On this date, a Senate subcommittee released a report entitled, “Employment of Homosexuals and Other Sex Perverts in Government”, that sanctioned homophobia by the federal government in harsh, offensive terms. After running through one stereotype after another and saying that gay people “must be treated as transgressors,” the report rendered the panel’s conclusion:
In the opinion of this subcommittee homosexuals and other sex perverts are not proper persons to be employed in Government for two reasons; first, they are generally unsuitable and second, they constitute security risks.
It’s true that gay men and lesbians in the closet of a homophobic world could be blackmail targets. But the Senate report went way beyond that possibility in rationalizing blatant discrimination:
The lack of emotional stability which is found in most sex perverts, and the weakness of their moral fiber, makes them susceptible to the blandishments of the foreign espionage agent.
Lest one think this represents more bark than bite, the report says “that between January 1, 1947, and August 1, 1950, approximately 1,700 applicants for Federal positions were denied employment because they had a record of homosexuality or other sex perversion.”
Another report, from March 1950, was titled “Employment of Moral Perverts by Government Agencies.”
By March 1950 Republicans were calling for an investigation of the homosexuals-in-government problem. When President Truman’s loyalty board refused, political cartoons like this one from the Washington Times-Herald, the city’s most widely read newspaper, accused Truman of protecting “traitors and queers.”
Nineteen-fifty was also the year that Senator Joseph McCarthy claimed 205 communists were working in the State Department. The State Department responded by denying that it had uncovered any communists in its ranks, but Undersecretary of State John Peurifoy admitted that it had fired 91 homosexuals. To the public, this seemed to confirm McCarthy’s charges. In the popular imagination, communists and homosexuals were soon conflated. Both seemed to comprise hidden subcultures with their own meeting places, cultural codes, and bonds of loyalty. In the 1950s, fear of political and sexual deviance became intertwined.
McCarthy hired Roy Cohn — who some claim was a closeted homosexual — as chief counsel of his Congressional subcommittee. Together, McCarthy and Cohn were responsible for the firing of scores of gay men from government employment, and strong-armed many opponents into silence using rumors of their homosexuality.
U.S. security officials were concerned that many gay men and lesbians who were fired from the State Department were finding employment in the United Nations and other international organizations. They were afraid that McCarthy and his allies might expose this situation and so they put extreme pressure on these organizations to copy the anti-gay employment policies of the U.S. government. They also pressured America’s NATO allies to exclude homosexuals from sensitive positions within their governments.
However, although a congressional committee spent several months in 1950 studying the threat homosexuals allegedly posed to national security, they could not find a single example of a gay or lesbian civil servant who was blackmailed into revealing state secrets – not one. Subsequent studies have confirmed this. But the myth of the homosexual as vulnerable to blackmail and therefore a security risk endured for decades.
The term for this anti-homosexual persecution was popularized by David K. Johnson’s book on it, The Lavender Scare (2004) which drew its title from the term “lavender lads” used repeatedly by Sen. Everett Dirksen as a synonym for homosexuals. In 1952 he said that a Republican victory in the November elections would mean the removal of “the lavender lads” from the State Department. The phrase was also used by Confidential magazine, a periodical known for gossiping about the sexuality of politicians and prominent Hollywood stars.
The Senate subcommittee’s report from November 1950, according to a Justice Department legal brief filed in July 2011 in the case of a federal court employee seeking health benefits for her same-sex wife, led President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953 to issue Executive Order 10450, “which officially added ‘sexual perversion’ as a ground for investigation and possible dismissal from federal service.””
On this date, in the case of Nikolai Alexeev v. Russia, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France ruled that Russia violated the European Convention on Human Rights with the banning of the 2006, 2007, and 2008 Moscow Gay Pride Marches. The beginning of the Court’s opinion recounted the facts of the historic case (numbers refer to specific paragraphs in the Court’s opinion):
6. In 2006 the applicant, together with other individuals, organized a march to draw public attention to discrimination against the gay and lesbian minority in Russia, to promote respect for human rights and freedoms and to call for tolerance on the part of the Russian authorities and the public at large towards this minority. The march was entitled “Pride March” that year, and “Gay Pride” in subsequent years, to replicate similar events held by homosexual communities in big cities worldwide. The date chosen for the march, 27 May 2006, was also meant to celebrate the anniversary of the abolition of criminal liability in Russia for homosexual acts.
7. On 16 February 2006 the Interfax news agency published a statement by Mr Tsoy, the press secretary of the mayor of Moscow, to the effect that “the government of Moscow [would] not even consider allowing the gay parade to be held”. Interfax further quoted Mr Tsoy as saying: “The mayor of Moscow, Mr Luzhkov, has firmly declared: the government of the capital city will not allow a gay parade to be held in any form, whether openly or disguised [as a human rights demonstration], and any attempt to hold any unauthorized action will be severely repressed”.
8. On 22 February 2006 Interfax quoted the mayor of Moscow as having said, on a different occasion, that if he received a request to hold a gay parade in Moscow he would impose a ban on it because he did not want “to stir up society, which is ill-disposed to such occurrences of life” and continuing that he himself considered homosexuality “unnatural”, though he “tried to treat everything that happens in human society with tolerance”.
(. . .)
11. On 15 May 2006 the organizers submitted a notice to the mayor of Moscow stating the date, time and route of the intended march. It was to take place between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. on 27 May 2006, with an estimated number of about 2,000 participants, who would march from the Moscow Post Office along Myasnitskaya Street to Lubyanskaya Square. The organizers undertook to cooperate with the law-enforcement authorities in ensuring safety and respect for public order by the participants and to comply with regulations on restriction of noise levels when using loudspeakers and sound equipment.
12. On 18 May 2006 the Department for Liaison with Security Authorities of the Moscow Government informed the applicant of the mayor’s decision to refuse permission to hold the march on grounds of public order, for the prevention of riots and the protection of health, morals and the rights and freedoms of others. It stated, in particular, that numerous petitions had been brought against the march by representatives of legislative and executive State bodies, religious denominations, Cossack elders and other individuals; the march was therefore likely to cause a negative reaction and protests against the participants, which could turn into civil disorder and mass riots.
(. . .)
16. On 26 May 2006 Interfax quoted the mayor of Moscow as saying in an interview to the radio station Russian Radio that no gay parade would be allowed in Moscow under any circumstances, “as long as he was the city mayor”. He stated that all three “major” religious faiths – “the Church, the Mosque and the Synagogue” – were against it and that it was absolutely unacceptable in Moscow and in Russia, unlike “in some Western country more progressive in that sphere”. He went on to say: “That’s the way morals work. If somebody deviates from the normal principles [in accordance with which] sexual and gender life is organized, this should not be demonstrated in public and anyone potentially unstable should not be invited.” He stated that 99.9% of the population of Moscow supported the ban.
___________________________________________________________
Moscow police dispersed a gay pride rally on 16 May 2009 that was banned by city authorities, drawing attention to Russia’s record on gay rights as it prepared to host a major international pop music competition:
And so on and so forth. The fact that the Moscow authorities were homophobic was firmly established in the Court’s ruling. In reaching its decision, the Court relied on extracts from Recommendation CM/Rec(2010)5 of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe to member States on measures to combat discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity, including:
Member states should take appropriate measures to ensure, in accordance with Article 10 of the Convention, that the right to freedom of expression can be effectively enjoyed, without discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity, including with respect to the freedom to receive and impart information on subjects dealing with sexual orientation or gender identity.
In a stinging rebuke to former Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, the Court stated:
86. The mayor of Moscow, whose statements were essentially reiterated in the Government’s observations, considered it necessary to confine every mention of homosexuality to the private sphere and to force gay men and lesbians out of the public eye, implying that homosexuality was a result of a conscious, and antisocial, choice. However, they were unable to provide justification for such exclusion. There is no scientific evidence or sociological data at the Court’s disposal suggesting that the mere mention of homosexuality, or open public debate about sexual minorities’ social status, would adversely affect children or “vulnerable adults”. On the contrary, it is only through fair and public debate that society may address such complex issues as the one raised in the present case. Such debate, backed up by academic research, would benefit social cohesion by ensuring that representatives of all views are heard, including the individuals concerned. It would also clarify some common points of confusion, such as whether a person may be educated or enticed into or out of homosexuality, or opt into or out of it voluntarily. This was exactly the kind of debate that the applicant in the present case attempted to launch, and it could not be replaced by the officials spontaneously expressing uninformed views which they considered popular. In the circumstances of the present case the Court cannot but conclude that the authorities’ decisions to ban the events in question were not based on an acceptable assessment of the relevant facts.
87. The foregoing considerations are sufficient to enable the Court to conclude that the ban on the events organized by the applicant did not correspond to a pressing social need and was thus not necessary in a democratic society.
As a result, The European Court ruled that Russian authorities violated three specific articles of the European Convention, namely, Article 11 (freedom of assembly and association), Article 13 (right to an effective remedy), and Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination). In its conclusion, the Court stated:
108. The Court reiterates that sexual orientation is a concept covered by Article 14 (see, among other cases, Kozak v. Poland, no. 13102/02, 2 March 2010). Furthermore, when the distinction in question operates in this intimate and vulnerable sphere of an individual’s private life, particularly weighty reasons need to be advanced before the Court to justify the measure complained of. Where a difference of treatment is based on sex or sexual orientation the margin of appreciation afforded to the State is narrow, and in such situations the principle of proportionality does not merely require the measure chosen to be suitable in general for realizing the aim sought; it must also be shown that it was necessary in the circumstances. Indeed, if the reasons advanced for a difference in treatment were based solely on the applicant’s sexual orientation, this would amount to discrimination under the Convention (ibid, § 92).
109. It has been established above that the main reason for the ban imposed on the events organized by the applicant was the authorities’ disapproval of demonstrations which they considered to promote homosexuality (see paragraphs 77-78 and 82 above). In particular, the Court cannot disregard the strong personal opinions publicly expressed by the mayor of Moscow and the undeniable link between these statements and the ban. In the light of these findings the Court also considers it established that the applicant suffered discrimination on the grounds of his sexual orientation and that of other participants in the proposed events. It further considers that the Government did not provide any justification showing that the impugned distinction was compatible with the standards of the Convention.
Peter Tatchell (left) and Louis-Georges Tin both praised Nikolai Alekseev for his courage in fighting for gay rights in Russia. The two are pictured with 'defiant' placards, with Moscow City Hall in the background, during the first Moscow Pride in 2006. (photo: UK Gay News)
The court awarded 12,000 euros in damages to Moscow gay rights advocate and Pride organizer Nikolai Alexeev and a further 17,500 euros in costs. “This is the first ever decision of the European Court of Human Rights which concerns freedom of assembly in Russia. It guarantees everyone freedom of expression without special permission,” Alexeyev told The Moscow News directly after the verdict.
Speaking to UK Gay News on the Court’s ruling, Peter Tatchell, the campaigner for global LGBT human rights, said in London, “Nikolai and his small band of daring LGBT activists have taken on the might of the Russian state – and won. It is a triumph for LGBT Russians and for all Russians who love liberty.” Louis-Georges Tin, the founder and president of the International Day Against Homophobia organization, said that the decision of the European Court of Human Rights cannot be clearer. “Russia must respect the rights of all citizens for freedom of assembly on its territory without delay, and especially LGBT activists who faced a systematic breach of this basic right in the past years,” he said.
However, under Articles 43 and 44 of the Convention, this “Chamber judgment” is not final. During the three-month period following its delivery, any party may request that the case be referred to the Grand Chamber of the Court. If such a request is made, a panel of judges considers whether the case deserves further examination. In that event, the Grand Chamber will hear the case and deliver a final judgment. If the referral request is refused, the Chamber judgment will become final on that day.
The horrific events that took place shortly after midnight on Wednesday, 7 October 1998, went against everything that Matthew Shepard embodied. Two men, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, lead him to a remote area east of Laramie, Wyoming. He was tied to a split-rail fence where the two men severely assaulted him. He was beaten and left to die in the cold of the night. Almost 18 hours later, he was found by a bicyclist who initially mistook him for a scarecrow. Matt died on this date at 12:53 AM at Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado with his family by his side.
Fence where Matthew Shepard was beaten and left to die (cross added posthumously).
Shortly after midnight (12:00 AM) on this date, two men, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, having led 21-year old college student Matthew Wayne Shepard to a remote area east of Laramie, Wyoming, tied him to a buck fence and brutally beat him and then abandoned him in the cold of the night. They later admitted that they had targeted him because he was gay. Still tied to the fence almost 18 hours after the horrific beating, Matthew was discovered by Aaron Kreifels, who initially mistook him for a scarecrow. At the time of discovery, Matthew was still alive in a coma.
Matthew Shepard sometime in 1998.
Matthew had suffered fractures to the back of his head and in front of his right ear. He had severe brain stem damage, which affected his body’s ability to regulate heart rate, body temperature, and other vital functions. There were also about a dozen small lacerations around his head, face, and neck. His injuries were deemed too severe for doctors to operate. Matthew never regained consciousness and remained on full life support until he died on October 12 at 12:53 AM at a hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado. His entire family was by his side for the last few days of his life. His funeral was attended by friends and family from around the world and gained the appropriate media attention that brought Matthew’s story to the forefront of the fight against hate.
In response to Matthew’s murder, many gay people, especially youth, reported going back into the closet, fearing for their safety, experiencing a strong sense of self-loathing, and upset that the same thing could happen to them because of their sexual orientation. The reaction to his murder underscores the fact that, from a psychological perspective, hate crimes are worse than regular crimes without a prejudiced motivation. The time it takes to mentally recover from a hate crime is substantially longer than it is for a regular crime, and gay people often feel as if they are being punished for their sexuality, leading to higher incidence of depression, anxiety, and post traumatic stress disorder.
Matthew was not a martyr. He was a victim of homophobia.
Rescue party reaches crash site of United Airline Flight 409 on October 7, 1955.
Ironically, yesterday was the anniversary of another tragedy that occurred at Laramie, Wyoming. On October 6, 1955, a jetliner slammed into a nearby mountain peak killing everyone on board, at that time the deadliest accident in U.S. commercial aviation history. Some say the pilot became disoriented in the clouds. Now that the crash site is more than 50 years old, it is federally protected and no one may legally remove pieces of the wreckage. On August 25, 2001, a memorial plaque was dedicated nearby, which reads “In memory of the 66 passengers and crew that perished on Medicine Bow Peak October 6, 1955.” The aftermath of the crash gave birth to new laws for aeronautical safety and new technologies for improved navigation.
In 2009, after repeated obstruction over the years by homophobic politicians like Senator Jesse Helms (who died in 2008), the federal hate crime law was finally expanded by passage of The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act to include crimes motivated by a victim’s actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, or gender identity. However, unlike the crash of the jetliner in 1955, NO memorial of any kind has been established to mark where Matthew was beaten and left to die. In fact, the names of the nearby roads were changed in an effort to make the location more difficult to find. Even the fence at the site has been removed by the landowner.
It seems this is one tragedy Laramie would like to forget …
Suggested Reading:
Monique Noelle, “The ripple effect of the Matthew Shepard murder: Impact on the assumptive worlds of members of the targeted group,” American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 46, No. 1, pp. 27-50 (2002).
On this date, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the case of Lawrence v Texas (539 US 558). This landmark ruling (6 to 3) struck down a Texas law that prohibited sodomy (that is, anal sex) between same sex couples. The Court had previously addressed the same issue in 1986 in Bowers v Hardwick (478 US 186), where it upheld a challenged Georgia statute, not finding a constitutional protection of sexual privacy.
The case arose when police received an anonymous tip of a disturbance in an apartment. The police went to and entered the apartment and discovered two men engaged in homosexual activity. The men were arrested and convicted under a Texas law that prohibits “deviate sexual intercourse.” They were fined $200. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed their convictions and rejected challenges to the Texas law based on both privacy and equal protection.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, held that the right to privacy protects a right for adults to engage in private, consensual homosexual activity. He said that this right is protected under the word “liberty” in the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and is not trivial. Kennedy wrote:
The Court began its substantive discussion in Bowers as follows: ‘The issue presented is whether the Federal Constitution confers a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy and hence invalidates the laws of the many States that still make such conduct illegal and have done so for a very long time.’ That statement, we now conclude, discloses the Court’s own failure to appreciate the extent of the liberty at stake. To say that the issue in Bowers was simply the right to engage in certain sexual conduct demeans the claim the individual put forward, just as it would demean a married couple were it to be said marriage is simply about the right to have sexual intercourse…
When sexuality finds overt expression in intimate conduct with another person, the conduct can be but one element in a personal bond that is more enduring. The liberty protected by the Constitution allows homosexual persons the right to make this choice.
Justice Kennedy expressly analogized to Supreme Court precedents protecting the right to purchase and use contraceptives and the right to abortion as aspects of privacy. The Court concluded that:
Bowers was not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today. It ought not to remain binding precedent. Bowers v. Hardwick should be and now is overruled.
Justice O’Connor, who had voted with the majority in Bowers, concurred in the judgment in Lawrence but said that she would not overrule Bowers. Instead, she would invalidate the Texas law because it applied only to same-sex couples. For her, the Georgia law in Bowers was different because it applied both to opposite-sex and same-sex couples. In some ways, O’Connor’s opinion was broader than the majority’s, for as Antonin Scalia noted in dissent, it explicitly cast doubt on whether laws limiting marriage to heterosexual couples could pass rational-basis scrutiny. O’Connor explicitly noted in her opinion that a law limiting marriage to heterosexual couples would pass the rational-basis test as long as it was designed to preserve traditional marriage, and was not simply based on the state’s dislike of homosexual persons.
However, O’Connor does not explain how a law limiting marriage to heterosexual couples could be designed to “preserve” (whatever that means) traditional marriage WITHOUT being motivated by the state’s dislike of homosexual persons. Furthermore, if a state provides nearly all the benefits of marriage to same-sex couples but calls it “civil union” or “domestic partnership”, its duplicity and prejudice become even more obvious by refusing to allow them to marry.
Justice Scalia, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Thomas, dissented. He said, with his characteristic hyperbole and hysteria, that the Court was not justified in overruling the precedent of Bowers v. Hardwick. Scalia’s dissenting opinion argued that states should be able to make the moral judgment that homosexual conduct is wrong and embody that judgment in criminal statutes. He also averred that State laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity are likewise sustainable only in light of Bowers‘ validation of laws based on moral choices.
However, Scalia’s assertion is NOT true — proscribing adult incest can be justified on medical grounds, since children produced by such activity are more likely to suffer genetic disorders, and proscribing bestiality can be justified on grounds of animal cruelty. Also, it logically follows from Scalia’s reasoning that states should be able to make the moral judgment that interracial marriage is wrong and embody that judgment in criminal statutes – except that the Supreme Court has previously ruled those laws unconstitutional as well.
With Lawrence, Scalia concluded, the Court “has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda.” While Scalia said that he has “nothing against homosexuals, or any other group, promoting their agenda through normal democratic means,” Scalia argued that the Court has an obligation to decide cases neutrally.
Of course, Scalia’s use of the term “agenda”, implying that the action against Texas is part of a wider, covert effort to legalize the activities he mentions above, debases homosexual persons, and his protestation that he has nothing against them only confirms his bias, or at least makes his self-professed neutrality suspect.
A scientific study entitled, “Multiple aspects of sexual orientation: Prevalence and sociodemographic correlates in a New Zealand national survey” recently appeared in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. The abstract was published online on 22 June 2010:
Sexual orientation consists of multiple components. This study investigated both sexual identity and same-sex sexual behavior. Data came from the New Zealand Mental Health Survey, a nationally representative community sample of New Zealanders aged 16 years or older, interviewed face-to-face (N = 12,992, 48% male). The response rate was 73.3%. Self-reported sexual identity was 98.0% heterosexual, 0.6% bisexual, 0.8% homosexual, 0.3% “Something else,” and 0.1% “Not sure.” Same-sex sexual behavior with a partner was more common: 3.2% reported same-sex sexual experience only and 1.9% reported both experience and a relationship. For analysis of childhood and lifecourse, five sexuality groups were investigated: homosexual, bisexual, and heterosexual divided into those with no same-sex sexual experience, experience only, and experience and relationship. The non-exclusively heterosexual groups were more likely to have experienced adverse events in childhood. Educational achievement and current equivalized household income did not differ systematically across the sexuality groups. Only 9.4% of the exclusively heterosexual lived alone, compared with 16.7% of bisexuals and 19.0% of homosexuals. Heterosexuals were more likely than bisexuals or homosexuals to have ever married or had biological children, with differences more marked for males than for females. Heterosexuals with no same-sex sexual experience were more likely to be currently married than the other two heterosexual groups. Restricting comparisons to heterosexual, bisexual, and homosexual identification ignores the diversity within heterosexuals. Differences between the bisexual and homosexual groups were small compared with the differences between these groups and the exclusively heterosexual group, except for sex (80.8% of bisexuals were female).
Of people who reported certain traumatic childhood events, including sexual assault, rape, violence to the child, and witnessing violence in the home, 15 percent were not heterosexual; of those without such experiences, only 5 percent were not heterosexual, suggesting that such experiences tripled the chance of later homosexual or bisexual identification. Although sexual or physical abuse in childhood was associated with adult homosexuality, other traumatic experiences, such as the sudden death of a loved one or serious childhood illness or accident, were only slightly associated with non-heterosexual identity or behavior.
The authors are J. Elisabeth Wells and Magnus A. McGee, who are both in the Department of Public Health and General Practice, University of Otago, New Zealand and Annette L. Beautrais, who is affiliated with both the Department of Psychological Medicine, University of Otago and the Department of Emergency Medicine, Yale University School of Medicine. The journal is peer-reviewed, so these authors are not hacks.
However, I find some aspects of the report disturbing because of their potential to mislead non-scientists (and even some scientists).
Wells, in commenting publicly about the study, revealed her assumption that homosexuals are made, not born. This is a major glaring flaw, since existing research has not produced conclusive findings indicating grounds for such an assumption. “People who either identify themselves as homosexual or bisexual, or have had a same-sex encounter or relationship, tend to come from more disturbed backgrounds,” she remarked. “You could say that if someone was sexually abused as a child, chooses to live as a homosexual and lives life well, then that is not a bad thing. But if they are living a homosexual life and regretting it, that is another matter.”
More importantly, I seriously doubt the credibility of this study because all of the ratios are way off. Of the sample who provided responses, ninety-eight percent identified as heterosexual, only 0.8 percent homosexual, and only 0.6 percent bisexual. Of those who identified as bisexual, 80 percent were women. This study is seriously skewed. The responses were all obtained in face-to-face interviews, which in sex studies are known to lead to under-reporting by sexual minorities. Self-reporting, even when obtained by questionnaire, is unreliable in sex studies. For example, homosexuals are probably less likely to identify as such because of homophobia in society. And are self-avowed homosexuals more — or less — likely to reveal that they were victims of child sex abuse than heterosexuals? They may be more comfortable talking about their sex lives and therefore more inclined to report childhood abuse. On the other hand, heterosexual males, less comfortable with discussing sex or seeing themselves as victims, may be far less likely to admit that they were sexually abused as children.
It is always important in scientific studies to distinguish between correlation and causation. This study reveals only a correlation between childhood abuse and later homosexual identification. It does not and, in fact, cannot demonstrate a causal connection — that child abuse causes homosexuality. To conclude so would be as illogical as saying that lynchings cause brown skin, or wearing skirts causes breast cancer. Perhaps homosexual identification causes child abuse — in other words, maybe homosexual children are more likely to be victims because of bigotry against them? Independent evidence — namely, the most comprehensive report ever on the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) students in the United States, The 2007 National School Climate Survey — indicates that this is likely. The survey of 6,209 middle and high school students conducted by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) found that nearly 9 out of 10 LGBT students (86.2 percent) experienced harassment at school in the past year, three-fifths (60.8 percent) felt unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation, and about a third (32.7 percent) skipped a day of school in the past month because of feeling unsafe. This survey, of course, did not address abuse in the home arising out of homosexual identification.
Homophobic bullying.
Tony Simpson, chairman of the national LGBT group Rainbow Wellington in New Zealand, said that the research should not be taken to mean that homosexuals are not born that way. “I have no doubt that the religious right will leap to the conclusion that this goes to show conclusively that homosexuals are made rather than born,” he said. As he predicted, the study was reported on LifeSiteNews.com, an antigay religious-right Web site.
However, the scientific and medical consensus is clear: homosexual orientation is not the result of choice. There is probably a combination of genetic and biological factors that cause people to become gay. Choice and willfulness have nothing to do with who is and is not homosexual (or heterosexual). Someone who falls in love with a member of their own sex has no more choice over their sexual orientation than someone who falls in love with a member of the opposite-sex. The only choice is whether to embrace and celebrate one’s orientation, or to be ashamed and hide.
Statue of David sculpted by Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475 - 1564 CE)
Click the image and find out.
U.S. military spending in 2011 was greater than the 14 countries with the next highest military spending COMBINED.
Since the days of the Viet Nam War, the U.S. Congress has tried to increase U.S. military spending by including Social Security and other trust funds in its federal budget. Politicians want to get their hands on money that should rightly be reserved only for Social Secutiry.
Income inequality in the U.S. is worse now than it was during the Great Depression, but politicians don't care.
Incarcerated Americans as Percent of U.S. Population, 1925-2003. Does not include prisoners held in the custody of local jails, inmates out to court, and those in transit. Less than five percent of the world’s people live in the United States, but we are home to about 25 percent of the world’s prisoners.
About This Site
This blog includes posts on wide-ranging topics of interest to me and/or my students, especially social justice, biology, education, and history. The content, views, and opinions in this blog are mine and in no way reflect those of my employer(s).
FAIR USE NOTICE
This site may contain material copyrighted by a third party, the use of which may not have been specifically authorized by that copyright owner. I am making such material available in order to advance an understanding of historical, political, religious, legal, economic, scientific, and environmental issues, especially as they affect human rights and social justice. I believe this constitutes a FAIR USE of any such copyrighted material as is allowed in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material within this site is made freely available without any charge, benefit, or profit to individuals who wish to use this collection of information for research and educational purposes only. Should you desire to utilize material copyrighted by a third party that is located here for any purposes beyond a good faith FAIR USE, you certainly must obtain permission from that copyright owner.
Dead Link?
Some of the links I've used eventually go to the Great Internet in the Sky. If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell me what link has expired. Thanks!
Comment Policy
I consider this weblog an extension of my living room in cyberspace. If you enter a comment that I wouldn't find acceptable in my living room, I'm likely to boot both you and your comment. Thus, I exercise prior restraint. I approve comments when I can get online.
[Diogenes of Sinope] lit a lamp in broad daylight and said, as he went about, "I am looking for a [virtuous] man." -- Teaching of Diogenes of Sinope (412–323 BCE) from Lives of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius
The unexamined life is not worth living. -- Socrates, from the Apology by Plato (429–347 BCE)
When truth is buried underground, it grows and it builds up so much force that the day it explodes it blasts everything with it. -- Émile Zola (1840–1902), French writer and political activist, from J'accuse! published in L'Aurore [The Dawn] (13 Jan 1898)
Economic "progress" is good only to the point of sufficiency, beyond that, it is evil, destructive, uneconomic. -- E. F. Schumacher (1911-1977), from "Economics in a Buddhist Country" (1955)
Christianity... is the most avowedly materialist of all the great religions… Its own most central saying is: "The Word was made flesh," where the last term was, no doubt, chosen because of its specially materialistic associations. By the very nature of its central doctrine Christianity is committed to a belief in the ultimate significance of the historical process, and in the reality of matter and its place in the divine process. -- William Temple (1881–1944), Archbishop of Canterbury, from Nature, Man and God (1934), p. 317
The beginnings of cosmic religious feeling already appear [at an early stage] of development, e.g., in many of the Psalms of David and in some of the Prophets. Buddhism, as we have learnt especially from the wonderful writings of Schopenhauer, contains a much stronger element of this. The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no Church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as Atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to one another. -- Albert Einstein (1879–1955), from The World as I See It (1934), p. 21.
There are many, you know, who think that this life journey through the world is not the first one we have made. Haven't you ever come across children who knew things that it was impossible for them to have learned? Have you ever gone to a place for the first time and felt sure that you had been there before? That's one of the reasons I do not travel much. -- Henry Ford (1863-1947), from interview by S.J. Woolf in New York Times Magazine dated 24 July 1938
A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish the delusion but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind. -- Albert Einstein (1879–1955), from a letter to Robert S. Marcus dated 12 Feb 1950 quoted in The New Quotable Einstein (2005), p. 206, by Alice Calaprice
[T]he world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it. --Albert Einstein (1879–1955), from his tribute to Pablos Casals (30 March 1953) quoted in Conversations with Casals (1957), by Josep Maria Corredor
There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. – Elie Wiesel, from his Nobel Lecture, 11 December 1986
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them. -- Frederick Douglass (1818–1895), in a speech delivered at Canandaigua, New York on 4 August 1857, quoted in Two Speeches by Frederick Douglass (1857), p. 22
To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory. -- Howard Zinn (1922-2010), from A Power Governments Cannot Suppress (2006)
Taxation is the price which we pay for civilization, for our social, civil and political institutions, for the security of life and property, and without which, we must resort to the law of force. -- 1852, Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Vermont, October Session, 1851, Appendix: Report of the Committee Appointed by the Governor to Take into Consideration the Financial Affairs of the State, Start Page 368, Quote Page 369, Printed by Chauncey Goodrich, Burlington, Vermont.
Once Chuang Chou dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know he was Chuang Chou. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Chuang Chou. But he didn't know if he was Chuang Chou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Chou. Between Chuang Chou and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things.
-- Chuang Tzu (369—298 BCE), from The Complete Works Of Chuang Tzu, chapter 2, translated by Burton Watson (1968)
Nothing is so insufferable to man as to be completely at rest, without passions, without business, without diversion, without study. He then feels his nothingness, his forlornness, his insufficiency, his dependence, his weakness, his emptiness. -- Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), from Pascal's Pensees (1669)
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. -- George Santayana (1863–1952), from The Life of Reason, Vol. 1, chapter 12 (1905–1906), Charles Scribner & Sons, p. 284
There is nothing which can better deserve [our] patronage, than the promotion of Science and Literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of publick happiness. -- George Washington, in his address to Congress on 8 January 1790
Establish & improve the law for educating the common people...The tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests & nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance. -- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to George Wythe dated 13 August 1786
Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially for the lower classes of people, are so extremely wise and useful that to a humane and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant. -- John Adams, from Thoughts on Government, April, 1776
It is ironic that the United States should have been founded by intellectuals; for throughout most of our political history, the intellectual has been for the most part either an outsider, a servant, or a scapegoat. -- Richard Hofstadter, from Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, pp. 145-146
Shake off all the fears & servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. -- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to his nephew, Peter Carr, dated 10 August 1787
If ever there can be a cause worthy to be upheld by all toil or sacrifice that the human heart can endure, it is the cause of Education. -- Horace Mann (1796–1859), from Thoughts Selected from the Writings of Horace Mann (1872), p. 7.
The all-important fact in the situation is this; any time the college professors of America get ready to take control of their own destinies, and of the intellectual life of their institutions, they can do it. There is not a college or university in the United States today which could resist the demands of its faculty a hundred percent organized and meaning business. -- Upton Sinclair (1878–1968), from The Goose-Step: A Study of American Education (1923), p. 458
I hope we shall... crush in it’s birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country. -- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to George Logan dated 12 November 1816
It is, no doubt, a very laudable effort, in modern teaching, to render as much as possible of what the young are required to learn, easy and interesting to them. But when this principle is pushed to the length of not requiring them to learn anything but what has been made easy and interesting, one of the chief objects of education is sacrificed. I rejoice in the decline of the old brutal and tyrannical system of teaching, which however did succeed in enforcing habits of application; but the new, as it seems to me, is training up a race of men who will be incapable of anything which is disagreeable to them....A pupil from whom nothing is ever demanded which he cannot do, never does all he can. -- John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), from the Autobiography of John Stuart Mill (1924), p. 37
How comes it that a cripple does not offend us, but that a fool does? Because a cripple recognizes that we walk straight, whereas a fool declares that it is we who are silly; if it were not so, we should feel pity and not anger. -- Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), from Pascal's Pensees (1669)
The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there's no place for it in the endeavor of science. -- Carl Sagan, from the Cosmos television series
The young specialist in English Lit ... lectured me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the Universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern "knowledge" is that it is wrong. ... My answer to him was, "... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." -- Isaac Asimov, The Relativity of Wrong, Kensington Books, New York, 1996, p 226.
A time is coming when those who are in the mad rush today of multiplying their wants, vainly thinking that they add to the real substance, real knowledge of the world, will retrace their steps and say what have we done? Civilizations have come and gone and in spite of all our vaunted progress, I am tempted to ask again and again: To what purpose? -- Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948) from D.G. Tendulkar, Mahatma: Life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi Vol. 2, 2nd edn.(1960), p. 29.
Can we reconcile the idea that copying errors are an essential prerequisite for evolution to occur, with the statement that natural selection favours high copying-fidelity? -- Richard Dawkins, from The Selfish Gene (2006) Oxford Univ. Press, p. 17
Let me try to make crystal clear what is established beyond reasonable doubt, and what needs further study, about evolution. Evolution as a process that has always gone on in the history of the earth can be doubted only by those who are ignorant of the evidence or are resistant to evidence, owing to emotional blocks or to plain bigotry. By contrast, the mechanisms that bring evolution about certainly need study and clarification. There are no alternatives to evolution as history that can withstand critical examination. Yet we are constantly learning new and important facts about evolutionary mechanisms. -- Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900–1975), from "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution", The American Biology Teacher Vol.35, No. 3 (March 1973), pp. 125-129
... there are many reasons why you might not understand [an explanation of a scientific theory] ... Finally, there is this possibility: after I tell you something, you just can't believe it. You can't accept it. You don't like it. A little screen comes down and you don't listen anymore. I'm going to describe to you how Nature is - and if you don't like it, that's going to get in the way of your understanding it. It's a problem that [scientists] have learned to deal with: They've learned to realize that whether they like a theory or they don't like a theory is not the essential question. Rather, it is whether or not the theory gives predictions that agree with experiment. It is not a question of whether a theory is philosophically delightful, or easy to understand, or perfectly reasonable from the point of view of common sense. [A scientific theory] describes Nature as absurd from the point of view of common sense. And it agrees fully with experiment. So I hope you can accept Nature as She is - absurd. --Richard P. Feynman (1918–1988), from QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter (Feynman 1985), pp. 9-10
Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual. The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats. Not all things are black nor all things white. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories. Only the human mind invents categories and tries to force facts into separated pigeon-holes. The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects. The sooner we learn this concerning human sexual behavior, the sooner we shall reach a sound understanding of the realities of sex. -- Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell R. Pomeroy, and Clyde E. Martin. Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. (Philadelphia, Pa: W.B. Saunders, 1948) pp. 610-666.
In a republican nation, whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion, and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance. --Thomas Jefferson in a letter to David Harding, from Monticello, 20 April 1824; found in H.A. Washington, ed., The Writings of
Thomas Jefferson (New York : H.W. Derby, 1861).
“I consider it important, indeed urgently necessary for intellectual workers to get together, both to protect their own economic status and also, generally speaking, to secure their influence in the political field.”
-- Albert Einstein, charter member AFT Local 552 Princeton University, comments in 1938 on why he joined the union. In addition, he had also joined the American Association of University Professors in 1935.
Professor Olsen @ Large 
You must be logged in to post a comment.