Q-Seattle Events: Tacky Tourist Clubs

During an address at Columbia University Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad issued the truly bizarre assertion that there aren't any lesbian or gay folk in Iran.

From the New York Times live-blog of the address:

In response to a question about the treatment of homosexuals in Iran, Mr. Ahmadinejad was initially evasive, instead talking about the death penalty, which, he pointed out, exists in the United States: "People who violate the laws by using guns, creating insecurity selling guns, distributing guns at a high level are sentenced to execution in Iran. Very few of these punishments are carried out in the public eye."

Pressed by Dean Coatsworth on the original question about the rights of gay men and lesbians in Iran, Mr. Ahmadinejad said: "In Iran, we don't have homosexuals like in your country. We don't have that in our country."

The audience booed and hissed loudly.

"In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon," Mr. Ahmadinejad continued, undeterred. "I do not know who has told you that we have it. But as for women, maybe you think that maybe being a woman is a crime. It's not a crime to be a woman. Women are the best creatures created by God. They represent the kindness, the beauty that God instills in them. Women are respected in Iran."

As the audience immediately recognized, that's a surprising assertion since human rights campaigners have repeatedly reported executions of gay men in Iran.

International gay rights campaigners have also said that homosexual men were among the executed. Homosexuality is a capital offence in Iran, along with adultery, espionage, armed robbery, drug trafficking and apostasy.

[Update, 9/26] There have, of course, been plenty of incredulous responses to the Iranian president's statements that there are no homosexuals in Iran, including this from Fox News (of all sources):

"When I first heard his comments yesterday, I laughed," said Arsham Parsi, founder of the Toronto-based Iranian Queer Organization.

"But after I thought about it, I realized this is really a very strong statement. By denying we exist, he does not even acknowledge that we have human rights." ...

According to Iranian law, consensual gay sex in any form is punishable by death. Violators are reportedly given a choice of four methods of execution: hanging, stoning, halving by sword -- or being dropped from the highest perch.

Ironically, Parsi says the truth is that Iranian officials actually know quite a bit about homosexuals in Iran. Gay men in Iran are allowed medical dispensations from mandatory military service, for example, and the country's secret police constantly monitor gay activities through Internet chat rooms and other electronic methods.

According to Edge, some have questioned whether the live translation of the speech from Farsi to English properly conveyed Ahmadinejad's meaning, but that argument seems strained when taken in the context of this Pink News report that his comments about homosexuality were stripped from the official transcript of the speech.

Arizona Star offers a full transcript of the address, introduction, and Q&A for those who want to read the comments in full context.

[[And, if I may offer an offhand recommendation: Anyone who read just enough philosophy in college to be dangerous might want to take a look at the beginning of the speech where the prez tries to assume on his pre-political role as a college professor. It all sounded surprisingly gnostic to me -- what with the whole "'science' means 'illumination'" theme. I hadn't realized that Shiism allows for that sort of thing, but a web search revealed this page that ties together Shiite gnosticism with Heideggerian phenomenology.

"Professor" Ahmadinejad lectured to the students gathered at Columbia:

If we accept that "science" means "illumination," then its scope supersedes the experimental sciences, and it includes every hidden and disclosed reality. One of the main harms inflicted against science is to limit it to experimental and physical sciences; this harm occurs even though it extends far beyond this scope.

Realities of the world are not limited to physical realities. And the material is just a shadow of supreme realities, and physical creation is just one of the stories of the creation of the world. Human being is just an example of the creation that is a combination of the material and the spirit.

Playing a kind of "six degrees of separation" game with this, we could tie the Iranian president to Leo Strauss and through him to the neoconservatives and Dick Cheney. The connection works by stretching out the kind of distinction that Ahmedenijad makes between what we could call the 'exoteric' and the 'esoteric'. So, see: Ahmadinejad is a Straussian neoconservative, just like Dick Cheney.]]

Labels: news bites

After a week of intense meetings in New Orleans, US Episcopal bishops are expected to release a response tomorrow to demands from some fellow bishops in the Anglican communion that the American church abandon its support for lesbian and gay church members.

The American bishops are widely expected to reject calls for them to adopt the anti-gay policies of Anglican churches in some other areas -- particularly the "global south" including Africa and South America. The spiritual leader of the Anglican communion, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, traveled to New Orleans for discussions with the American bishops.

Williams expressed hope that some sort of compromise could be reached that would avoid a schism among Anglican churches. Williams insisted in a press conference that a schism among the mostly-independent national churches that comprise the communion is not 'imminent'. But London's Telegraph -- whose reports tend to support the anti-gay global south position -- described Williams' mission to New Orleans as hoping for a "miracle".

[B]y the time he headed for the city's Louis Armstrong International Airport ... the archbishop appeared to have accepted that on Tuesday the 159 bishops of the Episcopal Church, as the two-million-strong Anglican congregation is called in the United States, are almost certain to support a bigger role for gays.

American bishops at the summit have been quick to declare their support for Bishop Robinson, who had been so upset by an earlier call from Dr Williams for a choice to be made between gays and the communion that he accused the archbishop of "dehumanising" homosexuals.

In a document seen by The Sunday Telegraph, the US bishops have rejected plans for an Anglican covenant -- or rulebook -- that Dr Williams had hoped could keep the communion together and which dictated a tougher line on homosexuality.

The Americans' document, The Constitutional Crisis, says that "if the Anglican Communion decides to read scripture literally or impose conformity to a single interpretation without attempting objective regard for critical scholarship, it will be a different church".

Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola obstinately insisted last week that Episcopal bishops are being "obstinate and intransigent" for not accepting Ankola's intransigent interpretation of scripture.

The most powerful leader of evangelical Anglicans worldwide has issued a last-minute plea to the US Episcopal bishops over their pro-gay liberal agenda, to save the Church from schism.

The Archbishop and Primate of Nigeria, Dr Peter Akinola, was speaking to The Times as the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, met US bishops in New Orleans in a last-ditch attempt to avert a split.

Dr Akinola, who heads the Global South group of Anglican provinces from Asia, Africa and Latin America, said the Anglican Church worldwide was in a state of "broken communion".

He said the crisis arose from the "intransigence and obstinacy"of The Episcopal Church in the US, which had pursued a liberal line on same-sex blessings and the consecration in 2003 of the openly gay bishop Gene Robinson. "They were warned not to do this," he said. "Now province after province has declared a state of broken communion with them."

Akinola traveled to the US this week to promote his message of intolerance and schism at a Chicago-area chapel.

Though Akinola did not mention the gathering in New Orleans or Anglican differences over homosexuality, the Nigerian archbishop said that the church is clearly divided and that those divisions stem from a failure to obey the word of God.

"Fornication is fornication. Adultery is adultery. ... These are the areas of primary evangelism," Akinola said.

Outside the chapel, a group of about 20 protesters held signs that read: "Reverend Akinola is a dangerous bigot" and "Akinola preaches hate and division." Many demonstrators criticized Akinola's past comments on gays, in which he has stated homosexuality is contrary to the teachings of the Bible and "a perversion of human dignity."

The archbishop also supports a bill in Nigeria that would make homosexual sex and any public expression of homosexual identity a crime punishable by imprisonment.

Akinola and other African bishops have anointed anti-gay US priests as bishops despite Anglican rules discouraging that kind of interference between national churches. They've encourage Episcopal parishes in the US to split off from the national church.

In Washington, two Episcopal parishes have split off from the Seattle-based Diocese of Olympia.

Poulsbo and Oak Harbor congregations have quit the diocese but continued to occupy church buildings.

In Oak Harbor, dissident self-described "Anglicans" and Episcopal loyalists hold worship services in the same building: Anglicans dictate the terms of sharing.

"The church canons are unambiguous," Lee said. "People can leave the Episcopal Church. Parishes can't. People cannot take property with them. That is theft!"

The Rev. Gregory Rickel, rector of St. James Episcopal Church in Austin, Texas, said a separation between the Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion may be inevitable.

Rickel was chosen as bishop of the statewide diocese whose headquarters church, St. Mark's Cathedral on Capitol Hill, is run by an out gay priest, Rt. Rev. Robert Taylor.

Rickel wants to see firsthand the arrangement that has two churches aligned with a conservative Brazilian bishop meeting on properties in Poulsbo and Oak Harbor that the Olympia diocese owns.

"What's on the paper looks great to me," he said. "But I want to know how it's working on the ground. I think the property issue is key."

He describes himself as "on the progressive side of theology," but also says it is his "fervent hope" that the Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion do not break over scriptural interpretation on issues such as homosexuality.

Rickel says he is comfortable continuing Bishop Warner's stance of letting individual priests decide whether to perform blessing ceremonies for same-sex unions.

Akinola and his fellow anti-gay bishops seek to silence tolerant churches like St. Mark's, but the views of the anti-gay clerics do not appear to be universally accepted even within the global south.

The recently appointed Dean of Central Africa, the Rt. Rev. Trevor Musonda Mwamba, believes Anglican churches will soon return to their grassroots mission to alleviate poverty, disease and injustice and abandon their current "fixation" on homosexuality.

His words of optimism come against a background of growing concern that the on-going "rights for gays" debate in the 75 million-strong worldwide Anglican community could wreck unity in that church throughout Africa before next year's Lambeth Conference in Canterbury, England.

That's an interpretation of the church's mission similar to what Episcopal bishops have tried to emphasize, but it's too often drowned out by the emphasis on narrow and intolerant biblical interpretations.

The Very Rev. Gene Robinson, the openly gay bishop of New Hampshire whose consecration symbolizes the theological differences among Anglicans, last month compared intolerance of LGBT people to churches' earlier support for slavery:

Gene Robinson spoke openly about his view on the current controversy surrounding the Anglican Church.

"It's very painful for me," he said. "Coming out of the experience of the United States, where we treated people from Africa as less than human, where we used scripture to justify their slavery and their continued bondage.

"It's very, very painful to have those people in Africa in some sense using the same thinking against gay and lesbian people and against me."

When it was suggested that he might have stepped aside for the sake of the unity of the Communion, Bishop Robinson attributed a vocational call from God for his perseverance, despite the controversy he knew it would cause.

Labels: anglican, news bites, religion

One of two suspects in the hate-crime death of a Sacramento man entered a plea today of not guilty.

Aleksandr Shevchenko, 21, faces a single felony count of intimidating and interfering with a person's rights, a charge that falls under the state's hate crimes statutes.

Shevchenko, with close-cropped brown hair and wearing a white shirt and black pants, shook his head and said "not guilty" when Judge Jaime Rene Roman read the charge against him.

Shevchenko is one of two men charged in the alleged hate-crime killing of Satender Singh in a confrontation at a Sacramento area park on July 1. The other man charged in the case, Andrey Vusik, fled to Russia and is being sought by the FBI on a fugitive warrant. Schevchenko, 22, turned himself into the sheriff's department on Aug. 6 and is free, pending trial, after posting part of a $25,000 bond.

Vusik allegedly punched Singh on July 1 after a day-long series of verbal confrontations between a group of Russian speaking people and a group that included Singh, a Fijian immigrant.

Singh, 26, fell backward, striking his head and rupturing a critical part of his brain stem. He died four days later.

Friends with Singh that day have said the "Russian-speaking" group hurled anti-gay epithets and racial taunts before Singh was punched.

Relatives of both suspects have insisted Singh's death was not intentional. Vusik's wife said her husband acted in self-defense.

The suspects' families have maintained that members of Singh's group were dancing provocatively, using foul language and drinking heavily that Sunday at the park. [SacBee]

Members of evangelical Russian-language churches in Sacramento have long staged protests at virtually every gay-related event scheduled in the capital city. Singh's friends have said that he might have been singled out because he was dancing with both women and men at a lakeside celebration of Singh's recent job promotion. [See previous post.]

Marcos Breton, a columnist for the Bee, last week appealed for calm in what has become a contentious issue in Sacramento.

Because now is the time for moderate voices to step forward. Now is the time for the rhetoric in the Singh case to be dialed down.

In that spirit, it should be stated that the suspect in this case is from Sacramento's Slavic community -- but the entire Slavic community is not suspect.

It should be stated that there were escalating tensions between some Slavic Christians and Sacramento's gay community before Singh was killed -- but the entire Slavic Christian community is not on trial. And neither is the Christian faith. Any suggestions to the contrary are simply inaccurate, a reflection of the fear and anger that have risen as justice has been delayed.

However, we shouldn't forget that long before Singh was killed, leaders in Sacramento's gay community had expressed fears about incendiary language used by some Slavic Christians in anti-gay protests around town -- fears that violence would follow.

When Singh was killed, they believe, those worst fears were realized.

Again -- we don't know if the words of some Slavic Christians created an atmosphere that led to violence.

In interviews with The Bee, members of Vusik's family said they are not affiliated with any anti-gay groups.

"We just got in the confrontation between the churches and the gay community," Vusik's wife, Tatyana, said in a recent interview. "What happened was a tragic accident and had nothing to do with gays."

An article in the Sacramento LGBT bi-weekly magazine, Outword, [issue available only in pdf format] reports that LGBT activists in Sacramento had been calling for greater police protection at gay events long before Singh's death.

"Our goal starting two years ago has been to seek safety for the gay community at our events," said Dr. David Lawson, one of the activists who attended meetings with the county sheriff and district attorney.

"While we have succeeded in increasing the awareness and presence of law enforcement at our events, we have had less success in opening a dialogue between the Queer and Slavic communities," Lawson said.

Labels: crime, gay news, ken hutcherson, news bites

As we said in a previous update, Oklahoma wisely decided last week against appealing a court decision directing the state to treat adoptions equally.

Widely syndicated Detroit News columnist Deb Price reflects on the decision in this week's installment of her must-read column. She offers this money quote:

"We are winning on the front of, 'Hey don't mess with our kids,'" notes legal director Jon Davidson of Lambda Legal, which represented the gay parents who sued.

"People are less sympathetic to those attacks that clearly harm children," Davidson continues. "How can it be good for children to be told the parents who adopted them are no longer their parents?"

The 10th Circuit's sensible ruling comes as states -- where nearly all family law originates -- are getting more used to gay families. About 250,000 U.S. children are being raised by gay parents. Those families' rights vary greatly from state to state.
Courts in most states allow gay couples to jointly adopt or allow a gay adult to become the legal second parent of a partner's child. And the Oklahoma ruling puts lawmakers nationwide on notice not to tamper with the legal rights of adopted children, regardless of the parents' sexual orientation.

Labels: law, news bites, parenting

A couple of legal issue bloggers expected the ruling to be appealed when the 10th Circuit Court ruled against the Oklahoma legislature's bizarre decision to deny birth certificates to children born in OK who had been adopted by same-sex couples (in other states, since that's not OK in OK).

Fortunately, that won't happen. The Oklahoma agency that issues birth certificates announced last week that it will honor the appeals court decision.

Tom Cross, the state Health Department's deputy general counsel, said the agency could not meet the requirements to have the 10th Circuit reconsider its opinion.

The agency does not believe that the U.S. Supreme Court would take up the case, he said.

"We will be issuing birth certificates for all adoptions, whether same-sex or not, for children born in Oklahoma," Cross said.

Lambda Legal, which filed cases challenging the hastily-adopted law, celebrated the decision.

"This is a monumental decision, not just for the couples involved in the case, but for lesbian and gay parents and their children nationwide," said Jon Davidson, Legal Director of Lambda Legal. "It means that when same-sex couples have an adoption decree recognizing both of them as parents, the adoption, and their status as their child's parents, must be honored no matter where they go."

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Still trying to recover a response at the Logo prez forum, Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson got some help from a not-so-desirable source, Fox's Bill O'Reilly.

When a viewer email questioned his previous remarks that Bill Richardson "looked bad by saying he believed homosexuality was a choice," Fox News' Bill O'Reilly responded, "I think everybody's got to relax on all this gay stuff."

You know you're in trouble if you?re a Democrat and O'Reilly comes to your defense. Huffington Post blogger RJ Eskow caught onto O'Reilly's probably unintentional 'Relax' reference, and so we offer this: (via YouTube)




But that wasn't O'Reilly's only indication during the week that he just can't bring himself to "relax about this gay stuff". He also flubbed a report about a poll that showed the votes of most folks in three swing states wouldn't be affected if a candidate were endorsed by a gay rights group. And then he flubbed it again when someone pointed out he'd been wrong the first time. (But then, he wasn't the only one. Politico.com headlined its story on the poll "Gay support could cost candidates".)

But the incident did help earn O'Reilly a not-so-rare two-fer on Olbermann's Worst Person nomination. [YouTube].

Labels: gay news, news bites, politics, TV

We posted some of the flurry of news stories on our news feed, but we might be the only gay-related blog that didn't do at least one post last week about Logo's forum for Democratic presidential candidates. But if you missed it, it's not too late to catch the full forum on Logo's website.

But, really, what we were waiting for is coverage of the event by Jon Stewart. You gotta love the bit about Melissa Etheridge's loooong questions. Although, of course, she did manage to ask the one question that really made news in the forum: Gov. Bill Richardson is still trying to recover from his flubbed response to the "rock star's" choice question.

Labels: celebrities, news bites, politics, TV

The comeback is one of the grand traditions of the entertainment world where they sometimes work. We see attempts even in politics (see, eg, Nixon) but the attempts rarely work out there. So here are a few recent news items that prompt a sense of "we've see that before..."

He's never really gone away, but Joe Fuiten, Bothell's rabidly anti-gay preacher/political activist is back under a new auspices. He formed his own group called after leaving Faith and Freedom Network. But now, he's folded that group into yet another new outfit called Family Policy Institute of Washington.

This one is under the philosophical umbrella (but not, they insist, the financial umbrella) of James Dobson's Focus on Family.

Fuiten's is also encouraging pastors throughout the state to get each member of their congrations to register to vote. Fuiten hopes to target legislators who voted for Washington's domestic partnership registry.
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And then there's Aubrey McClendon, the Sonics silent-partner co-owner, who helped bankroll one of Gary Bauer's anti-gay programs. Slog uncovered his funding of the Bauer project [background] at just about the time that the Sonics/Storm owners started threatening to move their teams away from Seattle -- both teams, including the Storm with its significant lesbian fanbase.

Well, McClendon stepped into it again with -- of all things -- a proposed real-estate development in Michigan. There are -- as often happens with these things -- a wealth of potential problems with the proposed beach-front development. Those potential problems have, of course, attracted a wealth of potential opponents of the development proposal. But, there's one extra problem for McClendon. It seems that his development proposal has drawn fire from an unlikely group -- gay folk in the area. Oops. McClendan bought an area of dunes and beach that is considered by locals to be the gay beach. Oh, boy...

McClendon's "people" gave a familiar response when asked about the opposition. "[B]ut after all, this is private property," said a spokesman.
---
And imagine, if you will, being famous as member of a "gay group" when you were never gay. Oh, the horror, eh? Maybe it would drive you to drink and drugs. Well, it seems that that's exactly what happened to Victor Willis former lead singer and "cop" of the Village People. But don't cry too much for the singer/songwriter. While racking up arrests and rehabilitation stints since leaving the group in the early 80s, Willis has made over a million dollars in royalties on 'not gay' songs he wrote for the disco group, including "In the Navy", "YMCA", and "Macho Man".

Willis is clean and sober now according to his "people", and ready to mount some sort of comeback tour after releasing a promised tell-all book in the fall. And yes, there's a regional connection even here. Turns out Willis wrote "YMCA" in Vancouver. According to his publicist, "Victor Willis wrote about the YMCA and having fun there, but the type of fun he was talking about was straight fun."

We'll have to wait for that tell-all book to get the nitty-gritty about what kind of not-gay fun the guys at the Vancouver Y were having way back when.
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In other 'not gay' news, there's Matt Sanchez, that hot-looking Marine conservative activist from a few months back. Soon after making several appearances on Fox News programs and hob-nobbing with Ann Coulter, Sanchez was identified as a former actor in gay porn known as "Rod Majors" [background]. He said then that making those movies was just a "summer job." Although he's remained a popular search topic on blogs, Sanchez mostly disappeared from News Corp TV. But he's not been forgotten by the company's many media outlets.

Cpl. Matt "Rod Majors" Sanchez turned up again as an expert source in an article in News Corp's Weekly Standard magazine.

Sorry, no local connection to this story.

Labels: celebrities, gay news, news bites, politics, sports

Since we don't often get comments here [sob], we can't be sure what readers want, but we figured we'd reintroduce something that we tried before, but with a more exclusive Northwest focus. These are items we wrangle from the web and post first to our Squidoo Gay Seattle page.

It seemed like it might be worth it as a test to occasionally post them here as well.

Ex-state senator, gay rights foe dies
Wouldn't talk to his lesbian daughter, but loved hunters, bridges, and -- of course -- the bible.
Mystery novel features Capitol Hill gay couple in a paranormal Seattle
What you might get into if you yearn for an old mansion.
Reality show star charged in Seattle assault
Keeps his tabloid career alive for another five minutes with anti-gay and racial slurs.
Oregon teens 'Free to Be' at alternative LGBT prom
Coming out on the town in the Portland suburbs.
Opponents aim to put Oregon gay rights to vote
It will -- at least -- probably delay the January implementation of domestic partnerships.
Outsider aces local candidates in election of Episcopal bishop
New bishop at St. Mark's will have to deal with local fallout of the anti-gay Anglican schism.

Labels: news bites, oregon, Washington

Randall L. Tobias, a prominent and generous GOP donor who was given high-profile jobs in the Bush administration, resigned on Friday after being questioned by ABC News when his name turned up on a client list kept by a Washington, DC madam.

He admitted that he had hired call-girls from the firm run by "DC Madam" Pamela Martin. He insisted to ABC News that he had rented the call girls only for "massages" and that he had, umm... abstained from sex.

Tobias's latest formal title in the administration was "Deputy Secretary of State ." His job duties: director of U.S. Foreign Assistance and administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

USA Today summarized his reponsibilities:

In his post, Tobias oversaw about $18 billion in U.S. foreign aid. He was put in charge of both USAID and named the State Department's first director of U.S. foreign assistance in an attempt to better coordinate aid.

USAID, an independent federal agency that receives overall foreign policy guidance from the Secretary of State, has nearly 8,000 employees in Washington and in its 80 missions around the world.

Prior to that, Tobias had served the ambassador for the Office of Global AIDS Coordinator (OGAC) -- the administration's so-called "AIDS czar."

Slate finds a tasty quote from FrontLine in which Tobias explained his primary strategy for fighting the global AIDS epidemic:

Well, the heart of our prevention programs is what's known as ABC: abstinence, be faithful, and the correct and consistent use of condoms when appropriate. ...

And it's also not "ABC: Take your pick." It's abstinence really focused heavily on young people and getting them to understand that the best way to keep from getting infected is to be abstinent and not engage in sexual activity until they are old enough and mature enough and get into a committed relationship, such as a marriage. B is being faithful within that committed relationship. And A and B, those two things together clearly had a huge impact in bringing the infection rates down in Uganda.

C recognizes the fact that there are individuals in high-risk circumstances who either by choice or by coercion are going to find themselves unable to follow A and B, and therefore they need to have access to condoms, and they need to understand the correct and consistent use of condoms.

When the Senate considered Tobias's nomination for the USAID post that he just resigned from a coalition of womens' health groups objected, and pointed out that he hadn't paid much attention to the "C" part of his acronym while he was AIDS czar:

"Under Ambassador Tobias' watch at OGAC, the U.S. has carried out a controversial approach to HIV prevention that goes far beyond any congressional mandate, by, among other things, limiting access to condoms even in generalized epidemics and hampering effective outreach to sex workers," stated Jodi L. Jacobson, Executive Director of the Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE). "Because Tobias has shown himself vulnerable to pressure by the extreme right at OGAC we feel his nomination to head USAID at this critical moment is cause for great concern."

The women's groups also charged that OGAC under Tobias's leadership had closely aligned itself with right-wing US religious groups.

"Ambassador Tobias' willingness to foster an ideological agenda under OGAC raises serious questions about his treatment of other sensitive issues that will fall within his purview at USAID, such as broader reproductive health and family planning programs," stated Jacobson. ...

Before confirming him for this post, "the Senate must ensure that Ambassador Tobias is committed to non-partisan humanitarian aid programs that seek the best methods -- and use the best people -- to improve health and reduce poverty worldwide. Humanitarian aid programs should respond to needs of people, not politicians," Jacobson concluded.

The ABC News story that prompted the resignation notes that he got the jobs at least partly through his generosity to GOP politicians:

Along with his wife, Marianne, Tobias donated over $100,000 to Republican candidates and political committees, according to the campaign finance Web site OpenSecrets.org.

Of course, Secretary of State Condoleza Rice, who had praised Tobias's work earlier this month, announced that Tobias was leaving "for personal reasons."

Huffington Post commentator James Love surveyed activists who pointed out that Tobias was doing the work of the late GOP Congress and of fellow GOP contributors in his global abstinence policies. They noted, however, that he might also have been doing the work of his former employer, phama giant Eli Lilly, in other AIDS policies:

I asked friends who would know, "How much of the 'abstinence only' efforts at USAID were the fault of Tobias, and how much from the White House." The push for this policy, which is actually mandated by a Congressional requirement, came from Republicans in Congress, the White House and the religious right.

Activists give Tobias much more blame for efforts to protect big drug companies from competition from generic manufacturers of AIDS drugs, for example, by undermining the World Health Organization's program to certify generic AIDS drugs (the WHO pre-qualification program) and forcing U.S. taxpayers to unnecessarily pay top dollar for brand name AIDS drugs in PEPFAR treatment efforts. This policy has been poorly covered in the press, but it is far more consequential than Tobias' sex habits.

After a career at Indiana Bell and at AT&T -- where he rose to become vice-chairman, Tobias joined Eli Lilly in 1993 as CEO. He joined drug company during a boardroom crisis and was credited with saving the company and significantly boosting its stock price during his tenure.

In a story on Tobias's 2003 nomination to the AIDS office, which carried an ambassadorial rank and required Senate consent, the New York Times found AIDS activists who worried about his ties to Lilly and to religious right groups in Indiana.

The activists worry that he will spend tax dollars on patented American AIDS drugs at up to $15,000 a year instead of generic copies from India or Thailand for, say, $300. Or that he will let drug companies fill the need through donations, which cost nothing but give the companies huge tax write-offs while shutting out generic competitors so they can control prices elsewhere. The critics also worry that he will adopt the religious right stand that condoms do not work and abstinence does.

Friends in Indiana pointed out that Tobias had shared some of the vast wealth he had accumulated at Lilly with Indiana's largest AIDS service group.

Labels: news bites, politics

We posted this Daily Show clip last week by the show's rising star, Jason Jones, because we thought it was funny.


[link to part 1] [link to part 2 (above)]

But if we'd looked at our feeds that day, we would have noticed that something odd was happening to the "ex-gay" "therapist" featured in Part 2 of the clip. The self-described "psychotherapist and educator" Richard Cohen was disappeared from the web sites of two "ex-gay" activist groups that had previously served as his organizational cover.

On March 31, writer David Robinson described on the Ex-Gay Watch blog the odd disappearance of Cohen from sites that had been primary proponents of his controversial "therapies."

Over the past couple of days, The National Association for the Therapy of Homosexuals (NARTH), and Parents and Friends of Gays and Ex-Gays (PFOX), have quietly removed all traces of any affirmation of Richard Cohen. PFOX has removed all references to him entirely, while NARTH has left only historical events which included his name - all his articles are gone and his books no longer appear in their online bookstore.

We missed the post along with mentions of it by Pam Spaulding and others. Fortunately, though, the virtual versions of the paper gay press is out there to catch -- a week or two later -- things that fall through the quickly-revolving blog cycle. Bar Area Reporter rehashes the purging in this week's issue:

As recently as last year Cohen had been president of Parents and Friends of Gays and Ex-Gays, whose slogan is "supporting the right of homosexuals to choose change." PFOX believes that individuals can change their sexual orientation and has paid for a series of controversial billboards promoting that idea.

The name of the anti-gay group was chosen as a twisted alternative to the pro-gay group Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.

Cohen had been expelled from the American Counseling Association in 2003 for violating its code of ethics. He continues to offer counseling in Maryland without a license.

One of the most recent of his frequent media appearances was a "Diagnosis Mystery" segment on The Daily Show, on March 20. Words cannot describe how hysterically bizarre the segment was.

Two days after the segment aired, Cohen sent out a fundraising appeal for his International Healing Foundation. In it he said he did such media appearances "in an effort to reach people who would normally never hear our message."

He called The Daily Show experience "the most degrading experience I've ever had in the media. I unknowingly allowed myself to be manipulated and coerced by the producer and the host. I take full responsibility for this mistake." He accused the program of taking comments out of context and making him look like a fool.

The Daily Show segment appears to have been too much for Cohen's ex-gay allies.

Even before Cohen's former sponsors had purged references to him, another "ex-gay" group, Exodus International, which claims to be the largest organization in that "movement," had criticized Cohen:

Randy Thomas, vice president of Exodus International, is rightly embarrassed by Richard Cohen?s appearance on the Daily Show:

The guy on the video announces Richard as the foremost expert on "healing the gay" or something like that. Richard is not the foremost of anything except making a spectacle of himself and completely misrepresenting the larger "ex-gay" movement. He is not a part of Exodus and apparently not willing to take our private feedback and accountability to heart.

But if the Daily Show appearance was finally just too much for Cohen's fellow activists, there were plenty of other bizarre appearances by the man before that:



On ABC's Jimmy Kimmell On CNN's Paula Zahn

Truth Wins Out founder Wayne Besen who appeared on the same Daily Show report as Cohen details his downfall in a syndiated column that appeared this week in several papers, including SGN.

The wheels began to fall off the car when I got a tip that Cohen had been kicked out of the American Counseling Association in 2002. He managed to hide this career suicide from the public until I informed the media in 2005.

With his counseling career in ruins, Cohen turned to the media as his only channel to attract new clients to his "healing" seminars. However, his act that played so well at the NARTH convention made him look like a quack to mainstream Americans. On his appearance on CNN's Paula Zahn Now earlier this year, Cohen actually performed his tennis racket routine to the guffaws of million of viewers. He made a further buffoon of himself on ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live where boxer George Foreman looked as if he wanted to give him a left hook. He further disgraced his image on Showtime's Bullshit, starring comedians Penn and Teller.

However, Cohen's "jumping on Oprah's couch moment" came on his appearance with me on Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart . To prove he was heterosexual, Cohen belched and cursed and when he was feeling the heat, he got up in the middle of the interview to "shake it off."

Cohen's antics were even more than PFOX and NARTH could take and they heaved him overboard, purging their websites this month of his kooky books and articles. The largest ex-gay group, Exodus International, even put out a statement saying they do not endorse the counselor's work.

But taking his name off the websites may not be enough to get Cohen and his bizarre techniques off the cable news shows. He appeared as part of a long documentary about "Conversion Therapy" on Australian network ABC. Although the documentary was probably taped months ago, CNN International re-aired it recently. Raw Story has the video. Snippets of the documentary showed up again this Friday on Anderson Cooper 360.

Labels: activism, celebrities, news bites, TV, youtube

SLOG was (as usual) on top of this (as it were) when the news broke in a military publication: The Marines have added a few unexpected charges after opening an investigation of Cpl. Matt Sanchez who appeared in gay porn features before signing up as a Marine.

The investigation was done by Reserve Col. Charles Jones, a staff judge advocate, who infomed Sanchez of the charges last week.

Jones wrote that Sanchez's participation in porn films was part of the investigation, but that two of the three allegations against him involved lying "to various people, including but not limited to, representatives of the New York City United War Veterans Council and U-Haul Corporation" about deploying to Iraq at the commandant's request.

"Specifically, you wrongfully solicited funds to support your purported deployment to Iraq" by coordinating a $300 payment from the UWVC and $12,000 from U-Haul, Jones wrote.

Sanchez vigorously denied the new charges, calling them "demonstrably false" in an interview with Marine Corps Times. He had earlier argued that what he describes as a "summer job" doing porn shouldn't be of concern to the Marines.

In a March letter addressed to MobCom commander Brig. Gen. Darrell Moore, who will ultimately decide what to do with Jones' investigation, Sanchez said he's never done anything to bring dishonor on the Corps since enlisting and that "my past is behind me."

"The Marine Corps is a conversion experience, what men were before they joined is not as important as what they become," Sanchez wrote.

An earlier story about Sanchez in a sister publication, gave this background.

A Reserve corporal whose star has been rising in conservative circles over the past few months -- including appearing on Fox News and being photographed with right-wing firebrand Ann Coulter -- has acknowledged appearing in gay porn films.

Cpl. Matthew Sanchez, 36, now a member of the Individual Ready Reserve, has made national headlines since, as a student at Columbia University, he stood up to war protesters who publicly vilified him for his military service while administrators there refused to intervene, citing freedom of speech.

Sanchez has appeared on cable television programs such as Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor" and "Hannity & Colmes," and penned an editorial for the New York Post. He also wrote a Back Talk column for the Jan. 1 edition of Marine Corps Times titled, "Missing the big picture: Ivy League protesters feel superior to service members."

Prior to the investigation, military officials said that they were not sure how past participation in gay porn might affect a service-member's career:

[O]fficials at Marine Forces Reserve in New Orleans were unable to confirm whether Sanchez had enlisted prior to the end of his film career or if Reserve Marines were prohibited from doing porn when not in a drilling status. ...

Matt Sanchez (center) as Rod Majors. Tom Bacchus has the unedited versions.

...Officials at Marine Corps Recruiting Command were unable to say whether past participation in gay porn disqualifies a potential enlistee because it was unclear how the current "don?t ask, don't tell" policy might apply.

The chain of military papers opened that question to its readers with a discussion forum that poses the question "Should past participation in gay porn disqualify a potential enlistee?" Sanchez often participates in the forum. Several of the posters are less than kind to him. Example:

Mr. Sanchez seems to be suffering from the "have your cake and eat it too" syndrome.

In the big scheme of things, gay porn is much more of a detriment to morale than being gay, which Mr. Sanchez disingenuously (and self-servingly) claims he isn't.

Perhaps Mr. Sanchez isn't gay in the strictest sense of the word. He's not the first man who can justify having anal intercourse with another man and claim that he isn't gay. Hundreds of thousands of men do. Perhaps our language lacks a sufficient construct to describe whatever Mr. Sanchez and thousands like him insists they are: men's men, straight-acting, guys-next-door, who just happen to like to get it on anally with their buds. ...

I don't fault Mr. Sanchez for acting in porn. I fault him for trying to capitalize on his Marine reservist status to advance his own agenda. I fault him for joining the Marines knowing that he did not possess the qualities that a true Marine exemplifies. I fault him for continuing to dissemble in the face of the truth. I fault him for being arrogant enough to think that his case deserves special consideration.

Go to Iraq, Mr. Sanchez. Fight like a Marine. Then I'll fight for your right to remain one. Otherwise, you're just acting -- which is what you seem to do best.

But beyond the usual message-board attacks and counter-attacts, the discussion offers several intriguing posts on the military's "don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) policy. Example:

If the military were serious about discharging service members for what it calls "sexual misconduct," there would hardly be a military left. If you've ever had sex in anything other than the missionary position, you're violating Article 125 of the UCMJ. I can't count the number of senior officers I knew who cheated on their wives in Subic Bay, Korea, etc. Yet, Marines only seem bothered by the sexual misconduct they find personally distasteful.

Having sexual relations with a consenting adult, whether it's the same gender, on film or for money is a has no bearing on a Marine's performance of duties in combat. In fact, the same qualities we admire in combat - boldness, ferocity, fierceness etc., are the same traits that cause Marines like Cpl. Sanchez to behave the way he does in his private life. I'd much rather fight with a guy who's daring enough to put himself out there the way Sanchez has than Marines who are too timid to step outside the line once in awhile.

Many of the Corps' most revered "saints" were the ones who broke the rules. The reason they're legends is that Marines happen to like the rules they broke.

Many of you may not be aware of the good Sanchez is doing. Thanks to his efforts, a liberal college like Columbia, in the most liberal corner of the universe (Manhattan's upper west side) has agreed to recognize war vets and build a memorial. He's intervening to help a wounded Marine combat vet gain admission and you can bet he won't stop there.

It's pretty petty and shallow to criticize someone's person or status as a Marine just because you don't like their bedroom habits or personal life.

DADT isn't an issue that Sanchez addressed in his time on the airwaves of conservative broadcasters, but he's now getting an unexpected lesson on the issue. Maybe he'll turn his fundrasing skills to the issue, eh?

Labels: celebrities, DADT, eye candy, news bites, shirtless hunk

Soulforce v. Focus

Dotti Berry and Robynne Stapp, from Blaine, WA, were arrested yesterday after a polite sit-down protest at Focus on Family headquarters in Colorado Springs. The lesbian couple was there as part of the "Focus on Facts" campaign coordinated by the group Soulforce, "a national LGBT social justice organization founded on principles of nonviolence."

Soulforce explained the protest in a press release.

"I am here today because I believed Dr. Dobson's teachings for many years, and it almost led to my suicide. My healing came from my acceptance of myself and my acceptance that God loves me exactly as I am," said Sapp. Sapp and Berry have toured Focus on the Family twice before to dialogue with visitors and staff about LGBT individuals and families.

Dobson has consistently misrepresented LGBT families with misleading references to social science research. In recent months, several social scientists -- including Dr. Carol Gilligan of New York University and Dr. Kyle Pruett of Yale -- have publicly rebuked him for mischaracterizing their research conclusions.

Dobson and other Focus spokespeople frequently discredit LGBT parenting with references to "more than 10,000 studies that have showed that children do best when they have a mom and a dad." According to the American Psychological Association (APA), such claims rely on "studies that simply do not address gay and lesbian parents and their children." Moreover, "no credible evidence shows that children raised by lesbian or gay parents differ in any important respects from those raised by heterosexual parents."

Berry and Sapp are the first participants in an ongoing campaign called "Focus on the Facts," which is modeled on Gandhi's Satyagraha campaigns in South Africa and India. In the words of Nelson Mandela, Gandhi "rightly believed in the efficacy of pitting the soul force of the Satyagraha against the brute force of the oppressor and in effect converting the oppressor to the right and moral point."

Soulforce made a video.

PI's Theil: Let Hardaway talk

Seattle PI's sports columnist Art Theil takes off where Steve Kelly, his uphill rival from the Times, left off last week in a column about ex-NBA star Tim Hardaway's self-admitted homophobia.

[NBA commissioner David] Stern immediately booted Hardaway from his All-Star Weekend appearances. Had he been an NBA employee, sanctions certainly would have followed.

Hardaway responded by backpedaling faster than Carmelo Anthony after throwing a sucker punch, retracting, apologizing, equivocating and rationalizing.

While the political correctness of Stern's action was predictable, it was too bad.

More of Hardaway's thoughts, and those of his like-minded peers, need to be shared.
Not because they need to be endorsed. But because they need to be known, discussed and engaged. And if necessary, avoided.

Whether such practices would enlighten Hardaway isn't the point. He's entitled to his views. But the rest of the world is not helped when ignorance is banished instead of addressed. It festers in darkness, withers in light.

Yes, there is risk when incendiary views are disseminated. But the reluctance to confront is, in the long term, worse. ...

Whether the cultural controversies of the day are racial integration, the politics of the Cold War (remember pingpong diplomacy as well as the 1980 Olympics boycott?) or gender equity, sports, mostly for good and sometimes for ill, is frequently the catalyst.

Simply because so many people care.

Please, let's hope no one thinks Congress, the Supreme Court, the president or most any other mainstream institution is capable of starting the discussion. ...

Speaking of hatas, let's hope Hardaway returns soon to public life with the courage of his convictions. I'm eager to hear how one of the NBA's strongest, toughest players feels so vulnerable and untrusting when he finds out with whom a teammate sleeps.

Gates Foundation to help build HIV research center in Canada

The Seattle-based Gates Foundation has pledged $28 million for building a research center somewhere in Canada to study HIV vaccines. Canada's Conservative government has pledged $188 million for the center.

Some Episcopal leaders would welcome schism

Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori, the leader of the US Episcopal Church, calls for calm while some in her church call for schism after Monday's ultimatum issued by a global summit of Anglican leaders.

Marc Handley Andrus, Bishop of California, issued a statement strongly affirming his church's support for its lesbian and gay members:

The Diocese of California is a place within the Church -- not alone, but prominently -- where gay and lesbian people have been freer to offer their gifts: Both professional gifts and those of lay and ordained ministry. As a result, the Diocese of California has been immeasurably enriched. As bishop of this diocese, I know very well that the Christian rights of gay and lesbian people are intrinsic and must be supported, and that without these gifts, this diocese would be as immeasurably impoverished as it is now enriched -- immeasurably as the spiritual gifts of all God's people know no measure.

Labels: gay news, news bites, philanthropy, religion, sports

Integrity, the LGBT group within the US Episcopal Church, yesterday strongly decried a statement released by a global meeting of "primates" -- the bishops who head semi-autonomous national and regional churches that are associated with the Anglican Church, a denomination that traces its origins to the Church of England.

The statement was issued Monday after a tense meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in which some of the bishops refused to take communion in the same church where US Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori worshiped.

The statement sets a September 30 deadline for the US Episcopal Church -- the US branch of Anglican churches -- to apologize for consecrating a gay bishop to to stop official blessings of gay unions.

Los Angleles Times reports

The five-day meeting ended with a joint communique and without evidence of an immediate schism in the 77-million-member global church, which many had feared. But tensions remained over the U.S. church's comparatively liberal stance on issues of biblical interpretation and homosexuality.

In the communique, issued near midnight local time and after multiple revisions, the Anglican leaders said that past statements by the Episcopal Church about gay unions and consecrations have been so vague that they have failed to heal the "broken relationships" with the wider communion. The Episcopal Church, with 2.3 million members, is the American wing of the denomination.

The Anglican leaders gave the U.S. church a deadline of Sept. 30 to clarify its position, warning that if the requested reassurances could not be given by then, the Episcopal Church ran the risk that its relationship with the global communion would be "damaged at best."

In strongly-worded press release, Integrity encouraged its members to contact their bishops to urge them to reject the demands of the primates.

"The primates of the Anglican Communion have utterly failed to recognize the faith, relationships, and vocations of the gay and lesbian baptized," said Integrity President Susan Russell, responding to the communique released today from Dar Es Salaam.

"Let us pray it doesn't take another hundred years for yet-unborn primates to gather for a service of repentance for what the church has done to its gay and lesbian members today, as they repented in Zanzibar yesterday for what it did to those the church failed to embrace as full members of the Body of Christ."

The Rev. Michael Hopkins, immediate past President of Integrity had this reaction: "Jesus weeps, and so do I. If the House of Bishops (or any other body with actual authority in this church) capitulates to these demands and sacrifices gay and lesbian people to the idol of the Instruments of Unity, it will have become the purveyor of an "anti-Gospel" that will (and should) repel many."

An out gay blogger in Georgia had this reaction:

My spiritual life in the Episcopal Church is extremely important to me, and I will join in the struggle to stop this madness now. If that means we are kicked out of the Anglican Communion, so be it. I won't stand silently by as I did at age 19 when my pastor said from the pulpit, "I could never have love in my heart for a homosexual. If I knew of any in the church right now, I would come down off this pulpit, escort them out the door, and tell them never to return." It was 7 years before I entered a church again for the purposes of worship. I won't be expelled or banished so easily this time.

The primates' statement was seen as a way of avoiding, or at least delaying a major schism in the Anglican Communion which is what they call the loose confederation of self-governing national and regional churches. It clearly didn't solve the doctrinal and cultural divide that still threatens to split the church.

The Times (London) reports that the more conservative bishops were unhappy that the convention didn't take more decisive action against their tolerant brethren in the US:

Anger among conservative Primates was growing tonight as it became clear that the Episcopal Church of the US is to escape discipline for ordaining an openly gay bishop.

Anglican Primates, meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, are to ask all 38 provinces to unite under a new Anglican Covenant published in draft form today. US and Canadian dioceses that have introduced same-sex blessings for gay couples are also to escape discipline.

Although the schism that some had expected was avoided, neither side of the divide appears to be happy with the compromise statement issued by the primates.

A liberal Anglican group in the UK expressed cautious optimism that the statement might lead to further dialogue, but warned that tolerance and acceptance of LGBT church members would not be blunted.

The cost of the decision not to authorise any Rite of Blessing for same-sex unions in the Episcopal Church is a serious means that LGBT people in America are being asked to carry an intolerable burden. As in England and other parts of the Communion which acknowledge that God blesses covenanted, faithful relationships, we know that priests with the courage of their own spiritual convictions will continue to welcome those who come for blessing.

This global argument has had effects in local communities throughout the US as the Seattle Times showed yesterday in a front-page feature by Janet I. Tu on a Whidbey Island church that's been divided, like dozens of others by cultural and doctrinal disagreement.

Like a few dozen other Episcopal parishes in the US, St. Stephen's in Oak Harbor has split from the US "province" headed by Bishop Jefferts Schori. It's declared its fealty with a Brazilian bishop who, unlike Jefferts Schori, has little tolerance for gay folk worshiping in his church.

[D]eeply held differences over the ordination of a gay bishop officially ended the congregation as it had existed since 1952.

Now, in its place are two distinct congregations ? a small one that remains in the U.S. Episcopal Church and a larger one that has severed ties and aligned itself with a conservative Brazilian bishop in the Anglican Communion.

While the two groups worship on the same property, their former closeness is gone, replaced by hard feelings.

Decades-long friendships have been strained or lost. Some in the Episcopal congregation feel wounded by how they say they were treated. Some in the Anglican congregation resent being considered extreme.

Although not mentioned in this article, the issue comes even closer for members of St. Mark's Cathedral in Seattle, headquarters of the statewide Diocese of Olympia. Very Rev. Robert Taylor, the dean of St. Mark's is openly gay and was considered for a position as bishop of the Diocese of California. (As "dean," Taylor heads the local parish while the bishop heads the diocese that includes dozens of churches.)

Labels: news bites, religion

On the same day that a local sports columnist (of all people) presents a call to examine the genuine homophobia in the sports world and beyond comes this remarkable item from 365gay.com.

The leader of an organization that opposes homosexuality has condemned former NBA player Tim Hardaway for the language he used in attacking gay players.

"Hardaway's comments are both unfortunate and inappropriate," said Matt Barber, the policy director for Concerned Women of America.

"They provide political fodder for those who wish to paint all opposition to the homosexual lifestyle as being rooted in 'hate.'"

But Barber then fires off his own anti-gay broadside.

"It's perfectly natural for people to be repelled by disordered sexual behaviors that are both unnatural, and immoral."

"All too often those behaviors are accompanied by serious physical, emotional, and spiritual pitfalls. However, the appropriate reaction is to respond with words and acts of love, not words of hate. Jesus Christ offers forgiveness and freedom for all sinners, and that is the heart of the Gospel message," Barber said.

But then added that gay activists are at least partly to blame.

"Hardaway's comments only serve to foment misperceptions of widespread homosexual 'victimhood' which the homosexual lobby has craftily manufactured," said Barber in a statement.

Yeah, sure.

And one wonders how Hardaway could think it's OK to let out the kind of rant he did. As Kelly, Amaechi and others have noted, at least Hardaway was honest about his bigotry.

In this attempt to get his political message across to his base, an activist like Barber can't even manage that level of honesty.

Labels: news bites, religion, sports, witch hunts

In the week since former NBA player John Amaechi came out on ESPN, coverage that combined "gay" and "NBA" in a single story had started to ramp down. That is, until Wednesday's broadcast homophobic rant by former NBA star Tim Hardaway.

Ameachi said he wasn't suprised to hear about Hardaway's comments, "I don't need Tim's comments to realize there's a problem," Ameachi told an AP interviewer. "People said that I should just shut up and go away -- now they have to rethink that."

Seattle Times sports columnist Steve Kelly addresses the issue in a must read column in today's paper.

Excerpts:

We had a feeling when former NBA player John Amaechi came out as a gay man, the story ultimately would not be about him, but about us. ...

The truth is, instead of cautious players throwing around code words like "trust," we needed some incendiary comments like those from former NBA point guard Hardaway to ramp up the debate. ...

There's nothing like an athlete, or ex-athlete, announcing he or she is gay to bring all of the village idiots out of the closet. ...

And, at least now, maybe we can begin the kind of wide-ranging, visceral talk that needs to be talked.

It's time for all the players to stop using code words and speak from the heart.

The reaction to Hardaway's comments shouldn't be, "You can't say that." It should be, "How can you think that?"

How can NBA players be so ignorant?

Kelly concludes

We shouldn't give a flying flip about the sexual orientation of John Amaechi or anyone else. But we do.

Even though I wish he'd made the announcement while he was still playing and really exploded some stereotypes, I applaud Amaechi's courage.

The fact that John Amaechi is gay shouldn't be news.

The real news is how we're dealing with that news.

So true.

But Dan Savage has some great advice over on SLOG for those dealing with that news:

But so long as we conflate liking us -- or believing that Jeebus loves us too -- with granting us our fundamental civil rights, we make winning those civil rights that much more difficult.

Of course as more and more of us live openly -- with or without our full civil rights --the hatred and fear that people like Hardaway espouse becomes less prevalent and less socially acceptable. But not everyone is going to like us or approve of us, whatever the law says, however socially tolerant our society becomes. And it is precisely these people?the haters, the Hardaways -- that have to be made to understand that no one is going to force them to change their minds.

What should the gays say about Hardaway? If I were the spokesperson for a big gay group I would say something like this:

"Mr. Hardaway is entitled to his opinions -- and his prejudices. He is not entitled to live in a world or a United States that's free from homosexuals. We are 'in the world,' we always have been, and we always will be. And gays and lesbians should not be subject to discrimination because some people are homophobic anymore than African Americans should be subject to discrimination because some people are racist. But if Mr. Hardaway doesn't care to know associate with gay people in his private life, that is his right. It is also his loss."

Labels: coming out, news bites, sports

• Gray zone: Isaiah Washington, serial slur-er and a star of the fake-Seattle medical drama Grey's Anatomy, kicked off an apology tour by meeting with activists from Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) and "agreed to help educate the public about the cruelty of anti-gay slurs." Not everyone is buying this act in the long-simmering drama. And other bloviating blatherers don't understand why it matters.
• ABCs of awards: Meanwhile, the ever-angry and easily offended (but always useful) folks at the inappropriately-named GLAAD gave Grey's and its home network, ABC, several nominations for GLAAD's annual Media Awards.
• Tourist attraction: Gay weddings are proving to be a popular tourist attraction in Vancouver and elsewhere in Canada. According to the first available set of stats, half of BC's marriage certs for same-sex nuptuals were given to non-Canadians. Do we smell a market for San Juan honeymoon suites?

• Witch hunts:
• The Roman Catholic Church says it will close its Brit adoption agencies if it isn't allowed to practice its Pope-given right to discriminate.
• The first gay couple married in South Africa got a lot of publicity followed by threatening calls and letters.
• Google seems to be targeting gay blogs that post even vaguely suggestive "eye-candy" photos on the site. Google has told at least two prominent blogs, Scott-O-Rama and BestGayBlogs, that if they display pictures of shirtless guys, they can no longer display the Google-supplied ads that often are a primary way for bloggers and other web sites to pay for (or partly pay for) web hosting charges. It's a good thing for Viacom that Google doesn't sell ads for eye-candy-only MTV.

Labels: gay news, marriage equality, news bites, TV

• Mess-o-potamia: Activists say that Bush's proposed surgelette of American troops in Iraq is unlikely to help gay and lesbian Iraqis who continue to be targeted by death squads, sometimes operated by US-allied factions.
• Noble scolding: Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu scolded his fellow Anglicans -- and especially his fellow African bishops -- for worrying too much about gay priests in the US and not enough about disease, poverty, and malnutrition in Africa. But then, rich conservative US parishes aren't lining up to join Tutu.
• Silly scolding: ABC scolded its Grey's Anatomy star Isaiah Washington for once again using the a slur at the Golden Globes. He apologized and refrained, this time, from using the word yet again.

• Sillier: Before firing him, the Donald scolded a hawt gay Apprentice candidate for being too gay. At least he didn't call him a "degenerate."
• Irredeemably silly: American Id... No, we can't stand to even think of it, let alone link.
• Cost of censorship: Little Sisters, the great LGBT bookstore in Vancouver won't be getting any help from Ottawa for the huge legal bills it racked up over two decades of fighting "oppressive and dismissive" customs officers who tried to keep foreign erotica out of the store.
• Sort of supportive: Gov. Gregoire kind of said that she kind of supports Murray and Pedersen's domestic partnership bill and indicated to LGBT activists that she might, kind of, sign it if it passes. (If it could be made really noisy, ugly, and view-blocking, it might have a better chance with her.)
• Supportive congregation: Parishioners prayed outside a hearing where church officials gathered to decide the fate of the gay Lutheran minister who got into trouble because he has what folks used to call a "companion."

Labels: gay news, news bites, politics, religion, TV

• Lobbying log: Log Cabin Republicans in California are actively lobbying their gubernator to sign the marriage equality bill that is expected to pass (again) in the legislature this year. They probably won't be getting much help from the largest national lobbying group, HRC, which has decided it's all about Democrats. A civil rights pioneer explained in Eugene yesterday why he things gay activists are focusing on the wrong issues.
• Divorcing rights: While marriage equality or inequality makes its way through legislatures, city halls, and ballot boxes, courts continue to be asked to sort of the contractual obligations of couples that split up:
  In Maine and Connecticut, courts are sorting through inheritance rights of the ex-partner of an IBM heiress who had, in happier days, adopted her adult partner since they couldn't get married. The adoptee now claims rights to part of her ex-partner's Watson/IBM fortune.
  In Virginia and Vermont, courts are still sorting out visitation rights for a lesbian couple who were once joined in civil union in Vermont, but the later split. The bio-mom of the couple's baby moved to Virginia and denied Vermont-court-ordered visitation. A Virginia court now says the Vermont ruling should apply even to the current Virginia resident.
• Make it work: Bravo TV will close its Queer Eye after one last mini-season, but the tradition of restyling clueless schlubs will carry on when Project Runway's Tim Gunn debuts his new style show on the cable net. Project Rungay is happy that he's escaped "from the claws of that Teutonic hussy."

Labels: gay news, marriage equality, news bites, TV

• Revisit DADT: Tacoma Congressman Adam Smith, the newly minted chair of the House Armed Forces subcommittee agrees with his neighbor Gen. John Shalikashvili that the military Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT) rules should be reconsidered. "Shalikashvili's right," Smith said. He doesn't plan to get into the issue right away, "But on principle," he said, "'don't ask, don't tell' does not make sense." Meanwhile, some conservatives decided they could ignore Shalikashvili because he had a stroke a few years ago.
• Bars as good neighbors: While a developer on Capitol Hill thinks he has to keep bars out of his "trendy" (as in Issaquah trends) new complex and while the town's mayor tries to clamp down on clubs, an uber-trendy and gentrified neighborhood in New York welcomes the rebirth of the historic Stonewall Inn.
• Gay cop heads to Afghanistan: Scott Oak, the gay cop who serves as LGBTI Liason to the Missoula, MT police force (and that's not the news in this bite), has been asked by the Bush State Department to help train police in Aghanistan. That's news, since Condi Rice got into trouble last year with the GOP right when she introduced the gay partner of a newly minted ambassador. And then there's the oddity of Oak working with folks from an army that would consider him unfit to serve since he's openly gay.
• Equality regs survive: It was called a "high noon" moment for equality in UK as the House of Lords considered suspending new rules banning discrimination because of sexual orientation. Hundreds from "faith groups" protested under Big Ben, but the Lords let the rules stand.
• Unions progress: As Washington takes its halting steps toward civil unions and marriage equality, the rest of the world moves on: The legislature in the Mexican state of Coahuila, which shares a border with central Texas, has adopted a law allowing more equal unions. Australia's capitol city of Canberra did the same, but conservatives there stepped in to maintain inequality. A former foe of marriage equality in Hawaii is now lobbying in favor of civil unions. The college town of Lawrence, Kansas became the first city in that state to adopt a partnership registry. But some Democrats lurch more rightward on this sort of thing, as a major party activist group hired an anti-equality campaigner as its director.
• Stepping toward madrasah: Conservative religious schools in the Muslim world are called madrasah. Maybe Federal Way should consider renaming its "School District" the "Madrasah District," since they appear to believe cultish misinformation trumps science in the district classrooms.
• Darth Eyman gets paid: Initiative huckster Tim Eyman collected a commission of $86,743 for his failed attempts last year to put two measures, including an anti-gay initiative, on the ballot. Who says failure doesn't pay? Meanwhile, a proposed legislative bill would make it more difficult for Eyman to pay the mini-hucksters who collect signatures for him.

Labels: DADT, gay news, marriage equality, news bites

• Identifying the real problem: The group that sponsored Virginia's draconian anti-gay constitutional amendment last fall might have found the real threat to marriage this time. They will now target the state's no-fault divorce law. Hmm. Why do you suppose they didn't include that issue in last year's amendment?
• DC too? While the issue is argued in MA, CA, NY and other states, Chris Crain holds out hope that he'll still be able to marry his partner in DC sometime this year (if only those "silver-haired" "elders" would get out of the way).
• Wildely inconsistent: A close ally of Pope Benedict has released a new book chock full of aphorisms from notorious queer Oscar Wilde. Headline writers have gone Wilde.
• Texas justice: Two men who killed one gay man in a beating rampage and injured others will be released on parole as early as next week. Towleroad has the reaction of the mother of their victim.
• Splitting churches: Another Episcopal church has severed ties with the national group over the 2003 consecration of a gay bishop. Andrew Sullivan suspects the splits might be a sign of a more deep-seated divide in many congregations.
• Homoerotic fashion: Lonestar Verve notes that several fashion houses have followed Calvin Klein toward ever-more homoerotic photography for their men's lines. They don't explain why, but offer plenty of examples.

Labels: gay news, marriage equality, news bites

• We're bound to hear more about this: An Ontario court has ruled that a boy can have three parents: his two moms and his bio-dad. After all, the children of hetero marriages today often have four: a mom, a step-dad, a dad, and a step-mom.
• We probably won't hear enough about this: An Oslo natural history museum is running an exhibit that shows (graphically) just how common homosex is in nature.
• We've been hearing about this for way too long already: The Names Project and the creator of the AIDS Memorial Quilt are still squabbling.
• In the be-careful-who-you cruise dept: A Canadian artist has turned his online cruising sessions into a video installation (with permissions, of course) that's been shown throughout the country.
• Confidential to searchers who land here because of that name: Vancouver hottie Taylor Kitsch is cover boy for this month's Men's Health magazine. He offers workout and diet tips. We offer more pics in our Rumor+Hunks Machine.

Labels: eye candy, gay news, news bites

Marriage in MA:
The state of marriage equality in Massachusetts isn't nearly as safe as it looked to some of us last week. After a scolding last week by the state's highest court, legislators meeting in a special session called a "Constitutional Convention" today agreed by a vote of 61 to 132 to put the fate of equality on the ballot in 2008.

Boston's WCVB explained the complicated process:

On Tuesday, 61 lawmakers voted to keep the proposal alive, while 132 voted to kill it. The proposed amendment needs 50 or more votes in two consecutive legislative sessions to get on the 2008 ballot. Late Tuesday afternoon lawmakers agreed to reconsider the vote, but a second vote still gave the proposal enough support to advance it to the next session.

Prior to the vote, the Democratic Governor-elect Deval Patrick served notice that he will treat the issue far differently than his predecessor, Gov. Mitt Romney. He wrote in a statement to legislators,

"Using the initiative process to give a minority fewer freedoms than the majority, and to inject the state into fundamentally private affairs, is a dangerous precedent, and an unworthy one for this Commonwealth," Patrick said in a statement distributed to lawmakers.

"For practical reasons as well, it's time to move on," the statement said. "Whatever ones views of marriage equality, all can agree that we have far more pressing issues before the Legislature and the Commonwealth."

He urged lawmakers to move on to more important matters.

Ford's friends:
Both Slog and Towleroad take note of a Wall Street Journal story [link will break after today] about Gerald Ford's later years. It turns out that a gay couple bought and lovingly restored Ford's childhood home in Grand Rapids, MI. Towleroad notes:

Ford later paid a visit to the couple and they began corresponding. As Joe notes, "Isn't it nice to read about non-gay-baiting Republicans?" It certainly is, and their actions perhaps contributed to Ford's views on gay marriage. News of Ford's death was poignant for the couple:

"Just past midnight on Wednesday morning, after Messrs. England and Kent went to bed, a friend called and told them to turn on their television. Watching the report of Mr. Ford's death, Mr. England says he felt sick to his stomach. A few minutes later, a local news crew pulled up in front of the home in the darkness. Mr. England went outside and pleaded with them to wait before they started shooting. He brought out the big American flag and draped it over the front porch. Then he told them they could start their cameras."

Meanwhile, at today's funeral for the former President, the pastor of the California Episcopal Church decried divisions that are arising within that church.

In his homily, Episcopalian minister Robert G. Certain touched on the fractious debate in the church over its growing acceptance of same-sex relationships, and said Ford did not think the issue should be splitting Episcopalians. He was Ford's pastor at St. Margaret's Church in Palm Desert, Calif.

"He asked me if we would face schism after we discussed the various issues we would consider, particularly concerns about human sexuality and the leadership of women," Certain said. "He said that he did not think they should be divisive for anyone who lived by the great commandments and the great commission to love God and to love neighbor.

The Episcopal Church has been under pressure from traditionalists for its 2003 consecration of the first openly gay bishop. Several prominent Virginia parishes have recently broken away from the church in protest.

Alaska benefits
The Associated Press caught a human-interest angle on the still-uncertain progress toward equality of benefits for partnered state employees in Alaska. AP interviewed Lin Davis, one of several parties on whose behalf ACLU filed a suit in 1999 that sought to assure equal treatment for the partners of all state employees.

The still-contentious wrangling among the legislature, courts, and administration came a step closer to solution last week when -- despite opposition to equal benefits -- the governor vetoed a bill that would have prevented their implementation.

Davis began her quest on principle. Her partner of many years, Maureen Longworth, also was a state employee and didn't need the health care, survivor benefits and other perquisites of state employment.

As the long case drew to an end, however, Longworth lost her job. Now, Davis needs the benefits to cover her partner.

"I just want to be able to sign her up for health benefits. We are planning on that for Jan. 1 because her (health coverage) runs out," said Davis, a job counselor with the state.

Legally married couples, which Alaska law defines as opposite-sex partners, automatically qualify for coverage.

The state set up a series of criteria to determine whether same-sex couples also qualified. Such factors as evidence of a committed relationship, living together and commingled finances are considered by the state to be evidence of a substantial enough relationship.

"We just want to be able to take care of each other, especially in these older decades of our lives," said Davis, who is in her 60s.

Longworth is now self-employed, with Davis' state benefit providing crucial security for her.

Don't ask, don't tell, don't support
General John Shalikashvili, who served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1993 through 1997, is now calling for the repeal of "Don't Ask. Don't Tell", the rule that prohibits gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military. Shalikashvili oversaw the implementation of the rule as chief military officer during the early Clinton administration.

Writing from his home in Steilacoom, WA, Shalikashvili announced his change of heart in an op-ed piece in today's New York Times [reg].

"I now believe that if gay men and lesbians served openly in the United States military, they would not undermine the efficacy of the armed forces," Shalikashvili writes in the Times.

"Our military has been stretched thin by our deployments in the Middle East, and we must welcome the service of any American who is willing and able to do the job."

He also notes that 24 foreign nations, including Israel, Britain and other allies in the fight against terrorism, let gays serve openly, with none reporting morale or recruitment problems.

A recent Zogby poll of military who had served in Iraq or Afghanistan indicated those now in the military are comfortable with gay folk.

According to the new Zogby data, however, nearly three in four troops (73%) say they are personally comfortable in the presence of gays and lesbians. Of the 20% who said they are uncomfortable around gays and lesbians, only 5% are "very" uncomfortable, while 15% are "somewhat" uncomfortable.

More than half of those polled said that, despite the DADT ban, they had served with gay or lesbian peers.

Labels: Gay, gay news, LGBTQ, marriage equality, news bites

Marriage equality
MA:
The highest court in Massachusetts today declined to intervene with the job of the legislature. They won't be forcing legislators to put to a vote a constitutional ban on equal marriage rights.

The legislators, sitting in a special constitutional convention, last month declined to vote on a petition that would have put the marriage-rights issue to a vote. The state's retiring governor, Mitt Romney, who is expected to seek the GOP presidential nomination in 2008 allied with anti-equality activists in asking the court to intervene and force a vote. These folks usually don't like what they call "activist judges," but were hoping the judges would become uncommonly active in this case. The judges seemed to be peeved, but declined to interfere.

The ruling said: "Beyond resorting to aspirational language that relies on the presumptive good faith of elected representatives, there is no presently articulated judicial remedy for the Legislature's indifference to, or defiance of, its constitutional duties," the Associated Press reports.

CA:
Both judges and legislators are also involved in the equally complex wrangling in California over marriage equality. Chris Crain sorts it out.

OR:
In Oregon, a panel appointed by Democratic Gov. Ted Kulongoski concluded that discrimination should not be legal in the state.

The task force also called for some form of "legal recognition" for gay relationships, a tricky issue considering Oregonians voted in 2004 to restrict marriage to unions between a man and a woman.

Instead, task force members said Oregon should model its own system on Vermont-style civil unions, a plan that was proposed in the 2005 Legislative session, but never made it past the Republican-controlled House.

RIP
Gerald Ford died yesterday at 93. Towleroad has an interesting gay footnote on his brief presidency.

James Brown died unexpected last week at 73. He's being called the godfather of just about everything musically interesting including soul, rap, R&B, rock, shiny pants, Dreamgirls, and Al Sharpton's hair.

Anti-Mary search like WMD search
Slate's Will Saletan compares the bizarre search by conservatives for "proof" that Mary Cheney and Heather Poe won't be good parents to another conservative forlorn hope.

The 30-year search for proof that gay parents are destructive looks a lot like the hunt for WMD. The American Psychological Association has compiled abstracts of 67 studies. Some are plainly biased, and only the latest two or three have avoided the methodological flaws of earlier investigations. But after 67 tries, you'd expect the harm of gay parenting to show up somewhere. Yet in study after study, on measure after measure, kids turn out the same.

Out on the ice (Movies only)
"Toronto Maple Leafs, one of Canada's iconic teams, has lent its name and logo to a movie whose central character is a gay former hockey player." -- But, so far, no real NHL player has chosen to be a real-life example of the movie's theme. The movie is tentatively scheduled for release a year from now.

Labels: Gay, gay news, marriage equality, news bites

Virgin lizard mother
A komodo dragon at an English zoo has laid several fertile eggs that are expected to hatch sometime around Christmas Day. Nothing remarkable there, except that the mother has never mated.

"Essentially what we have here is an immaculate conception," said a zoo curator.

"We will be on the look-out for shepherds, wise men, and an unusually bright star in the sky over Chester Zoo," he joked.

Mary's baby
We don't think this is related, but President Bush was asked at this morning's press conference to comment again on the child that is expected by veep-daughter Mary Cheney and her long-time partner, Heather Poe. Once again, Bush declined to mention Poe. But he did offer "I know Mary and I like her and I know she's gonna be a fine, loving mother."

Maybe he thinks it's a virgin birth? But even the Christmas stories at least mention Joseph.

Good As You has the video.

Truthiness of the preacher
The whole thing has James Dobson and other wing-nut spokesmen all tied up. Dobson was offered paper and ink for a rant about Mary and Heather's baby last week in Time. But, it turns out that maybe Dobson should stick to condemning science rather than trying to use it to reinforce his exclusionist arguments.

One of the scientists quoted by Dobson, Carol Gilligan, a prominent psychologist and author of In a Different Voice, responded in a video:

"I was stunned to hear that James Dobson quoted me in Time magazine," Gilligan says in the video. "I had no idea. I was mortified." She says that there is nothing in her research that would lead anyone to agree with Dobson?s claim that same-gender families are unhealthy for children.

Another of the scientists Dobson quoted, Kyle Pruett, a professor of child psychiatry at the Yale, insisted that Dobson refrain from quoting (and misrepresenting) his work. In an interview with insidehighered.com, Pruett said Dobson's

analysis of his research on fathers was "destructive and highly prejudicial," and cherry-picked information. When people start spinning science, Pruett said, you have to respond.

More preachers fall
After the outing of Colorado Springs mega-church pastor Ted Haggard, his church asked another of its ministers to step down for unspecified sins. The church appealed to its members to tattle on any other ministers or fellow congregants who might also have sinned.

The Stranger is, of course, also concerned and has asked readers of Slog to help out with any information they might have. Of course, Dan is only concerned about the children.

But it doesn't happen only in Colorado. A Southern Baptist church in Memphis has put one of its ministers on leave in the wake of "a past, but highly concerning moral failure." (aka "child abuse".)

White-hood warning
But it's not just preachers and priests that we should watch out for. A southern GOP lawmaker is warning of trouble ahead if we don't hermetically seal off the country's borders.

[R]eacting to the controversy (among certain extreme conservatives, at least) over Muslim representative-elect Keith Ellison?s (D-MN) decision to be sworn in on the Koran, Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA) warned that the U.S. must close its borders to guard against the influx of still more Muslims.

Yikes.
Naughty hot chick
Proving that we who use any excuse to put a scantily-clad hot guy in our posts follow the MSM in that regard, the networks were having fun all week with the stories of a pageant queen. Jon Stewart has the details.

Asking judges to be activists
In our final witch hunt item, supporters of special rights for heterosexual married couples in Massachusetts have asked the state's highest court to intervene in the business of the state's legislature. They want the Court to force legislators to vote on a measure that would put a measure about gay marriage on the ballot.

John Hanify, an attorney for Gov. Mitt Romney, said supporters are asking the Supreme Judicial Court to clarify what the obligations of legislators are under a state constitutional provision that establishes the rights of citizens to petition for an amendment.

That's something usually left to legislators in a special convention, but Romney and his anti-equality supporters hope that the judges will be more activist in this case.

But maybe they're asking the Court to save them from themselves. Last weekend, at an anti-equality rally a speaker left the stage to push a pro-equality protester to the ground.

Labels: gay news, marriage equality, news bites, youtube

Put on the rubber gloves for this one, as we wade into the stench of Foleygate:

Although it took them a few days to do it, the two national LGBT groups that had endorsed the disgraced Congressman's reelection have now rescinded their endorsements and joined the chorus of stinging criticism.

"Gay or straight, Democrat or Republican, it is completely inexcusable for an adult to have this kind of communication with a minor," said Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay political group....

"Mark Foley's shameful actions were reprehensible," said Patrick Sammon, executive vice president of Log Cabin Republicans, a national gay group. "He abused the power of his office, violated the trust of the voters, and exploited young people," Sammon said.

"There should be a thorough criminal investigation by appropriate law enforcement agencies," he said, and if Foley broke the law, "he should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law."

And here's the name du jour for the scandal: Kirk Fordham. He "resigned" today as chief of staff to Congressman Tom Reynolds. Reynolds runs the GOP's reelection committee that takes money from Congress members in safe districts (like Foley's was until Friday) and redistributes it to members in tight races (like, ohh, maybe Reichert in our own Eighth District?). Foley gave $100,000 to Reynold's committee in July, long after Reynolds had learned of what the GOP House leadership was calling "overly friendly" emails to a former page.

But Fordham helps tie Reynolds and the rest of the House GOP leadership far more closely to the Foley scandal because he was Foley's chief of staff (and babysitter/fixer) before he joined Reynold's office. Even worse for Reynolds, Fordham took up his fixer role again last Thursday as the scandal began to break with reports by ABCnews.com:

Fordham counseled his former boss as the story began breaking last week -- first with a report of an e-mail in which the congressman had asked a former House page for his picture and then with the more explicit instant messages that followed. He asked an ABC News reporter to not publish the messages, a protective role Fordham had performed for years as he sought to prevent mainstream media reports about his ambitious boss' sexual orientation. Democrats charge that Fordham's involvement reflected the GOP's desire to minimize the political fallout by, at least initially, keeping the issue quiet. [LAT]

Fordham's job as fixer for Foley during his early years in Congress was probably a challenging one because -- even though Foley refused to answer questions about his sexual orientation -- it was widely known on the Hill that Foley is gay, according to MSNBC commentator Joe Scarborough, a fellow Floridian who joined Congress along with Foley in 1994 during the GOP sweep.

Rumors about Mark's homosexuality followed him from his first day on the Hill, and I even discussed the issue with him before he launched his Senate campaign in 2003. Though I had never broached the subject out of deference to him, I just wanted Mark to know it would come up and warn him that he had better have a response ready.

(It did come up when Florida weekly ran an article outing Foley who later abandoned the Senate bid.)

After Fordham had "quit", Reynolds held a press conference today drenched in flop sweat throughout the Q&A. (At least, he refrained this time from using a gaggle of kids to protect him from questions.)

According to ABC News, "Capitol Hill sources say Fordham's resignation was demanded by Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, whose job is on the line because of his handling of the page scandal."

[Update:] Fordham now says that he discussed Foley's inappropriate contact with pages even before last year's "overly friendly" emails were revealed:

[Fordham] had "more than one conversation with senior staff at the highest level of the House of Representatives asking them to intervene."

The conversations took place long before the e-mail scandal broke, Fordham said, and at least a year earlier than members of the House GOP leadership have acknowledged.

Tags: Link bites, Foleygate, Reynolds, Hastert, Fordham,

Labels: gay news, news bites

We usually ignore the bizarre little "battles" that the culture warriors out there set up for their minions as fundraising or ratings campaigns, but a recent one was too odd to overlook. This one was run mostly by the crazies at American Family Association (AFA) and targeted a new show on the low-rated NBC television network. [The AFA site was offline when this was posted.]

The show, which premiered Friday on KING and most other NBC stations, is called "Book of Daniel". It's about the dysfunctional family and work life of a pill-popping Episcopalian priest named Daniel Webster -- which is apparently supposed to call to mind the story of The Devil and Daniel Webster, except that this Daniel Webster communes with a hippie-like robed Anglo Jesus who often serves as his co-pilot while driving.

Several of the objections to the show by the AFA and other critics revolve partly around that JC character.

Jerry Falwell complains that "God is portrayed as a kind of inane wise guy, maybe not quite as dopey as the "Jesus' of 'South Park' who hosts a cable access show in Colorado."

Washington Post uber-critic Tom Shales, who panned the show as "A mean-spirited unholy mess", called the Jesus character "a pushover for a bad gag and much too cool a guy to be judgmental about the deplorable pack of crackpots who make up the priest's family and friends."

A Christian blogger complains

Jesus is portrayed as being passive! This is not the way I see Jesus at all. He is not going to tell a Dad, whose son is committing sin, that 'he's just a kid'. That goes against what the Bible really teaches! Therefore, it's offensive to me, that Jesus was portrayed in this way.

Well, yes. The character on this show who represents the Jesus that this priest is "seeing" probably isn't the most common of the various Jesi that other folks who also commune with him think they see and hear. But I believe that's part of the point of the character. Of course it's a flawed Jesus, but then, Daniel Webster -- who followed his father into the family church business -- is himself a flawed character. He is depicted as a man of faith by the dramatic conceit of having him chat with a Jesus who is visible to the camera. But Father Webster's faith might be called a flawed faith. It strikes me that this is just the kind of Jesus that he would see. And hey, this Jesus wears a seatbelt when he's shown as the co-pilot and that has to be good. No?

Big problem for AFA: It's written by a gay man

The bigger objection to the show comes from something that's closer to the viscera of AFA and its ilk: The show was created by an openly gay man, Jack Kenny. That, in itself is a problem for these folks. Interestingly enough, it doesn't seem to be a problem in Hollywood. Whereas, being termed a "gay actor" is a ticket to cable TV or low-budget art flicks, "gay writer" seems -- at least from our distant perspective -- to be a mark in favor of a show. I suppose that's because of the success of shows like Friends, Desperate Housewives, and Will & Grace. AFA, however, is doing its best to put a stop to this possible trend.

A spokesman for AFA, Ed Vitagliano, told the LA Times

that the group was also offended that Kenny is gay, as are two of the show's characters.

"We look at that and say, 'If they wanted to try to alienate conservative Christians, they're making every effort to do so,'" he said.

Responded Kenny: "That strikes me as both non-Christian and un-American. It seems to me I should be able to write about anything I want to write about. They have a perfect right not to watch it."

[The LA Times story is also available here if the link above requires a subscription]

Kenny told the Times that the religious aspects of the show were never intended to be its primary subject.

All the fuss has come as somewhat of a surprise to creator Jack Kenny, who originally wrote the pilot as a writing sample a year ago. Kenny -- who most recently produced "Wanda at Large" and "Titus" -- said he intended to make Webster's vocation merely the background, not the focus of the show.

"It's never been about religion," said Kenny, who was raised Roman Catholic and describes himself now as an unaffiliated Christian. "It's about a family that loves each other unconditionally and is ready to catch each other when they fall.

"I was always very clear with the writers and actors that this was never to make fun of or mock Christianity," he added. "It was always a show about people of faith who believe in Jesus Christ as their savior. But it's not about that -- that's just there."

Vitigliano, the AFA spokesman, insisted that "[T]his was not a realistic portrayal of a minister's life. This was so far beyond the pale, it was almost a comic strip version."

Some real Episcopalian priests embrace show

Some of the Episcopal priests who watched the show disagree. After watching previews of the show, clergy as some Episcopal parishes urged theparishionersers to watch the show. The Diocese of Washington [DC] even set up a blog that includes generally positive comments on the show.

The LA Times talked to an Episcopal priest who had actually watched the show before judging it:

"I'm thrilled we have the opportunity to offer to the mainstream media the story of a progressive protagonist in a faith-based story where life is never tidy and neat," said the Rev. Susan Russell, senior associate for parish life at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, where the show's pilot was filmed. "I think it's a realistic portrayal of a faithful man facing 21st century challenges."

Russell, who has watched the pilot and read the scripts for the rest of the episodes, said she has sent a message to her congregants urging them to tune in to the program. She and other Episcopal leaders believe the show could actually draw more people to the Episcopal Church....

"I think a lot of people are looking for a spiritual home that doesn't look like the welcome mat that Jerry Falwell puts out," Russell said.

Some NBC affiliates treated the show's debut as a news story by collecting focus groups of religious-affiliated folk to discuss it after it aired. In one of those discussions -- this one with an Indianapolis station -- two Episcopalian clergymen found the portrayalyal of the priest at least within the pale.

"I didn't think it was anti Christian at all... pro-Christian," said The Rev. Gary Goldacker of Christ Church Cathedral.

"What I saw in the show, I didn't consider to be irreverent, I didn't agree with everything in the show," said Bishop Cate Waynick of the Episcopal Diocese of Indianapolis.

But it is, as we understand it, part of the nature of that church that not everyone agrees with everyone else or with those who make a different profession of faith. One poster on RateItAll.com -- a site that collects amateur reviews about anything -- expressed concern about the perception that the show might create for his church:

The scary part about this show for me is it that many viewers will misunderstand the snarky writing and possibly believe the characters in the show to be representational of my co-religionists. I want to shout out there into TV-land that we Episcopalians, at times flawed and challenged like everyone else, do take our Christian beliefs very seriously.

The show gets an mediocre 2.38 (out of a possible 5) rating from the RateItAll site, but the majority of those who weighed in with comments did so before the shows aired on any NBC station. We somehow doubt that all of them were given preview screenings of the show.

But even after the shows aired, the "Terrible" ratings continued. One poster called it "a slanderous portrayal of Christians and Christianity by modern day AntiChrists...". Another who displays an interesting take on the notion of Christian charity said, "I saw that this show has 'always been a favorite of NBC executives'. [T]hey should all be shot."

In the numbers that will actually matter to NBC, the show didn't do a whole lot better for the network that is trying to pull itself out of a recent ratings slide. Despite all of the publicity about the show, NBC still staggered to a third-place ranking on Friday night with the more traditionally religious and sentimental shows on CBS drawing the most viewers.

Is it worth watching?

But beyond all that, is it worth watching? Hmmm... There's this: The oversexed straight son is a hottie who is given frequent reason in the scripts to remove his shirt. The more conservative gay son was only barely introduced in the initial episodes that aired Friday, so it's hard to guess how that character will be developed.

In fact, the first two episodes seemed to be little more than collections of too-brief scenes that will be replayed later as "Previously on Book of Daniel." A wide array of characters and subplots -- too wide for these two hours -- were introduced in the initial episodes. The show also strikes us as a victim of too much group think that might have diluted its initial spirit. Is it a family drama like Seventh Heaven or a melodrama/comedy like Desperate Housewives? The answer wasn't clear from the initial episodes. It didn't jump far enough over the top to fulfill its melodramatic promise.

Frankly, I'd rather watch something more like the over-the-top manga cartoon that the daughter in the family is creating. If Book of Daniel is to become an edgy drama, as NBC's publicity insists, then its blunt edge will need to be sharpened.

I certainly wouldn't advise anyone to stay home or otherwise go out of the way to watch this show, but it strikes us as at least worth a Tivo slot. This schizophrenic show strikes as as having a bit too much "Seventh Heaven" in it and not enough Desperate Housewives or Six Feet Under. But there is reason to hope that the balance will change in later shows once they can take more time to develop the odd collection of characters and situations. Even in the initial episodes, it demonstrated that it can have at least a few laugh-out-loud moments.

And then there's that hawt bad-boy brother always taking his shirt off. The gay son is also a hottie, of course, but we suspect that it will be a long time before he removes his shirt. Sigh.

Technorati tags: Book of Daniel Gay TV Religion Christianity

Labels: gay news, news bites, TV