We’ve lost another one of our own to violence. Whether this was a hate crime, or something else, we’ll have to wait and see.
In any case, it’s our loss.
But first, a big thumbs down to the Palm Beach Post — not for its ignorance of plural versus possessive (”investigator’s”), but for using the highly offensive, Bush-era, right-wing slur, “homosexual activist.”
WEST PALM BEACH — Police identified a body found Wednesday morning at 113 Ellamar Road as that of high-end interior designer Scott E. Graham.
Graham’s family identified him through photos taken at the medical examiner’s office.
Investigator’s [sic] wouldn’t say what killed Graham, a successful businessman and homosexual activist. But they were treating his death as a homicide.
Lt. Chuck Reed said the body had “obvious signs of foul play.” …
Reed also said police found Graham’s garage door half-open and front door unlocked when they arrived at about 11 a.m. Wednesday. …
California teen fatally shotover sexual orientation and gender expression
WASHINGTON–A coalition of GLBT organizations led by GLSEN, including the Human Rights Campaign, will host a candlelight vigil on Monday, February 25th in memory of Lawrence King, the California teenager who was fatally shot February 12th by a classmate. The vigil’s purpose is to call for an end to violence and harassment directed at gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in schools. Attendees are asked to gather at 6:00 p.m. in Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C. The program will begin promptly at 6:30 p.m.
WHAT: Candlelight vigil in memory of Lawrence King
WHO: Cosponsored by: GLSEN, Human Rights Campaign, SMYAL, Allied in Pride at George Washington University, GLSEN Northern Virginia, DC Trans Coalition, Alliance for Justice, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Mayor’s Office of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Affairs, Gender PAC, GLSEN Baltimore, American University Queers And Allies, Advocates For Youth, DC’s Youth Pride Alliance, ACLU, ACLU-National Capitol Area, National Center for Transgender Equality, Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance, DC Coalition of Black Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Men and Women.
WHEN: Gather at 6:00 p.m. on Monday, February 25.
Program will begin promptly at 6:30 p.m.
WHERE: Dupont Circle, Washington, D.C.
The Human Rights Campaign is America’s largest civil rights organization working to achieve gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender equality. By inspiring and engaging all Americans, HRC strives to end discrimination against GLBT citizens and realize a nation that achieves fundamental fairness and equality for all.
GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, is the leading national education organization focused on ensuring safe schools for ALL students. Established nationally in 1995, GLSEN envisions a world in which every child learns to respect and accept all people, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression. For more information on GLSEN’s educational resources, public policy and public education work, student organizing programs, research or development initiatives, visit www.glsen.org.
Human Rights Campaign Mourns the Death of Rev. James Orange
“The GLBT community has lost a great ally,” said HRC President Joe Solmonese
WASHINGTON—Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, offered the following statement today on the death of the Rev. Dr. James Orange. Rev. Orange was a prominent civil rights leader who fought to ensure that the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community remained on the forefront of the fight for equality.
Solmonese said: “The GLBT community has lost a great ally and leader. From the time he was a young man, Rev. Orange demonstrated the passion and dedication to a vision of a nation free from hate. He continued that work until his death, and the GLBT community will be forever grateful for his efforts.”
Rev. Orange was active in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference through the late 1970s, when he became a union organizer. Throughout his life, he served at numerous national and international labor and civil rights organizations, including the AFL-CIO and the People’s Agenda for Voter Empowerment. He also supported the Bayard Rustin Breakfast, a GLBT component of the events surrounding Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
The Human Rights Campaign is America’s largest civil rights organization working to achieve gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender equality. By inspiring and engaging all Americans, HRC strives to end discrimination against GLBT citizens and realize a nation that achieves fundamental fairness and equality for all.
Gordon B. Hinckley, the president and prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who led Mormonism through a period of global expansion, died Sunday at his apartment in Salt Lake City. He was 97.
. . .
Mr. Hinckley spent 46 years in the church’s top leadership ranks, nearly 13 of those as its 15th president, and became the its oldest president.
. . .
To Latter-day Saints, the church president is not merely a temporal figure but also an inspired prophet who interprets church teachings for the present day. In his first year in office, Mr. Hinckley issued a proclamation on the family. Besides reaffirming Mormon belief that families live on together after death, it condemned domestic abuse. It also said that gender was a characteristic determined even before birth, and that procreation was reserved only for a man and a woman as husband and wife.
Under Mr. Hinckley, the church endorsed a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman and financed political campaigns to support legislation that would ban same-sex marriage in California and Hawaii. …
In what will likely be remembered as one of the most offensive Christmas devotionals ever, LDS President Gordon B. Hinckley used part of his 2003 Christmas address to condemn homosexuals and to remind his audience that “the traditional family is under attack.”
“Sodom and Gomorrah, and the sinful practices observed therein, became examples of that which was evil and abominable in the sight of God,” said the nonagenarian leader. “It was Jehovah, speaking through his prophets, who decried evil and pleaded for righteousness. When there was no repentance, it was his withering hand that destroyed them.”
Rather than speak ill of the dead, we’ll just let the dead speak for himself:
158 Years of Racism in the Mormon Church = Merely “Little Flicks of History”
Mike Wallace: From 1830 to 1978, blacks could not become priests in the Mormon Church. Right?
Gordon B. Hinckley: That’s correct.
Wallace: Why?
Hinckley: Because the leaders of the church at that time interpreted that doctrine that way.
Wallace: Church policy had it that blacks… uh… had the mark of Cain. Brigham Young said, “Cain slew his brother, and the Lord put a mark upon him, which is the flat nose and black skin.”
Hinckley: It’s behind us. Look, that’s behind us. Don’t worry about those little flicks of history.
Why Did It Take So Long to Overcome Racism in the Mormon Church?
I like that. “I don’t know.” That’s nice. “Mr. Hand, will I pass this class?” “Gee, Mr. Spicoli, I don’t know.” You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to leave your words right up here for all my classes to enjoy, giving you full credit of course, Mr. Spicoli.
Steve, a devout Mormon, feared God would not accept him if he were gay. The couple met with their bishop who urged Steve to rid himself of his homosexuality by going through conversion therapy, a controversial program intended to eliminate homosexual feelings. Steve felt he had no choice.
“I wanted to be accepted by God,” he said. “I wanted to be loved. That was everything to me. And so I saw no other route.”
So every week Steve joined other Mormon men for group therapy. Most conversion therapy involves different forms of behavior modification, attempting to make people straight by having them act straight. Some programs even teach men about stereotypically “male” activities, such as talking about football and changing motor oil. Steve did not find that his experience with conversion therapy was at all therapeutic.
“I would definitely call it brainwashing,” he said. “It was an exercise in humiliation.”
Channeling Groucho: Whatever It Is, If It’s Gay, I’m Against It.
Larry King: …As the mores have changed— for example, I know the church is opposed to gay marriage. Do you have an alternative — do you like the idea of civil unions?
Gordon B. Hinckley: Well… We are not anti-gay. We are pro-family, let me put it that way. And we… love these people and try to work with them and help them. We know they have a problem. We want to help them solve that problem.
King: The problem they caused or they were born with?
Hinckley: I don’t know. I’m not an expert on these things. I don’t preted to be an expert on these things. The fact is, they have a problem.
King: Do you favor some sort of state union?
Hinckley: Well, we want to be very careful about that… because that— whatever may lead to gay marriage, we’re not in favor of. We…Many people don’t get married. Goodness sakes alive, you know that. We have many people who have to discipline themselves. If they transgress, they become subject to the discipline of the church. But we try in every way that we know how to help them, to assist them, to bless their lives.
And How, Exactly, Does the Mormon Church “Help” Gay People Get Over Their “Problem”?
This is how:
And then there’s Stuart Matis. And countless other Stuarts.
That’s enough, we think, to give the heretofore-uninformed an introduction to Gordon B. Hinckley.
Deborah Kerr, who shared one of Hollywood’s most famous kisses and made her mark with such roles as the correct widow in “The King and I” and the unhappy officer’s wife in “From Here to Eternity,” has died. She was 86.
Kerr, who suffered from Parkinson’s disease, died Tuesday in Suffolk in eastern England, her agent, Anne Hutton, said Thursday.
For many she will be remembered best for her kiss with Burt Lancaster as waves crashed over them on a Hawaiian beach in the wartime drama “From Here to Eternity.”
. . .
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences nominated Kerr a six times for best actress, but never gave her an Academy Award until it presented an honorary Oscar in 1994 for her distinguished career as an “artist of impeccable grace and beauty, a dedicated actress whose motion picture career has always stood for perfection, discipline and elegance.”
She had the reputation of a “no problem” actress.
“I have never had a fight with any director, good or bad,” she said toward the end of her career. “There is a way around everything if you are smart enough.”
. . .
She played virtually every part imaginable from murderer to princess to a Roman Christian slave to a nun.
In “The King and I,” with her singing voice dubbed by Marni Nixon, she was Anna Leonowens, who takes her son to Siam so that she can teach the children of the king, played by Yul Brynner.
Her best-actress nominations were for “Edward, My Son” (1949), “From Here to Eternity” (1953), “The King and I” (1956), “Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison” (1957), “Separate Tables” (1958), and “The Sundowners” (1960).
Among her other movies is “An Affair to Remember” with Cary Grant. …
I’m in serious fan mourning here. I absolutely adore Deborah Kerr. She was one of the most… well, I can’t put it any better than “an “artist of impeccable grace and beauty, a dedicated actress whose motion picture career has always stood for perfection, discipline and elegance.” ‘Though I can add: She also possessed the most impeccable diction of any English speaker, ever.
One film the CNN obit doesn’t mention, which ranks right up there with From Here to Eternity, Heaven Knows Mr. Allison, The Innocents, and The King and I, is The Chalk Garden, a quiet but riveting little drama about secrets and lies, with Ms. Kerr’s cool demeanor masking something intense just beneath the surface, and a teenage Hayley Mills in an exceptionally fine performance. The cast is rounded out by Sir John Mills (Hayley’s dad) and Dame Edith Evans; all four are such brilliant actors, it’s nearly impossible to focus on just one. (And talk about a four-way lesson in perfect English diction!)
(Strangely, I’m the only person I know who’s never been wowed by An Affair to Remember — even though I love Cary Grant, too.)
Another film the article doesn’t mention: Ms. Kerr took her Broadway performance in Tea and Sympathy to the screen. While this isn’t among her top films, it is required “gay viewing”; John Kerr (no relation) is a student who is “different” (is he gay, or isn’t he?), and Ms. Kerr is the faculty wife who senses that he’s not at all like the other boys. Well worth watching at least once; I think a few scenes willl make you men cringe with recognition (such as the scene in which Mr. Kerr recruits a dorm mate to teach him how to walk like a “real” man).
One more note: You know the Columbia Pictures logo lady? I’ve always thought she looked like Deborah Kerr in costume as the Statue of Liberty.
Also of note today (although I bet I’m the only one who knows who she was): Teresa Brewer died overnight, too. She was a singer — a cute, very perky little singer, quite popular in the 1950s, and best known for “‘Til I Waltz Again with You” and “Music, Music, Music” (you know: “Put another nickel in / In the nickelodeon / All I want is lovin’ you / And music, music, music”). I liked her a lot.
I can’t say I was a big fan of Joey Bishop — but then, save for the inimitable style of Frank Sinatra, I can’t say there was much I liked about the whole boozin’-and-broad-chasin’ Rat Pack mentality. But Bishop, the third in today’s three celebrity deaths, certainly deserves a mention in… well, in passing.
Here’s one we missed — and it’s no wonder: We can’t find even one other story on the Web about it. Kudos to MassResistance Watch for keeping an eye on missives from the nasty MassResistance:
Massresistance posted this past week that J. Edward Pawlick, the guy who started the virulent anti-gay MassNews passed away this past weekend, however no obituary was published in either the Boston Globe or the Boston Herald.
I have a lot to thank Pawlick for. It was because of him that I became involved in the Equal Marriage movement. After I started reading MassNews I couldn’t wait to debunk the garbage he was posting and I started speaking out.
Every year he would have predictions about Massachusetts and none of them would come true. (I bet the small plane pilots will miss him too since he paid for a lot of anti-gay airplane banners.)
In the past few years I’ve written sparingly about Pawlick mostly because it was clear the poor guy was going off the deep end. To give you a little insight into Pawlick’s mind here are his predictions for 2004…
Oh, yes, do click the link for Pawlick’s Criswell-like predictions (and for a handful of reader comments).
to the Palm Beach Post — not for its ignorance of plural versus possessive (”investigator’s”), but for using the highly offensive, Bush-era, right-wing slur, “homosexual activist.”
