December 31, 2008

Is Homewrecking a New Aggie Tradition?

Good question. The Aggie Insurgency (”Aggie,” FYI, is the nickname for any sports team, or team member, or, I’d guess, sports fan, at Texas A&M University) illustrates something I’ve been thinking about for some time: that the best exposés of anti-equality bigots are done by the bigots’ own homies. (I know that after our Prop 8 database is launched, in alpha, and I go to work on filling in details, I’ll naturally be drawn first to the bigots in my own backyard — such as my hometown’s ex-mayor, whom I took on directly at a city council meeting, who could not be swayed to acknowledge a Gay Pride Day requested by my old high school… despite being reminded that institutionalized homophobia led to the well-known and bloody suicide of Stuart Matis right on the steps of the ex-mayor’s own Mormon temple. But I digress, as usual.)

Aggies Do Not Lie, Cheat nor Steal, but Breaking Up Other Aggies’ Marriages is Apparently an Honorable Endeavor: Prop. 8’s Long and Intrusive Reach to Texas A&M, Part 1

Jeffery Puryear and Clair Nixon form the Aggie archetype. Both earned degrees from Texas A&M and both returned to their alma mater to contribute to its academic mission. Each is devoted to his family, work, and church, owns his own house and pays taxes—conforming in every way to the image that Texas A&M markets regarding the solid citizenship and family devotion practiced by Aggies worldwide. …

Although breaking up another Aggie’s marriage is definitely not an activity encouraged by the Aggie Code of Honor, it’s precisely what Puryear and Nixon—and arguably many conservative Aggies—would like to do with regard to these two one-time classmates and dedicated Texas A&M employees.

Is Homewrecking a New Aggie Tradition?

Jeffery Puryear (B.S. ’78) will earn slightly more than twenty thousand dollars this year as a part-time laboratory associate for the University’s Department of Ecosystem Science and Management. … Despite [financial hardships], Puryear recently scraped together a one thousand dollar donation to Yes on 8, a political action committee opposed to gay marriage in California.

Clair Nixon (M.S. ’77, Ph.D. ’80), a professor of accounting in the Mays Business School, stands on the other side of Texas A&M’s salary structure. However, he also faces his share of financial challenges. As a temple recommend-holding member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Nixon tithes ten percent of both his annual $157,137 salary and any ancillary income he earns through private consulting. A devout Mormon who has served as bishop of a local “ward” (congregation), Nixon takes seriously the Old Testament admonition to multiply and replenish the earth. He and his wife Laura have ten children.

Yet, when Mormon “prophet, seer, and revelator,” Thomas S. Monson, issued a mobilization order against the California Supreme Court’s legalization of gay marriage last spring, Dr. Nixon managed to find three thousand dollars to fund the same PAC that successfully urged 52% of Californians to deny gay marriage rights in the Nov. 4 election. …

The New Texas Philanthropy: Keep Gay Californians from Marrying

Altogether, conservative Texans donated $1.35 million to keep marriage in California between “one man and one woman,” included Mormon Alan Stock, owner of some 350 Cinemark theaters.* The Plano-based movie magnate gave $10,000 to Yes on 8, despite the fact that his cinemas are currently profiting from showing Milk, in which Sean Penn plays gay rights hero Harvey Milk, San Francisco’s legendary city supervisor and “Mayor of Castro Street,” who became America’s first openly gay elected official in the 1970s. …

More at the link, and worth the read — with Part 2 to come: “Two gay Aggies recount the joy of their California wedding and their disappointment at the passage of Proposition 8.”

* More on Alan Stock and Cinemark:

SF MovieBears: Boycott Century, CinéArts, Tinseltown Theater Chains
November 13, 2008

No “Milk” For Cinemark: “If You Have A Choice, Go Somewhere Else”
November 17, 2008

Meet Cinemark’s Token Auntie Tom, Bob Shimmin
November 23, 2008

Posted by: Sapphocrat

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