you’re gay: A teen in Concord, New Hampshire, writes about what it’s like to be a gay teen in a small town. It’s surprisingly ordinary in most ways. “Rather than pretending to be someone else, I just came out” The newspaper’s editors are very grateful to Barry for sharing his story.

No Standing

Some opponents to gay marriage claim that all of the rights that gay couples seek can be obtained through other legal documents. But that’s not true, as a case in New York state painfully illustrates:

Linda Saegert and Victoria Sarafino lived together for 18 years, owned a house and a business together, and raised two children together. They were married in a ceremony at a Unitarian church in Freeport.

“We did everything that’s the criteria for a nuclear family,” said Saegert, a Valley Stream resident, adding that the two women even signed the children’s report cards together. “We were a couple as well as any husband and wife.”

But a State Supreme Court justice in Nassau County does not agree. Acting New York Supreme Court Judge Daniel Palmieri ruled that Saegert does not qualify as the late Sarafino’s legal partner or spouse. Palmieri rejected last week Saegert’s attempt to seek wrongful-death damages after Sarafino was killed in a car accident in 2003.

Gay couples can sign powers of attorney, financial partnership agreements, wills, living wills, trusts, a whole mountain of paperwork costing thousands of dollars, but in the end there are still rights and obligations that cannot be had any other way but for the price of a $35 marriage license:

Those include: receiving survivor’s benefits if a spouse dies; being able to file joint taxes and receive various tax deductions; entering hospitals, jails and other places restricted to immediate family; obtaining family health insurance and other employment benefits; collecting unemployment benefits if you move because of a spouse’s job change; recovering damages from an injury to a spouse; making medical decisions for an injured or incapacitated spouse; and inheriting a spouse’s property if he or she dies without a will.

Some say that these aren’t really problems. And whenever the issue of hospital visitation or medical decision-making comes up, it has even been suggested that the problem is an urban myth — that it never really happens. They say a Durable Power of Attorney takes care of that. But consider the story of Robert Daniel and Bill Flanigan. Robert was admitted to the University of Maryland’s Shock Trauma Unit in Baltimore in 2000 due to complications from AIDS. He and Bill had been traveling to Washington D.C. to visit family when he suddenly became ill. But officials at the Shock Trauma Center wouldn’t let Bill see Robert or confer with Robert’s doctors because he wasn’t “family”.

Flanigan explained he had a Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care Decisions and that he and Daniel were registered as domestic partners (in California). The Shock Trauma Center also had the records of the first hospital to which Daniel was admitted, where Flanigan was recognized as family, having spent the night in a chair by Daniel’s bed.

The Shock Trauma Center acted quite differently. For four hours, personnel kept Flanigan away from Daniel and his doctors – meanwhile allowing family members of other patients to visit their loved ones and confer with doctors. Flanigan, on the other hand, was not given the opportunity to make surgeons aware of Daniel’s wish not to have life-prolonging measures performed on him, including the insertion of a breathing tube.

After four hours, Daniel’s sister and mother arrived from out of town. Only then did the Shock Trauma Center provide information on Daniel’s status that had been repeatedly denied to Flanigan, and subsequently allow the entire family, including Flanigan, to see Daniel. By that point, Daniel was no longer conscious, his eyes were taped shut, and the two men never had the chance to say goodbye.

So just because you paid good money to have a lawyer draw up an agreement, it doesn’t mean a hospital will feel bound by it. When that happens, the partner is left with “no standing.”

Opponents to same sex marriage acknowledge that those who are married are often healthier than those who aren’t, but they don’t go bother to ask why that would be the case. But the simple fact is that those who are married are empowered by the state to take better care of themselves and their partners than those who aren’t. And this empowerment extends to all phases of life.

State Medicare regulations provide protections of a married couple’s home should a spouse require nursing home care. But for couples who aren’t married, the healthy partner is forced to sell of all jointly-owned property to pay for the care of the partner requiring care in order to satisfy Medicare requirements for single patients. And if the second partner needs nursing home care, there are no provisions to guarantee that they can share the same room, or even be housed in the same facility. And after death occurs, the coroner is often not allowed to release the body of the loved one to his or her partner.

All of this is because the partner has “no standing.” It’s as if that relationship, no matter how long or enduring, never existed. And outside of a $35 marriage license, there is no legal document that can fix that.

Briefly Noted

“Do we allow a man to marry a sheep?” • A Cincinnati anti-gay group withdraws their petition after discovering massive forgeries. (Update: Did Fidel Castro really sign it?) • Unmarried couples are now allowed to live in Black Jack, Missouri • Canadian Conservatives are just different.

• This is what’s called a “red herring”. We’ve already noticed that some folks are under the mistaken impression that we want to marry ducks, dogs, pigs, goats, and box turtles. Now, with thanks to Colorado’s GOP candidate for lieutenant governor, Janet Rowland, we have this possibility to ponder: “Do we allow a man to marry a sheep? I mean at some point, you have to draw the line.” Who knows — maybe herring will be next.
• A quick tour of my old college stomping grounds brings some interesting news. A local anti-gay group Equal Rights Not Special Rights withdrew their petitions for a ballot measure overturning that city’s human rights ordinance, which grants protections in housing and employment based on sexual orientation. It turns out that about 1,300 of these righteous folk’s signatures — that’s more than one out of six — were forged (incuding someone who signed his name “Fidel Castro“).
• The north St. Louis suburb of Black Jack, Missouri has dropped its ordinance that barred unmarried couples from obtaining occupancy permits. Says Olivia Shelltrack, who fought the ban with her partner Fondray Loving, “I just hope this brings comfort to families who had to go through what we did.”
• A fratricidal fight has broken out over gay marriage between Canadian Conservative MP Garth Turner and some members of the Christian community, who want to find someone else to represent his riding (or parliamentary district) in the next election. “Am I supposed to change my mind and all of a sudden hate homosexual people because I’m facing a challenge in my riding? Of course not, I’m not going to change.”

Briefly Noted

• Remember the ruckus in Meade, Kansas over the rainbow flag? Lakeway Inn proprieters J.R. and Robin Knight hung it after their 12-year-old son, drawn by its bright colors, sent it as a gift from California. Others in town aren’t so taken by its beauty however, and someone broke the flagpole and tore it down on July 31. Then, early last Friday morning, someone tossed a brick with the word “fag” written on it through a plate glass window. “Get the — out of town” was written on a second brick, which was found on the sidewalk in front of the hotel. As they say, Sheriffs are investigating…
• Meanwhile, the father of two boys who admitted tearing down the flag brought them to the Lakeway to apologize to the Knights. “They apologized and said they’d replace it.” And Fred Phelps, of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka (The “God hages fags” bunch) will be there to protested on August 27, with a BBC camera crew in tow.
• Under Australia’s political system, like America’s, adoption laws are subject to state regulations, not the federal administration. But John Howard’s government is trying to attach a prohibition on overseas adoption by gay couples to the 2004 law banning gay marriage.
• But regardless of attempts to ban gay adoption, gays are raising children. They always have, and they always will. And, as this article in Newsweek demontrates, these kids are refusing to remain silent. “People on both sides of the issue agree on one thing: the number of kids raised by same-sex parents will continue to climb. What’s also clear is that these children aren’t going to sit quietly. If these kids have a message for the rest of the world, it seems to be this: get over it.”

Briefly Noted

• Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., dismissed more soldiers (60, up from 40 the year before) under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” than any other military installation in 2005. That base was followed by Fort Campbell, Ky., (49, up from 19). The Pentagon said there were 726 military members discharged under the policy altogether last year — up 11 percent from the 2004.
• A Houston gay advocacy organization sent out a call for gay and gay-friendly foster parents to save GLBT youths who have been kicked out of their homes by their parents. But unlike other, similar efforts in the nation, this gay-friendly recruitment is coming from outside the state’s child protective agency. “We heard kids say things like, ‘I got jumped by a bunch of guys in my group home’ and the adult in charge said, ‘If you weren’t a faggot, they wouldn’t beat you up,’ “
• Black Pride in the heartland: “The black community as a whole has been taboo about gays and lesbians. For everyone to come out today and to show that we are here, it means that we have come a long way, especially in Indianapolis.”
• The Illinois Board of Elections concluded that there weren’t enough valid signatures to put on the ballot a referendum asking voters if the state constitution should be amended to ban gay marriage. The referendum would have been an advisory one, asking the legislature to begin the difficult process of amending the state constitution. Supporters of the referendum promise a court fight to get it on the ballot.
• In related news, a Superior Court judge in Arizona ruled that a proposed ballot initiative to ban gay marriage, civil unions, and state sponsorship of domestic partner benefits does not violate the state constitution’s single-subject rule for ballot initiatives.
• Meanwhile in New Jersey, as that state’s Supreme Court considers the question of gay marriage, social conservatives there say they will put the question before voters if they lose in court. New Jersey is one of only five states without a specific ban on gay marriage.

APA Repudiates NARTH

According to Wayne Besen and confirmed by Warren Throckmorton, the American Psychological Association will release the following statement to the press sometime today:

“For over three decades the consensus of the mental health community has been that homosexuality is not an illness and therefore not in need of a cure. The APA’s concern about the positions espoused by NARTH and so-called conversation therapy is that they are not supported by the science. There is simply no sufficiently scientifically sound evidence that sexual orientation can be changed. Our further concern is that the positions espoused by NARTH and Focus on the Family create an environment in which prejudice and discrimination can flourish.”

This is sure to raise the roof at Focus-sponsored Exodus and NARTH. We’ll keep you posted on their reaction as we hear it.

Paul Cameron: “35% of Foster-Parent Molestations Homosexual”

Paul Cameron is at it again. From a press release:

New evidence poses problems for those who think homosexuals should be allowed to serve as foster-parents. 35% of foster-parents who sexually abused their foster-children in the last three years engaged in homosexuality.

From 2003 through 2005, a third of foster-parent molestations of foster-children were homosexual. That’s the official tally from two states — Illinois and Minnesota — that permit homosexual foster-parents. For the approximately 30,000 children/year in foster-care at some point in the two states:

—12 foster mothers sexually abused their charges: 9 (75%) assaulted foster-daughters, 3 (25%) raped foster-sons.

—28 foster-fathers sexually abused their charges: 23 (82%) assaulted foster-daughters, 5 (18%) raped foster-sons.

A similar claim sparked a firestorm in April, 2005 when Cathie Adams, the president of Texas Eagle Forum repeated Cameron’s statistic live on CNN. The only difference between today’s statistics and last year’s is that Paul Cameron has added data from Minnesota. But when Carl Bialik, the “Numbers Guy” at the Wall Street Journal — which can hardly be accused of being a liberal rag — looked into the claims last year, he found the evidence very unconvincing. Since Cameron’s method for generating his statistics are unchanged from last year, Mr. Bialik’s criticisms still apply:

There were 270 reports, and 34% of those were same-sex in nature: committed by a male adult against a male child, or a female adult against a female child. Dr. Cameron called those homosexual acts of abuse, and, citing several studies, including a joint report by the University of Michigan and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, concluded that gays make up between 1% and 3% of the adult U.S. population. “Thus, homosexual practitioners were proportionately more apt to sexually abuse foster or adoptive children,” Dr. Cameron wrote.

This required several leaps of logic, some of which I’ll discuss later. The biggest is that Dr. Cameron had no data about the makeup of homes in which the Illinois children were abused; indeed, a state DCFS spokeswoman told me the agency doesn’t record whether households are same-sex. It’s possible that much of what Dr. Cameron calls homosexual abuse occurred in what would be considered heterosexual homes.

And he goes further:

Besides his lack of data about same-sex couples in Illinois, researchers pointed out Dr. Cameron’s flawed assumption that the gender of pedophiles’ victims correlates to adult sexual attraction; that he applied nationwide data on homosexuality to a predominantly Chicago-based population of foster homes; and that he cited many of his own studies, including two previous ones that attempted to calculate the proportion of sexual abuse that is same-sex based on small sample sizes of six and 25 cases of abuse, respectively.

“The paper is not written as a competent research paper,” said Paul Velleman, associate professor of social statistics at Cornell University. “This is a pretty lightweight study,” said Kenneth Land, professor of sociology at Duke University and chair of the American Statistical Association’s mathematical sociology section.

Walter Schumm, professor of family studies at Kansas State, once published a paper responding to Dr. Cameron’s critics, but in this case he questioned Dr. Cameron’s conclusion that same-sex couples pose a special threat to children. “Since the state didn’t provide him with any data on whether parents were heterosexual or gay, it’s hard to make any definitive statements other than that much of the abuse seems to be same-gendered,” Dr. Schumm said. “For all we know, that could all be by heterosexual parents.”

That last point by Dr. Schumm is very significant. Up until then, he had been a staunch defender of Cameron’s work.

Cameron concludes this press release saying:

The study from data provided by the IL Dept Children & Family Services and MN Dept of Human Services appears in a rebuttal to gay marriage in the August, 2006 issue of Pediatrics on-line http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/eletters/118/1/349.

If you click on that link, you will see that the rebuttal, by Kirk Cameron, Paul’s son, is not peer-reviewed, nor does it even appear in the journal itself. It is part of an online discussion forum they call a “Post-Publication Peer Review,” which, in the broad scheme of things, doesn’t have much standing as far as professional publication is concerned. At best, it’s an online letter to the editor. They didn’t even bother to pay the fees to have it published in the vanity journal Psychological Reports.

By twisting official statistics, and making assumptions that men who molest boys and women who molest girls are among the “2-3%” of the openly gay population, Cameron seeks to perpetuate the lie that gays and lesbians are much more likely to molest children. But if you want to know the real truth behind statistics like these, read our report, Testing the Premise: Are Gays A Threat To Our Children?.

Briefly Noted

• The flap in Meade, Kansas started when J.R. and Robin Knight, owners of the Lakeway Hotel, started flying a rainbow flag, which was sent to them by their 12-year-old son as a gift from California. (He just liked the colors.) That didn’t go over too well with the locals. It was ripped down, but replaced by the Knights. Now the Kansas Equality Coalition has decided to hold a public meeting this Sunday to discuss the situation and engage in community outreach. The coalition issued a statement of support “for standing up to discrimination by continuing to fly (the) rainbow flag despite a backlash by some.”
• Colorado voters will likely see not one, but three measures related go gay unions. There’s the standard measure to ban marriage between same-sex couples, but the legislature forwarded a measure to allow civil unions and gay rights supporters submitted a petition for an initiative saying that domestic partnerships are not equal to marriage in an effort to protect rights for gay couples. This represents a new strategy among gay rights advocates, giving the voters an alternative to simply saying no to marriage. Focus on the Family has already put up $500,000 to support the anti-marriage measure and fight against the other two. A fourth Focus-backed initiative banning civil unions, failed to garner enough signatures.
• Detroit resident Steven Williams Jr. shot 31-year-old Salvagio Vonatti in the head as he walked to a Detroit gay bar last January 10. But amazingly, the jury decided not to convict Williams for attempted murder. Instead, they found him guilty of assault and a firearms violation. Judge David Allen yesterday gave Williams the maximum sentence, which means that he will spend up to twelve years in prison. Meanwhile, Salvagio remains in a coma.
• Police in Jerusalem decided to bar a planned gay protest in a central city park out of concern that it could spill into violent clashes. The planned event itself was to be a protest against a previous police decision to ban an international gay pride parade that was scheduled for the same day. That event was canceled, according to police, because they were unable to allocate sufficient forces needed to secure such a major event due to the fighting in Lebanon. Organizers vow to go ahead with the protest.

The Cypress Project

Yesterday, I wrote about the apparent exodus of gays and lesbians from Virginia. Fortunately, there is a flip side to that story.

The Washington Post published an article about the shocking vandalism to Heyward Drummond and John Ellis’s home in Aldie, Virginia. More than 170 trees and boxwoods were either ripped out of the ground or cut down, the word “FAG” was spraypainted on the driveway, mailbox, fence, and on the street in front of their home, and gasoline was poured on the lawn in a trail leading up to the front door.

A local gay-rights activist noted that the intended message behind this vandalism was clear: Get out! And many are heeding that warning. But others, including Heyward Drummond and John Ellis have another message: “I live here, and I’m out and I don’t believe in hiding.”

A local group has formed to offer a similar response:

We believe that the best way to respond to such a hateful act is to transform it into its opposite: a project that brings a broken community together and leaves it stronger than it was before.

The Cypress Project was formed to bring the community together,”in the restoration of not only Heyward and John’s property, but their sense of safety as well.” On Saturday, October 14, 2006, they will work to help Heyward and John replace the trees that were cut down.

I think this is a wonderful idea. And once those trees are restored, I hope the Cypress Project doesn’t go away. It seems that with the rising tide of violence and vandalism that often comes with gay marriage debates, their work will be needed all the more.

When the Soulforce Equality Ride stopped at Lee University, a Pentecostal school in Cleveland, Tennessee, their bus was vandalized with anti-gay graffiti. Several students from the university came by to offer consolation and to help clean up the damage. Alexey Bulokhov, a rider, observed, “The act of defacing our bus was a symbolic gesture by some Cleveland residents. So was the act of others volunteering to clean it up.”

The Cypress project can be a similar opportunity for everyone, regardless of personal political or religious perspectives, to come together and say no to hate.

Besides, Who Ever Heard of Gay Gardeners?

Via Good As You and Pam’s House Blend, comes this odd piece of corporate outreach. The online gardening store, Outsidepride.com, sent this E-mail to members of its subscriber list:

This is not your typical newsletter from Outsidepride.com, Inc. In fact, this is the first one in six years which is not business related. I apologize for cluttering your inbox with an unsolicited email; however you are free to unsubscribe just by clicking the link at the bottom.

I want to share with you my television viewing experience the other night on prime time television. I ask those of you who agree with me to go to www.cbs.com and go to the bottom of the page, click the feedback link and express your opinion. I know the vast majority of you will agree with me as all polls indicate. We are the majority, not the minority as the liberal media would lead you to believe.

My wife and I sat down to watch television the other night with our children. Cold Case was on which is normally a fairly enjoyable show to watch; however, the last half hour of the show dealt with a young man who wished he had asked his male friend to come with him (long story short). The show ended with the two men hugging and obvious intimation they had discovered their gay feelings towards each other. The very next show was Without A Trace. The whole last half hour of this show was about two lesbians who were struggling with their feelings of lesbianism. It ended with full acceptance from one father and the two lesbians making out. Yes, they were kissing right at the end of the show on public prime time television. So much for wholesome family television.

Now, I am NOT trying to bash homosexuals and I am not a bigot; however, I feel homosexuality is morally wrong and should not be “promoted” as what is the norm for society. Text books are being rewritten as I am writing this to “highlight” every homosexual who has made a contribution to society. There are teachers who have been asked to make sure students know that, “This person in history was a homosexual.” History is being rewritten to promote homosexuality and prime time television is doing its best to make homosexuality a “normal” behavior. If homosexuality was the norm, civilization would have ceased to exist thousands of years ago. Procreation takes a man and a woman. There was Adam and then there was Eve, not Adam and Steve.

There are literally tens of thousand of you reading this email right now. If you are tired of the way public television is going let CBS know! It will only take about 1 minute of your time. Again, just go to www.cbs.com and click the feedback link at the bottom. It is time the majority speak up and not let the minority run this country. The majority can bring back the Christian heritage this country was founded on because it is, “In God We Trust.”

Thank you for your time,

Troy Hake
President
Outsidepride.com, Inc.

I assume that Troy forgot to attach a P.S. to his missive: “P.S., Don’s let any homosexuals see this.” Because, you know how much the gays hate all things gardening. And you know they would never subscribe to a mailing list from a company named OutsidePride.com.

As Pam delightfully points out, you can drop him a line.

Briefly Noted

A challenge to “Don’t Ask, Don”t Tell,” and a deteriorating situation for gays and lesbians in Iraq and Iran:

• The latest challenge to the U.S. military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy comes from none other than a West Point Cadet. Writing in his senior thesis, Cadet Alexander Raggio argues, “the Army often talks of doing the harder right rather than the easier wrong, and now it is time to put the policy where the propaganda is. Allowing the open service of gays in the military is the right thing to do, no matter how difficult a transition it may be.” And were there any consequences to writing this thesis? Nope, none whatsoever. It was awarded the best senior thesis in the art, philosophy and literature major.
• Unfortunately, hostility toward gays in the military is rampant, according to a Reuters investigation. “On the Navy’s USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier, for example, anti-gay statements and jokes are on display and have been incorporated into a video about the F-14 Tomcat fighter aircraft, recently shown to reporters on the carrier.”
• Meanwhile in Iraq, gays are trying to flee the country because they are being targeted by Shia death squads, aided by the Ministry of the Interior. “One photograph is of the mutilated, burnt body of 38-year-old Karar Oda from Sadr City. … Oda’s family were given an arrest warrant signed by the Ministry of Interior which said their son deserved to be arrested and killed for immorality as a homosexual. His body was found ten days later.” Is this what we’re fighting for?
• In related news, a German court blocked the deportation of an Iranian lesbian back to her home country because of the likelihood that she would face punishment for her sexual orientation. According to Iranian human rights advocates, more than 4,000 gay and lesbian Iranians have been executed since the 1979 revolution.
• And here’s an interesting insider’s political view of the recent dust-up in Orlando concerning that city’s reluctant adoption of a non-discrimination policy for gays and lesbians. If they were so reluctant, why did they finally do it? “People started talking about the folly of Orange County trying to recruit companies whose employees could be legally discriminated against.”

Is Virginia the New Mississippi?

I mean no disrespect to residents of Mississippi. Or Virginia for that matter.

But there’s no denying that Ole’ Miss’s reputation was severely battered during the civil rights struggle of the 1950’s and 1960’s. The murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, was depicted in the movie Mississippi Burning, and that movie’s title became a national shorthand to describe the poor reputation that had befallen that state.

I could just as easily have asked, “Is Virginia the New Alabama?” or, “Is Virginia the New Little Rock?” — anything to arrest the impulse to title this post with the overworked phrase, “Virginia Isn’t For Lovers.”

But two recent articles in the Washington Post led me to compare Virginia in 2006 to the Deep South in 1956. A couple of parallels are striking. It appears we are seeing examples of some rather frightening attacks against a hated minority, a minority whose rights are persistently and severely hampered by that state’s legal strictures. And we are seeing a migration of that minority to safer locales.

The parallels mostly end there, of course. Gays and lesbians are allowed to vote, enroll in college and drink from any water fountain they choose. Sexual orientation is excluded from their hate crime statutes, but thankfully there are no lynchings that I’m aware of. It’s unclear to me whether gay Virginians are protected from discrimination in employment and housing. But no matter the shortcomings there, the situation in Virginia is nothing like what African Americans faced a mere generation ago. Not even close. It would take a special kind of chutzpah to even try to equate the two.

No, there is no equivalency whatsoever between the two situations, but there are certainly some cautionary parallels.

The first article in the Washington Post detailed the recent vandalism to a gay couple’s home in Loudoun County, Virginia. Normally, when you think of vandalism, you are probably more likely to think of spray-painted graffiti, some broken windows, stuff like that. This, however, was much more severe:

It was early one recent Saturday morning when Heyward Drummond noticed that something was wrong. Still in his bathrobe, he shuffled down to the end of his driveway in Aldie to get the newspaper. That’s when he saw it. The word was written in looping white script on the driveway, on the mailbox, on a nearby fence: “FAG.”

Then Drummond smelled gas. Wide brown zigzags stained the lush green lawn where vandals had poured gasoline. Someone had pulled up dozens of boxwoods and chopped down Leyland cypress saplings that Drummond and his partner, John Ellis, had planted. Drummond couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

David Weintraub, president of Equality Loudoun, tied this incident to heightened tensions over that state’s proposed constitutional ban on gay marriage, a trend that others have noticed as well. (For more information on the link between the gay marriage debate and hate crimes, see our report, When Words Have Consequences.)

And that gasoline, by the way, was poured in a trail that led right up to the front door. What sort of message do you think that was meant to impart? Mr. Weintraub thinks it’s not difficult to decipher it at all:

“I think the intent of the message is ‘Get out!’ They’re hoping that we will shut up and get out and sell our homes,” Weintraub said.

And it appears that many gay and lesbian Virginians are acting on that message.

A second Washington Post article reports the rising trend of gays and lesbians in Virginia selling their homes and moving out of state:

Many gay people in Virginia and some family-law attorneys say they worry that the state law and proposed amendment are more far-reaching than simple bans on gay marriage — that the measures could threaten the legal viability of the contracts used by gay couples to share ownership of property and businesses.

The exact effects are unclear, and the 2004 law remains untested, but some gays say they fear the laws could affect their ability to own homes together; to draft powers of attorney, adoption papers or wills; or to arrange for hospital visitation or health surrogacy.

…Others say they want to avoid possible legal problems, particularly if they want to have kids. In 2002, for example, an Alexandria family court ruled that a father would lose custody of his son unless the father’s male partner, who had lived with them for five years, moved out. In 2004, a Winchester judge ruled that the female partner of a woman who had borne a child in 2004, whom the child had called “mama,” had no legal custody rights and that the woman who gave birth was the “sole parent.”

So gay Virginians are leaving, migrating from a place where they feel persecuted and unsafe, to where they know they can better protect themselves and their families — in a move that harkens back to the post-war Black migration from the Deep South. And considering how the states left behind by those African-Americans families were held back in so many ways — economically, politically and culturally — during the turmoil of the civil rights era, it’s appropriate to wonder what Virginia stands to loose in all this. Virginia is certainly losing more than a despised minority; it’s fast losing its reputation as a decent place for all of its citizens to live and work. Maybe Virginians should ask the people of Mississippi what the cost of that might be.

But hey, let’s look in the bright side. At least nobody burned a cross on Heyward Drummond and John Ellis’ lawn. To find that, you’ll have to go to Tennessee.

A Sign of Poor Hospitality

The CEO of a resort hotel operating company thinks it’s okay to discriminate against gays in housing. In fact, he’s hopping mad that Orlando no longer does so.

Orange County, Florida passed a fair-housing ordinance to protect gays and lesbians from discrimination, and this led one of Mayor Rich Crotty’s prominent supporters, Tom Hutchinson, CEO of CNL Hotels & Resorts Inc., to stomp out of Crotty’s re-election campaign:

Hutchison’s e-mail to Crotty argued that the mayor’s recent “position (actually lack thereof)” of “favoring the absolutely ridiculous vote on legal protection for equal housing for gays” prodded him to “withdraw my name from any further association” with the campaign. “I am not interested in supporting candidates with seemingly zero Christian biblical principals [sic –BTB Ed.] on the issues regarding the alternative gay lifestyle,” it concluded.

A spokeswoman for CNL tried to clear up the mess by releasing a statement saying the CEO’s comments were a personal statement and did not reflect the views of the company. Hutchinson then issued his own statement:

I do not believe in discrimination of any kind, for any reason — period,” it said. “I am thankful that this is a community that embraces the individual views of all its citizens.”

Hutchison’s written statement to the Orlando Sentinel said he never intended to offend anyone and regrets “the way the exchange was handled.” He could not be reached for further comment.

So which is it? Does Hutchinson support discrimination, or is he against it? Or was he for it before he was against it?

And when it comes to extending hospitality toward his hotel’s many gay and lesbian guests, does Hutchinson offer similar self-contradictory statements?

So here’s the question. Does the Arizona Biltmore Resort and Spa treat all of its guests fairly? What about the Capital Hilton in D.C., or the JW Marriott Grande Lakes in Orlando, or the Grand Wailea Resort in Maui? Or any of these other fine establishments?

And since the CEO of these hotels has thrown his hissy fit over gays buying and renting homes, should we really be renting rooms from him?

Briefly Noted

• San Diegans rallid against hate in the gayborhood of Hillcrest, protesting the attacks against six gay men leaving the Pride celebration in Balboa Park the previous weekend. Mayor Jerry Sanders described the attacks as an attempt to keep the gay community in the closet. “We won’t allow that to occur. And it won’t occur.
• Victory in the Hoosier State. Kim Brennan and Becky Hamilton, who have foster and childcare experience and have been together for more than ten years, successfully sued the state of Indiana for the right to adopt a baby girl. By a vote of 4-1 Friday, the Indiana Supreme Court allowed an appeals court ruling to stand. State Sen. Jeff Drozda, (R-Westfield) vows to introduce legislation in 2007 to bar same-sex couples from adopting.
• Wisconsin is struggling with how to word the “plain English” ballot explanation for that state’s proposed anti-marriage amendment. Supporters of the ban want to conceal its impact on domestic partnerships and other protections for unmarried couples.
• Volunteers with Equality Virginia use the personal touch to try to pursuade Virginia’s “moveable middle” to vote against the proposed anti-marriage amendment, one vote at a time.
• Here’s something you may have missed on your local sportscast. Gay American swimmer Daniel Veatch broke the world record in the 200-meter backstroke in the 40-44 age category at Montréal’s Outgames. Daniel’s time was 2:14.83, besting the previous record of 2:15.49 set in 1999.