Asterisk

Flags in San Fransisco’s Castro District are flying at half staff today in honor of Gay Rights Pioneer Del Martin’s passing this morning. Ms. Martin and her wife Phyllis Lyon have been trailblazers in the Gay Rights movement since the early days in the 1950s. For more information on Del Martin’s life and her passing, please follow the link to the Box Turtle Bulletin‘s wonderful article on Del’s life and her passing.

Del (right) and her wife exchanged vows in 2004, and again in 2008.

Phyllis Lyon made the following statement today.

Ever since I met Del 55 years ago, I could never imagine a day would come when she wouldn’t be by my side. I am so lucky to have known her, loved her, and been her partner in all things. I also never imagined there would be a day that we would actually be able to get married. I am devastated, but I take some solace in knowing we were able to enjoy the ultimate rite of love and commitment before she passed.

Del Martin is survived by her partner of over 55 years and wife of two months, as well as daughter Kendra Mon. Family and friends have requested that donations in her memory be made to the No On 8 campaign.

Members of a Holmes County, Florida community just don’t understand the problem.

Last September, a senior at Ponce de Leon High went to a teacher’s aide because several students were gay-bashing her, calling her “gross” and “sick”, along with other epithets. That aide referred the incident to Principal David Davis, who called the young woman into his office and told her to avoid those kids or he’d suspend her. Oh, and stop being a lesbian. Then he called her parents and outed her to them.

But Mr. Davis didn’t stop there. Here’s an incomplete list of what this high school principal did. (View the full report here (pdf) with thanks to the Box Turtle Bulletin.)

• Had a local minister lead a mandatory “morality assembly”. At the public high school. In response, students began to protest by wearing gay pride shirts, writing slogans on their arms, circulating petitions, shouting “Gay Pride” in the halls.
• Interrogated about 30 students he thought might be gay. Those who identified as gay were forbidden to talk about their homosexuality. They were also forbidden from wearing or having anything in their  possession that indicated “Gay Pride”.
• Nine days later, suspended a third of the interrogated students for belonging to a “secret society”.
• Told the mother of one of the students that he could have her daughter taken away and that “if there was a man in your house, your children were in church, you wouldn’t behaving any of these gay issues.”

Then one bright young woman, high school junior Heather Gillman, decided to take action. Her cousin was one of the suspended, and through an attorney, Ms. Gillman sent a letter to the board of education requesting clarification on Mr. Davis’ policy of suspending people for being gay or not hating gay people. Specifically, asked for permission to display rainbows, pink triangles, and/or one of the following phrases, all of which were expressly forbidden by Mr. Davis:

• Equal, Not Special Rights
• Gay? Fine By Me
• Gay Pride or GP
• I Support My Gay Friends
• I Support Gays
• God Loves Me Just the Way I Am
• I’m Straight, But I Vote Pro-Gay
• I Support Equal Marriage Rights
• Pro-Gay Marriage
• Sexual Orientation is Not a Choice. Religion, However, Is.

The school board replied that none of the images or slogans were permitted to be displayed on school grounds in any way because of Mr. Davis’ secret society argument, as well as the disruption it causes. I guess in Florida a t-shirt is more disruptive than outing a bunch of kids, which is a whole lot of disruptive.

Ms. Gillman contacted the ACLU, and with their help sued the school district. In late July, Northern Florida District Judge Richard Smoak ruled against the school district to the tune of the request: One dollar to Ms. Gillman, plaintiff’s court costs, and court mandated correction to the policy.

Now. Getting back to my original statement, members of the community don’t understand why everyone’s so het up, if you’ll pardon the phrase. In fact, they’re downright outraged that the board voted to remove Mr. Davis from his role as principal. According to an Associated Press article and a local TV news report, both published yesterday, they’re bewildered that this is such an issue.

Some even say that Davis is a hero. At last week’s school board meeting, a member of the crowd says, “He didn’t abandon you, but you abandoned him and you abandoned the values of the people of Holmes County.” Another claims that “David Davis is a fine man and good principal, and we are a gentle, peaceful, Christian, family-oriented community. We aren’t out to tar and feather anyone.”

This is a great example of the reason we need laws to protect members of the LGTB community. There are people in the United States who don’t understand that suspending someone from school for being gay or just liking gay people means that you are not “a fine man”. There are people who don’t see the problem with calling up a 17-year-old girl’s parents and telling them that she’s a lesbian. There are people who think it’s normal to tell a mother that he’ll take her child away because the child is gay.

And there are still places that will hire someone like David Davis.

Instead of just cutting Mr. Davis loose, this man who did such damage to the student body, they put him back in the classroom. What does he teach? In the ultimate of ironies, the Ponce de Leon school board assigned him to teach American Government.

I happened across this bingo card yesterday and couldn’t help but chuckle. According to this, I got bingo several times in the last week!

Extra points if they claim to know lots of ho-mo-SEK-shuls

Thanks to Willie Hewes for the laugh. Check out her blog and ITCH Publishing, her indie comix company, for more funny.

In an interview yesterday with Stephen F. Hayes of the Weekly Standard, Arizona Senator John McCain discussed requirements for potential running mates. In response to a question about pro-choice Republicans, McCain had this to say:

I think it’s a fundamental tenet of our party to be pro-life but that does not mean we exclude people from our party that are pro-choice. We just have a–albeit strong–but just it’s a disagreement. And I think Ridge is a great example of that. Far moreso than Bloomberg, because Bloomberg is pro-gay rights, pro, you know, a number of other issues.

Note that McCain isn’t talking about having a problem with someone who favors gay marriage or gay adoption. This is pro-gay anything. In only slightly other words, McCain requires that the Vice President of his administration be anti-gay.

After McCain’s interview last month with The New York Times I shouldn’t be surprised. In it he said had this response to a question about gays adopting:

I think that we’ve proven that both parents are important in the success of a family so, no I don’t believe in gay adoption.

That’s a faulty ‘whereas’ and faulty logic for the ‘therefore’ in order to come to the faulty and, yes, bigoted conclusion that gays shouldn’t be permitted to have families.

The evidence is clear. A McCain administration, God help us, would be virulently anti-gay. If this is what McCain says to the press, I can’t imagine how hostile he must be in private.

I don’t generally advocate single-issue voting, but I’ll make an exception this time around. A vote for John McCain is a vote for the restriction and reduction of basic civil rights. America can’t afford that anymore.

It gets so tiresome, hearing the same nonsense arguments over and over. I suppose the other side probably feels the same about us, but really, can’t we stop the false comparisons between homosexuality and pedophilia? At the very least, educated people should know better.

But that’s not the world we live in. Today we’ll look at an article from George Guthrie, a professor of Bible at Union University in Tennessee. Today I ran across his article “No True Compassion Apart From Revelation” from the Associated Baptist Press. In it, he has this to say:

I am also concerned that there exists a short step from affirming homosexuality on the basis of one’s constitution, to affirming other forms of sexual expression, such as pedophilia, on the same basis. Some of our homosexual friends would abhor the idea, but we are talking about constitutionality as a basis for making ethical decisions, and there are those in the global, heterosexual and homosexual communities who already put pedophilia forward on the basis of it being “natural.” My point is not that all homosexuals are pedophiles, but that constitutionality forms a terribly poor basis for promoting an ethical stance on homosexuality.

It’s interesting how Dr. Guthrie equates gays with child molesters long enough to plant a frame of mind, and then attaches the requisite ‘You misunderstood me!’ line at the end. Just in case someone like me is paying attention to the undercurrent of his musings.

But it gets worse, as Dr. Guthrie makes some bold and outright false claims. Claims that reveal his true character:

I am sure to be accused of lacking compassion for those embracing a homosexual lifestyle, and that grieves me. Yet, is it a rightly applied compassion that affirms a lifestyle that too often compromises the physical and emotional well being of fellow human beings? The data seems to indicate that homosexual practice for both couples and individuals leads to a greatly reduced life expectancy (as much as three decades, and not just due to AIDS). Among homosexual men, for instance, there exists a much higher risk of rectal cancer and rectal trauma (which causes a much higher risk of a wide range of diseases). Is it compassionate to affirm such a lifestyle?

It’s reasonable to assume (he doesn’t include any references) that the ‘greatly reduced life expectancy’ he’s talking about is based on ‘research’ done by Paul Cameron and the so-called Family Research Institute, an openly anti-gay organization. ‘Research’ that was panned almost universally outside anti-gay circles. ‘Research’ that was condemned by the authors of the 20-year-old study on which it was based.

Or maybe he’s talking about a study (this one based on science!) published by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute in 2005. The one that looks at the very real increased instance of rectal cancer in men who are A) sexually active with B) more than five partners and who C) use alkyl nitrites during sex (Is Dr. Guthrie suggesting that all gays are pill-popping, bed-hopping sex hounds? Last I knew, it was possible to be gay and monogamous. And even if we/they aren’t, are non-monogamous gays undeserving of basic Godly respect?), OR who carry human papillomavirus (HPV), the virus often associated with cervical cancer in women (I wonder what Dr. Guthrie has to say about those women.).

There’s more, but I think we know enough about Dr. Guthrie to understand his point quite well, even if he isn’t willing to own up to it. It bothers me that someone like him is in a teaching position, but I’m more disturbed by the rest of his CV. Dr. Guthrie has been in a position to affect translation of the Bible, and God only knows what bias and balderdash he’s managed to shoehorn in.

Dr. Guthrie, in response to your article, I am not equivalent to child molesters, and you know better than to use a slippery slope argument, faulty pseudo-scientific studies, and misrepresented research in the first place.

I couldn’t care less if you’re compassionate, Dr. Guthrie. You can take that up with the Lord one day. What I care about is that you stop treating my Baptist brothers and sisters and all the rest of us as if we’re weak, diseased, pitiable creatures. We are made in the image of God, and God requires that you treat us better than this.