From a photo by Mark Peterson ca 1983 Lambda Minneapolis.
Oil on canvas 16" x 20"
Monday, April 11, 2011
Monday, January 24, 2011
Lambda show: Happy, Joyous & Free
Sat January 22, 2011 at 9:30 pm. Songs, poetry, art on display. Audience ca 200.
My work was very well received. And I found some of the songs superb, even over the top!
Jonathan Olalo and Jennifer Hoppas-Hyde
That's Jennifer Hoppas-Hyde over a Miro inspired background.
That's Jonathan Olalo in burnt sienna
Portraits by Tim Campbell shown Jan 22, 2011
Portrait of Brian Blackard and his son William ca Christmas 2009.
Portrait of Matt Stark, Emeritus Ex Dir ACLU Minnesota from a foto taken 1980s(?)
First Gay Marriage: Baker and McConnell
Pulse Twin Cities April 8, 2004
How gay marriage got divorced from gay rights
by Tim Campbell
The early years
Jack Baker and Mike McConnell applied for a marriage license on May 18, 1970 in Minneapolis. That is the first known gay marriage license application. The Clerk of District Court for Hennepin County summarily refused to issue them a license. Subsequently, Baker and McConnell went to Blue Earth County in southwestern Minnesota and got a license on August 16, 1971, from a different clerk. They were married on September 3 using that license. The Rev. Roger Lynn, a United Methodist minister, performed the ceremony.
That gay marriage required a little legal detour. In early August 1971, Baker changed his name to Pat Lyn McConnell. Consequently, the names on the license are Pat Lyn McConnell (aka Jack Baker) and J. Michael McConnell. They wanted the same last name in case they acquired children.
Baker was in law school at the University of Minnesota. McConnell had just been nominated as an instructor and chief cataloguer at the university library on the St. Paul Campus. In the wake of monumental news coverage over this controversy, the students at the University of Minnesota elected Baker student body president. The University Board of Regents, on the other hand, reacted by withdrawing McConnell’s nomination as a library head and university instructor.
During this media onslaught, Jack and Mike received four large boxes of mail from all over the world. I have met people who saw articles about the event in newspapers in both Paris and Athens. Most of the mail was supportive.
Moreover, Jack’s victory at the student polls was probably the first instance of a vote by the general, non-gay public, on attitudes towards gays. That vote made one thing clear: the time had come for gay rights.
The Baker-McConnell dispute also produced a wave of copycat gay marriages throughout the country. I was a graduate student at the University of Texas in Austin at the time. There, I was invited to at least five gay marriages. One drag queen even asked me to marry her. Worse yet, I accepted. Fortunately, we both forgot about it when we sobered up.
Tell the whole truth. The bulk of that rash of gay weddings involved drag queens with butch-looking lovers. They were, however, performed by ministers. Most of them did not last longer than a good underarm deodorant. None of them, to my knowledge, involved real marriage licenses.
Gay marriage was not exactly a brand new idea, even back in 1970. Jean Genet described one in a novel in 1943 and John Rechy did so in 1963.There were big differences, however. The Baker-McConnell wedding involved same-sex appearance. It was intended to produce social stability like a straight marriage. By contrast, the Genet and Rechy gay weddings were staged to look like opposite-sex marriages and designed to scoff at society. They were not intended to produce social stability.
Baker and McConnell are still together to this day. In fact, they have been together a total of 38 years now, 34 of those married. Sure beats Britney Spears’ marriage record! Also beats the records of Zaza Gabor and Liz Taylor.
Decades of lawsuits
Baker and McConnell ended up in decades of legal haggling because of their marriage. The Minnesota Supreme Court upheld the clerk who denied them a license. Its decision cited the Book of Genesis. Jack and Mike appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. There, Warren Burger and cohorts dismissed their appeal for lack of a “substantial federal question.” How would they rule today? Who knows. President George W. Bush certainly wants to turn gay marriage into a substantial federal issue now.
Baker, now a lawyer, argues their marriage was and remains valid since there were no laws or court decisions prohibiting same sex marriages on September 3, 1971. He notes: “Every court recognizes this basic principle: that which is not prohibited is permitted.” The Minnesota marriage statute actually has a section listing non-valid marriages. Same-sex marriage is not on that list. Baker argues their marriage is in fact more solid legally than the recent ones in San Francisco. Those marriages were performed after laws against same-sex marriages were passed.
Jack and Mike Had a Dream
Legal considerations aside, Jack and Mike’s genius was to perceive long before most, that the right to marry is an essential part of gay civil rights. Their point is: the fundamental right for gays and lesbians is the right to fall in love with and marry the person of one’s choice. Without that right, there is no such thing as gay rights. “It’s nonsense,” said Jack long ago, “to find two people (both competent to marry) incompetent because they chose each other.”
Many gay marriage activists say the right to choose your own spouse is probably the most characteristic social right of modern western democracies. Such a right was unheard of in ancient China. It’s a right rarely granted in the “oily-garchies” of the Middle East. Many contemporary Jews are still loath to marry outside their religion. Back in the `50s, Catholic parents hoped that none of their kids would marry outside their Church. Unthinkable was marrying outside one’s own race. But times changed. Times change because young people dare to love outside the box. They always have. They probably always will.
Early Legislation
While the news of the fight over gay marriage and McConnell’s job denial were fresh in the minds of the public and elected officials, Baker went to the Minneapolis City Council looking to include gays and lesbians in the city’s civil rights ordinance. Council Member Ed Felien, now editor of Pulse of the Twin Cities, took on the task and authored such a bill. It was passed unanimously in 1974 amid virtual silence on the council. Felien said recently, “They (the city council members) were afraid to say anything against it.” This put Minneapolis on the map as the leader in gay civil rights legislation.
Enter the Democrats
Minneapolis and Saint Paul also beat the rest of the country to the idea of separating the right to marry from the rest of gay civil rights. This was in direct response to Baker and McConnell’s marriage.
The anti-marriage contingent included, among others, Alan Spear, a gay history professor who represented the University of Minnesota neighborhood as a State Senator. Spear tiptoed out of the closet to a small circle of friends once Baker got elected student body president. He proposed to author a gay rights bill on the state level. Senate Majority Leader Nick Coleman Sr. agreed to help. Spear and Coleman were both career Democrats.
Coleman’s motive was that he was married to Debbie Howell who had a gay brother. I suspect Howell’s brother came out to them after Jack got elected student body president. That made me and hundreds of others come out. Howell herself was a wig at Minnesota’s main daily newspapers. In 1975, she wrote Alan Spear’s going public interview for the Minneapolis Star newspaper. Minnesota being a small pond, this trio constituted a power block.
Sex, Drugs and Secret Parties
(I mean fundraisers)
Spear and Coleman hired a part time lobbyist named Steve Endean to shepherd these gay rights bill through the state senate. There were a number of hearings and amendments before all the ordinances finally settled in. Endean was a piece of work. He was in his early 20’s, a college dropout, and stood only about 5 feet, 6 or 7 inches tall in a chubby frame. Everybody called him “Weebee.”
By day Endean lobbied at city halls and on Capitol Hill. By night he checked coats at popular gay discos—first at Sutton’s which has since folded, then at the Gay `90s which is still the biggest gay bar between Chicago and San Francisco. After bars closed, “Weebee” almost literally lived in the local gay bathhouses.
With all this gay contact, Endean got to know both the important closet gays and the hottest young gay guys. He was great at organizing private parties, hand picking guests from both groups. Some of the more outrageous called it “pimping.” Those parties rivaled the ones in Larry Kramer’s novel, “Faggots: Drugs, sex and rock and roll.” This was how gay money began to flow into the hands of Democrats back then.
Drag queens and the Baker-McConnell crowd were not invited to these secret, late-hour fundraiser parties. Baker and McConnell didn’t notice or mind being left out of the parties, but the drag queens did. Eventually, they went to the State Legislature en masse, in drag, to demand inclusion in the gay rights bill. What’s more, the drag queens won.
Gay marriage, on the other hand, was never included in Minnesota’s gay rights legislation. Sadly, the Spear-Coleman-Howell laws were carefully crafted to exclude the “crazies.” That meant the drag queens and radicals like Baker and McConnell who wanted gay marriage. The laws also left the University of Minnesota exempt from all these pieces of legislation.
Enter Half-Measures
The civil rights laws in Minnesota, scripted in the 1960s, had four parts: employment, housing, public services and public accommodations. The Spear-Coleman-Howell laws added gays and lesbians to those sections of said laws that dealt with employment and housing only. They did not add them to the sections of the same laws that dealt with public services and public accommodations.
Previously, public services and public accommodations referred to places like hotels, restaurants and barbershops. Nobody could decide exactly where marriage licensing fell. Was it a public service? Was it a public accommodation? They didn’t know.
Nonetheless, they were sure they weren’t going to push gay marriage and drag queens on anybody. Whenever the proposed legislation had a setback, Spear and Endean would cuss the “crazies,” that is, Baker-McConnell and the drag queens. They hardly worried about the wild parties. Note, however, that everybody agreed, even back then, that full gay rights would include gay marriage.
The Spear-Coleman-Howell triumvirate got gay rights laws introduced at the state capitol pretty soon after the Minneapolis and St. Paul ordinances were passed. Still, it just sat there. It never got out of committee and never came up for a vote in the whole house and senate. A public discussion of gay rights was not happening. Spear excused himself saying: “I don’t want to get some legislators in the habit of voting against gay rights.” Unfortunately, no one had to fight very hard for the bill either. The State of Minnesota did not pass a gay rights law until much later: 1993. Rural Minnesota dragged its feet.
Half-measures exported to Washington, D.C.
In about 1976, Spear and friends let the Minnesota legislation lie fallow and sent Endean off to Washington, D.C., to work with the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. He eventually founded the Human Rights Campaign. He figured even closeted gays would write checks to a group so broadly named. “Weebee” eventually died from AIDS but the groups he influenced have been resisting gay marriage ever since the `70s. They consider their compromise wise like Solomon. Democrats around the country have adopted the same “pragmatic” approach.
For example, Barney Frank, the openly gay Democrat from Massachusetts who sits in the U.S. House of Representatives, is currently notorious for his criticism of the gay marriages now occurring in San Francisco. Ironically, his constituents keep electing him even though he rented an apartment downstairs of his own dwelling to a well-known gay prostitute. Naturally, Frank claims he didn’t know. Clinton’s not the only dumb Democrat.
Supporters of gay marriage, on the other hand, consider this opposition a fungus growing under the nails of Democrats. While this may make easier work for politicians, gay marriage supporters insist it’s not very practical for their goals.
Alan Spear has now retired from the Minnesota Senate and lives with his longtime partner, Jun, a Japanese immigrant, in central Minneapolis. He reports that he and Jun have not yet gone anywhere to get a license or a civil union. “We’ve thought about it, but done nothing. Just laziness, I guess,” he said recently. Then, he added, “We don’t really need it.” At least Spear has been consistent!
Epilogue
The half-measure maneuvers of these Democrats did not reap many benefits for gays and lesbians in Minnesota. In the intervening years, practically no gays and lesbians have filed complaints with any civil rights departments anywhere. Someone in a position analogous to Mike McConnell, can’t even file a complaint under the ordinance because the University of Minnesota is exempt.
The bottom line is: More gays and lesbians have applied for marriage licenses this year in San Francisco in one week than have filed discrimination complaints throughout the country since 1975. That suggests lots of gays think the right to marry is a very important right. One might call it a “substantial federal issue.”
[E-mail timcampbellxyx@yahoo.com.]
[Baker-McConnell web site: www.may-18-1970.org]
--------------------------------------------------
This announcement was printed from Pulse of the Twin Cities
http://pulsetc.com
The URL for this announcement is:
http://pulsetc.com/article.php?sid=1015
posted by Tim Campbell at 12:44 PM 0 comments
How gay marriage got divorced from gay rights
by Tim Campbell
The early years
Jack Baker and Mike McConnell applied for a marriage license on May 18, 1970 in Minneapolis. That is the first known gay marriage license application. The Clerk of District Court for Hennepin County summarily refused to issue them a license. Subsequently, Baker and McConnell went to Blue Earth County in southwestern Minnesota and got a license on August 16, 1971, from a different clerk. They were married on September 3 using that license. The Rev. Roger Lynn, a United Methodist minister, performed the ceremony.
That gay marriage required a little legal detour. In early August 1971, Baker changed his name to Pat Lyn McConnell. Consequently, the names on the license are Pat Lyn McConnell (aka Jack Baker) and J. Michael McConnell. They wanted the same last name in case they acquired children.
Baker was in law school at the University of Minnesota. McConnell had just been nominated as an instructor and chief cataloguer at the university library on the St. Paul Campus. In the wake of monumental news coverage over this controversy, the students at the University of Minnesota elected Baker student body president. The University Board of Regents, on the other hand, reacted by withdrawing McConnell’s nomination as a library head and university instructor.
During this media onslaught, Jack and Mike received four large boxes of mail from all over the world. I have met people who saw articles about the event in newspapers in both Paris and Athens. Most of the mail was supportive.
Moreover, Jack’s victory at the student polls was probably the first instance of a vote by the general, non-gay public, on attitudes towards gays. That vote made one thing clear: the time had come for gay rights.
The Baker-McConnell dispute also produced a wave of copycat gay marriages throughout the country. I was a graduate student at the University of Texas in Austin at the time. There, I was invited to at least five gay marriages. One drag queen even asked me to marry her. Worse yet, I accepted. Fortunately, we both forgot about it when we sobered up.
Tell the whole truth. The bulk of that rash of gay weddings involved drag queens with butch-looking lovers. They were, however, performed by ministers. Most of them did not last longer than a good underarm deodorant. None of them, to my knowledge, involved real marriage licenses.
Gay marriage was not exactly a brand new idea, even back in 1970. Jean Genet described one in a novel in 1943 and John Rechy did so in 1963.There were big differences, however. The Baker-McConnell wedding involved same-sex appearance. It was intended to produce social stability like a straight marriage. By contrast, the Genet and Rechy gay weddings were staged to look like opposite-sex marriages and designed to scoff at society. They were not intended to produce social stability.
Baker and McConnell are still together to this day. In fact, they have been together a total of 38 years now, 34 of those married. Sure beats Britney Spears’ marriage record! Also beats the records of Zaza Gabor and Liz Taylor.
Decades of lawsuits
Baker and McConnell ended up in decades of legal haggling because of their marriage. The Minnesota Supreme Court upheld the clerk who denied them a license. Its decision cited the Book of Genesis. Jack and Mike appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. There, Warren Burger and cohorts dismissed their appeal for lack of a “substantial federal question.” How would they rule today? Who knows. President George W. Bush certainly wants to turn gay marriage into a substantial federal issue now.
Baker, now a lawyer, argues their marriage was and remains valid since there were no laws or court decisions prohibiting same sex marriages on September 3, 1971. He notes: “Every court recognizes this basic principle: that which is not prohibited is permitted.” The Minnesota marriage statute actually has a section listing non-valid marriages. Same-sex marriage is not on that list. Baker argues their marriage is in fact more solid legally than the recent ones in San Francisco. Those marriages were performed after laws against same-sex marriages were passed.
Jack and Mike Had a Dream
Legal considerations aside, Jack and Mike’s genius was to perceive long before most, that the right to marry is an essential part of gay civil rights. Their point is: the fundamental right for gays and lesbians is the right to fall in love with and marry the person of one’s choice. Without that right, there is no such thing as gay rights. “It’s nonsense,” said Jack long ago, “to find two people (both competent to marry) incompetent because they chose each other.”
Many gay marriage activists say the right to choose your own spouse is probably the most characteristic social right of modern western democracies. Such a right was unheard of in ancient China. It’s a right rarely granted in the “oily-garchies” of the Middle East. Many contemporary Jews are still loath to marry outside their religion. Back in the `50s, Catholic parents hoped that none of their kids would marry outside their Church. Unthinkable was marrying outside one’s own race. But times changed. Times change because young people dare to love outside the box. They always have. They probably always will.
Early Legislation
While the news of the fight over gay marriage and McConnell’s job denial were fresh in the minds of the public and elected officials, Baker went to the Minneapolis City Council looking to include gays and lesbians in the city’s civil rights ordinance. Council Member Ed Felien, now editor of Pulse of the Twin Cities, took on the task and authored such a bill. It was passed unanimously in 1974 amid virtual silence on the council. Felien said recently, “They (the city council members) were afraid to say anything against it.” This put Minneapolis on the map as the leader in gay civil rights legislation.
Enter the Democrats
Minneapolis and Saint Paul also beat the rest of the country to the idea of separating the right to marry from the rest of gay civil rights. This was in direct response to Baker and McConnell’s marriage.
The anti-marriage contingent included, among others, Alan Spear, a gay history professor who represented the University of Minnesota neighborhood as a State Senator. Spear tiptoed out of the closet to a small circle of friends once Baker got elected student body president. He proposed to author a gay rights bill on the state level. Senate Majority Leader Nick Coleman Sr. agreed to help. Spear and Coleman were both career Democrats.
Coleman’s motive was that he was married to Debbie Howell who had a gay brother. I suspect Howell’s brother came out to them after Jack got elected student body president. That made me and hundreds of others come out. Howell herself was a wig at Minnesota’s main daily newspapers. In 1975, she wrote Alan Spear’s going public interview for the Minneapolis Star newspaper. Minnesota being a small pond, this trio constituted a power block.
Sex, Drugs and Secret Parties
(I mean fundraisers)
Spear and Coleman hired a part time lobbyist named Steve Endean to shepherd these gay rights bill through the state senate. There were a number of hearings and amendments before all the ordinances finally settled in. Endean was a piece of work. He was in his early 20’s, a college dropout, and stood only about 5 feet, 6 or 7 inches tall in a chubby frame. Everybody called him “Weebee.”
By day Endean lobbied at city halls and on Capitol Hill. By night he checked coats at popular gay discos—first at Sutton’s which has since folded, then at the Gay `90s which is still the biggest gay bar between Chicago and San Francisco. After bars closed, “Weebee” almost literally lived in the local gay bathhouses.
With all this gay contact, Endean got to know both the important closet gays and the hottest young gay guys. He was great at organizing private parties, hand picking guests from both groups. Some of the more outrageous called it “pimping.” Those parties rivaled the ones in Larry Kramer’s novel, “Faggots: Drugs, sex and rock and roll.” This was how gay money began to flow into the hands of Democrats back then.
Drag queens and the Baker-McConnell crowd were not invited to these secret, late-hour fundraiser parties. Baker and McConnell didn’t notice or mind being left out of the parties, but the drag queens did. Eventually, they went to the State Legislature en masse, in drag, to demand inclusion in the gay rights bill. What’s more, the drag queens won.
Gay marriage, on the other hand, was never included in Minnesota’s gay rights legislation. Sadly, the Spear-Coleman-Howell laws were carefully crafted to exclude the “crazies.” That meant the drag queens and radicals like Baker and McConnell who wanted gay marriage. The laws also left the University of Minnesota exempt from all these pieces of legislation.
Enter Half-Measures
The civil rights laws in Minnesota, scripted in the 1960s, had four parts: employment, housing, public services and public accommodations. The Spear-Coleman-Howell laws added gays and lesbians to those sections of said laws that dealt with employment and housing only. They did not add them to the sections of the same laws that dealt with public services and public accommodations.
Previously, public services and public accommodations referred to places like hotels, restaurants and barbershops. Nobody could decide exactly where marriage licensing fell. Was it a public service? Was it a public accommodation? They didn’t know.
Nonetheless, they were sure they weren’t going to push gay marriage and drag queens on anybody. Whenever the proposed legislation had a setback, Spear and Endean would cuss the “crazies,” that is, Baker-McConnell and the drag queens. They hardly worried about the wild parties. Note, however, that everybody agreed, even back then, that full gay rights would include gay marriage.
The Spear-Coleman-Howell triumvirate got gay rights laws introduced at the state capitol pretty soon after the Minneapolis and St. Paul ordinances were passed. Still, it just sat there. It never got out of committee and never came up for a vote in the whole house and senate. A public discussion of gay rights was not happening. Spear excused himself saying: “I don’t want to get some legislators in the habit of voting against gay rights.” Unfortunately, no one had to fight very hard for the bill either. The State of Minnesota did not pass a gay rights law until much later: 1993. Rural Minnesota dragged its feet.
Half-measures exported to Washington, D.C.
In about 1976, Spear and friends let the Minnesota legislation lie fallow and sent Endean off to Washington, D.C., to work with the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. He eventually founded the Human Rights Campaign. He figured even closeted gays would write checks to a group so broadly named. “Weebee” eventually died from AIDS but the groups he influenced have been resisting gay marriage ever since the `70s. They consider their compromise wise like Solomon. Democrats around the country have adopted the same “pragmatic” approach.
For example, Barney Frank, the openly gay Democrat from Massachusetts who sits in the U.S. House of Representatives, is currently notorious for his criticism of the gay marriages now occurring in San Francisco. Ironically, his constituents keep electing him even though he rented an apartment downstairs of his own dwelling to a well-known gay prostitute. Naturally, Frank claims he didn’t know. Clinton’s not the only dumb Democrat.
Supporters of gay marriage, on the other hand, consider this opposition a fungus growing under the nails of Democrats. While this may make easier work for politicians, gay marriage supporters insist it’s not very practical for their goals.
Alan Spear has now retired from the Minnesota Senate and lives with his longtime partner, Jun, a Japanese immigrant, in central Minneapolis. He reports that he and Jun have not yet gone anywhere to get a license or a civil union. “We’ve thought about it, but done nothing. Just laziness, I guess,” he said recently. Then, he added, “We don’t really need it.” At least Spear has been consistent!
Epilogue
The half-measure maneuvers of these Democrats did not reap many benefits for gays and lesbians in Minnesota. In the intervening years, practically no gays and lesbians have filed complaints with any civil rights departments anywhere. Someone in a position analogous to Mike McConnell, can’t even file a complaint under the ordinance because the University of Minnesota is exempt.
The bottom line is: More gays and lesbians have applied for marriage licenses this year in San Francisco in one week than have filed discrimination complaints throughout the country since 1975. That suggests lots of gays think the right to marry is a very important right. One might call it a “substantial federal issue.”
[E-mail timcampbellxyx@yahoo.com.]
[Baker-McConnell web site: www.may-18-1970.org]
--------------------------------------------------
This announcement was printed from Pulse of the Twin Cities
http://pulsetc.com
The URL for this announcement is:
http://pulsetc.com/article.php?sid=1015
posted by Tim Campbell at 12:44 PM 0 comments
Friday, September 26, 2008
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Letter to Houston Chronicle
Chronicle debating old-ladies issues
To the Editor of the Houston Chronicle
James Campbell's piece (Sunday, May 6, 2006) on the pipe attack story was a huge disappointment. Yes, the attack in Spring TX can teach us a lot, but not unless we are willing to think outside the box.
In my opinion, it is now time to rethink media policies about the names of sexual assault victims in general. In addition, we need to redefine sexual assault. James Campbell's headline shouts "sexual assault." Other Chronicle headlines bark "pipe attack." Which was this? It's really, really time to think outside the box on these policies.
In my opinion, it is now arcane to think reporting the name of the victim of sexual assault serves any real purpose. Many victims of such attacks are testifying about it themselves at public rallies and gatherings around the country. In feminist circles, such victims achieve at times the status of war veterans.
The old laws and media policies are rooted in the suspicion that a woman looses her value by being raped, hence we should be nice. What an old talisman!
The victim of the pipe attack is not really much different than Frida Kahlo, the wife of prominent Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. She was impaled in the vagina are during a city bus accident. There has never been any need to hush this up. No one says she was sexually assaulted.
Likewise, the victim in the pipe attack in Spring TX will lose nothing by the publication of his name. On the contrary, many readers like myself already feel strongly sympathetic with him and would love to be able to put a face and a name to the man. This isn't cheap voyeurism. It's love and compassion.
Yours truly,
Tim Campbell
(Not for publication. I made these comments to James Campbell, the Readers' rep by phone last week. He chose to ignore my whole theme in his article. Lou Gelfand, the Readers' rep at the Minneapolis StarTribune treated readers with more respect.)
"Campbell, James" Chronicle's readers rep wrote:
Mr. Campbell,Great name. The charge against the suspects is aggravated sexual assault, not aggravated pipe assault. Had police charged the suspects with felony aggravated assault, I would not have used sexual assault. I also think not using the victim´s name protects him from further embarrassment outside of his community. If he goes off to college and meets someone in another and says his name a person from another state might remember that he was the victim in a brutal attack and began spreading that news around campus. Yes, people in the immediate community know him, but I don´t see the value of spreading his name beyond the general knowledge in his community.James Campbell
To the Editor of the Houston Chronicle
James Campbell's piece (Sunday, May 6, 2006) on the pipe attack story was a huge disappointment. Yes, the attack in Spring TX can teach us a lot, but not unless we are willing to think outside the box.
In my opinion, it is now time to rethink media policies about the names of sexual assault victims in general. In addition, we need to redefine sexual assault. James Campbell's headline shouts "sexual assault." Other Chronicle headlines bark "pipe attack." Which was this? It's really, really time to think outside the box on these policies.
In my opinion, it is now arcane to think reporting the name of the victim of sexual assault serves any real purpose. Many victims of such attacks are testifying about it themselves at public rallies and gatherings around the country. In feminist circles, such victims achieve at times the status of war veterans.
The old laws and media policies are rooted in the suspicion that a woman looses her value by being raped, hence we should be nice. What an old talisman!
The victim of the pipe attack is not really much different than Frida Kahlo, the wife of prominent Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. She was impaled in the vagina are during a city bus accident. There has never been any need to hush this up. No one says she was sexually assaulted.
Likewise, the victim in the pipe attack in Spring TX will lose nothing by the publication of his name. On the contrary, many readers like myself already feel strongly sympathetic with him and would love to be able to put a face and a name to the man. This isn't cheap voyeurism. It's love and compassion.
Yours truly,
Tim Campbell
(Not for publication. I made these comments to James Campbell, the Readers' rep by phone last week. He chose to ignore my whole theme in his article. Lou Gelfand, the Readers' rep at the Minneapolis StarTribune treated readers with more respect.)
"Campbell, James"
Mr. Campbell,Great name. The charge against the suspects is aggravated sexual assault, not aggravated pipe assault. Had police charged the suspects with felony aggravated assault, I would not have used sexual assault. I also think not using the victim´s name protects him from further embarrassment outside of his community. If he goes off to college and meets someone in another and says his name a person from another state might remember that he was the victim in a brutal attack and began spreading that news around campus. Yes, people in the immediate community know him, but I don´t see the value of spreading his name beyond the general knowledge in his community.James Campbell
To sodomize v to impale anally
TO SODOMIZE V TO IMPALE ANALLY
Members of the Media:
Please consider and discuss the following comments about the verb “to sodomize" which is in the news a lot these days in the Houston area because of the pipe attack on the young man from Spring, Texas.
1. The media often use “sodomize" to mean everything from impaling someone annaly to sucking a child’s peepee.
2. Sodomy is often used as a synonym or euphemism or pejorism for homosexuality.
3. Sodomy often denotes anal or oral sex but connotes mostly homosexual anal or oral sex.
4. Sodomy is sometimes used to include bestiality.
By contrast, no one ever says Monica Lewinsky “sodomized” Bill Clinton or vice-versa.
By contrast, no one ever says Frida Kahlo, wife of Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, was sexually assaulted or sodomized by the city bus accident that left her impaled in the vaginal area.
Conclusion: When the media says the Spring youth was sodomized, they are using a hugely vague and problematic term. They/you are assuming the youths who did this had sexual intent. What data supports that? Did they jerk off simultaneously? Is there semen residue? Did they shout sexual insults. No. All of that seems lacking. Shouldn’t a good defense attorney raise all these issues in defense of these attackers? Shouldn’t reporters withhold judgement?
Sidebar: The media people, particularly the print reporters, are the wordsmiths. They, not the police, are responsible for the words they choose in telling their stories. A reporter can cite the legal charge in one place without slipping into vague and unjustified language elsewhere in the story. It is clear this was a pipe attack. It is not clear this was sexual assault. When the media says “sodomy” here, they bias the report. They add to the bad name of oral and anal sex and they add to gay hate.
Second Sidebar: I believe this pipe attack was done to humiliate the victim, not for sexual gratification. When the media withhold the victim’s name, they participate in the humiliation of the victim. They/you act like you believe the victim was humiliated. I don’t. I feel nothing but love and compassion for this victim.
The saddest thing about this story is that two teenaged thugs kicked a pipe up another teenager's ass because it was the worst thing they could think of to do. Now, the police and the media want to punish them in kind and the worst thing they can think of is pinning a brutal homosexual rape on them. In this, the police and the media are as primitive as the original hate mongers.
Tim Campbell
Members of the Media:
Please consider and discuss the following comments about the verb “to sodomize" which is in the news a lot these days in the Houston area because of the pipe attack on the young man from Spring, Texas.
1. The media often use “sodomize" to mean everything from impaling someone annaly to sucking a child’s peepee.
2. Sodomy is often used as a synonym or euphemism or pejorism for homosexuality.
3. Sodomy often denotes anal or oral sex but connotes mostly homosexual anal or oral sex.
4. Sodomy is sometimes used to include bestiality.
By contrast, no one ever says Monica Lewinsky “sodomized” Bill Clinton or vice-versa.
By contrast, no one ever says Frida Kahlo, wife of Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, was sexually assaulted or sodomized by the city bus accident that left her impaled in the vaginal area.
Conclusion: When the media says the Spring youth was sodomized, they are using a hugely vague and problematic term. They/you are assuming the youths who did this had sexual intent. What data supports that? Did they jerk off simultaneously? Is there semen residue? Did they shout sexual insults. No. All of that seems lacking. Shouldn’t a good defense attorney raise all these issues in defense of these attackers? Shouldn’t reporters withhold judgement?
Sidebar: The media people, particularly the print reporters, are the wordsmiths. They, not the police, are responsible for the words they choose in telling their stories. A reporter can cite the legal charge in one place without slipping into vague and unjustified language elsewhere in the story. It is clear this was a pipe attack. It is not clear this was sexual assault. When the media says “sodomy” here, they bias the report. They add to the bad name of oral and anal sex and they add to gay hate.
Second Sidebar: I believe this pipe attack was done to humiliate the victim, not for sexual gratification. When the media withhold the victim’s name, they participate in the humiliation of the victim. They/you act like you believe the victim was humiliated. I don’t. I feel nothing but love and compassion for this victim.
The saddest thing about this story is that two teenaged thugs kicked a pipe up another teenager's ass because it was the worst thing they could think of to do. Now, the police and the media want to punish them in kind and the worst thing they can think of is pinning a brutal homosexual rape on them. In this, the police and the media are as primitive as the original hate mongers.
Tim Campbell
Friday, September 16, 2005
Volunteer booted by Second Baptist
A volunteer’s experience at the City of Houston shelter after Katrina
By Tim Campbell
September 16, 2005
All rights reserved
At about 5:00 p.m. Friday, September 2, the Houston affiliate of ABC News announced that the City of Houston was opening up another shelter at the George R. Brown Convention Center here, and that volunteers should just go down there. Previously, Harris County, not the City, had opened large government shelters at the Astrodome and Reliant Center.
I went right down to the GRB. By 6:00 p.m., I was helping to sort donations of clothing, toys, toiletries, bedding, baby items and food.
By 8:00 p.m., I was calling forklift drivers at the GRB Center for hundreds of more tables for the sorted items. Houstonians were donating supplies faster than we could set up tables. Volunteers with initiative just did what was needed to meet the occasion.
Saturday, Sunday and Monday (this was Labor Day weekend), the line of walk-in-off-the-streets volunteers stretched half a block. People were waiting an hour in the Texas summer sun just to volunteer! Now that’s good Samaritanism! Oh was I proud of Houston.
By Monday night, somebody decided to stop accepting donations at the Convention Center itself and donors were directed to nearby warehouses.
Evacuees finally started arriving in large numbers. Gov only knows why it took they nearly three days to make the eight hour trip from New Orleans to Houston. But we were ready. Air mattresses were in flated and there were sheets and pillows on every one of them. There were towels and soap. There were baby cribs and bassinets. There was new underwear and good clean used clothes. There was a shoe collection bigger than Imelda Marcos’—all spread out on the Convention Center floor for easy selection. Oh was I proud of Houston.
I went back to volunteer Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. One night, I stayed until 4:30 a.m., but the other evenings there were so many volunteers no one really had to stay long hours. I mean, this operation was cool.
During those days, leadership was provided mostly by volunteers from CenterPoint. I was impressed by how well and how humbly they lead us other volunteers. There was a lot of group problem solving. Questions were thrown out and people spoke up with possible answers. Other times, a volunteer ran off somewhere seeking answers. We were working like a fully functional family. I was impressed.
But the most amazing thing was this: Between Friday and Wednesday, I only saw two angry incidents at the Convention Center. One involved a thirty-is male evacuee, apparently the father of one or two children. Within minutes, Houston volunteers managed to answer his questions or help him and he left the area calmed.
The other angry incident involved a Houston woman who claimed she wanted to offer a family shelter in her home rather than in the big Convention center. At that point, our instructions were simply to let such host families (and there were lots of them) walk around in the Convention Center meeting people and then extend their invitation to lucky evacuees themselves. The previous informal system moved a lot of families out the GRB almost as fast as they arrived. Now that’s Texas hospitality. I was proud of my home city.
This one woman was angry, in a sanctimoniously soft-spoken way, because there wasn’t more structure to adopting families. She went away promising to file a complaint somewhere. I suspected she had some other agenda. And I was real curious where she might go to file a complaint. I surely had no idea but I hoped she’d find a way.
My volunteering ended almost as quickly as it began on Thursday, September 8 about 6:00 p.m. When I got to Convention Center, all volunteering had been taken over people organized by Ed Young’s mega-Second Baptist Church. Second Baptist volunteers had assumed posts at the volunteers’ entry and were only letting in volunteers who had gone through their training or who would wear their t-shirts. They seemed hell-bent on imposing their name on the whole project. Born Catholic, I was not amused.
I wore one of these t-shirts for about an hour. Then I bumped into another off the street volunteer I had come to know. She was refusing to wear the t-shirt. "On strike," she said. I empathized and took off my t-shirt too. We off-the-streets volunteers had come to associate this t-shirt with Second Baptist Church.
Furthermore, said "Operation Compassion" in three-inch letters across the front. That name made me and many others cringe. If you needed help, would you want someone to come to your assistance wearing a t-shirt bragging about their compassion? I wouldn’t.
When I settled in to work at the Information Center where I had been working previously, I quickly noticed the Second Baptist volunteers had xeroxed flyers with the wrong zip code for the GRB and were entering this in all the Internet posts for people looking for loved ones. I set out to correct this error and met surprising resistance from lead people from the Second Baptist group. I ended up suspecting the Second Baptists had decided to send all the mail addressed to evacuees at GRB General Delivery back to sender. I was ashamed of my city.
After working to resolve this problem for about an hour, I told off the Second Baptist leaders without mincing my words. I even forgot to speak in a sanctimoniously soft voice. I was surrounded by security trained at Second Baptist and physically forced out of the Convention Center. This probable assault on my person was the closest thing to violence I saw at the GRB shelter all week. I was not a happy camper.
During subsequent conversation later with Rogene Calvert, the employee of the City of Houston in charge of volunteer staffed projects, I learned because of fears expressed by the Second Baptist people, Houston families are no longer allowed to sponsor evacuees out of the center as before. People looking for lost family and friends are not allowed to enter the GRB shelter. Houstonians wanting to drive evacuees around to look for housing or jobs have to meet their friends outside the center or go through a procedure that takes about half an hour. This has virtually ended any new contacts between evacuees and Texas hospitality. GRB is under virtual lockdown. I am shamed again.
If more Houstonians knew, I think they'd be pissed too.
I was really proud of my City of Houston during that first week of volunteering at the city shelter. Now, I’m pissed. The City should never have turned its shelter so completely over to a religious group. Most importantly, these Second Baptists should have shown more respect for volunteers not organized by their church. And they should not have been allowed to set up their own security with cops and soldiers standing by. The evacuees at the GRB shelter were really lovable and admirable guests, especially considering what they had already been through.
As far as I am concerned, Second Baptist can take their t-shirts and store ’em where the sun don’t shine.
Tim Campbell
208 Caylor
Houston TX 77011
713 928-6119
By Tim Campbell
September 16, 2005
All rights reserved
At about 5:00 p.m. Friday, September 2, the Houston affiliate of ABC News announced that the City of Houston was opening up another shelter at the George R. Brown Convention Center here, and that volunteers should just go down there. Previously, Harris County, not the City, had opened large government shelters at the Astrodome and Reliant Center.
I went right down to the GRB. By 6:00 p.m., I was helping to sort donations of clothing, toys, toiletries, bedding, baby items and food.
By 8:00 p.m., I was calling forklift drivers at the GRB Center for hundreds of more tables for the sorted items. Houstonians were donating supplies faster than we could set up tables. Volunteers with initiative just did what was needed to meet the occasion.
Saturday, Sunday and Monday (this was Labor Day weekend), the line of walk-in-off-the-streets volunteers stretched half a block. People were waiting an hour in the Texas summer sun just to volunteer! Now that’s good Samaritanism! Oh was I proud of Houston.
By Monday night, somebody decided to stop accepting donations at the Convention Center itself and donors were directed to nearby warehouses.
Evacuees finally started arriving in large numbers. Gov only knows why it took they nearly three days to make the eight hour trip from New Orleans to Houston. But we were ready. Air mattresses were in flated and there were sheets and pillows on every one of them. There were towels and soap. There were baby cribs and bassinets. There was new underwear and good clean used clothes. There was a shoe collection bigger than Imelda Marcos’—all spread out on the Convention Center floor for easy selection. Oh was I proud of Houston.
I went back to volunteer Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. One night, I stayed until 4:30 a.m., but the other evenings there were so many volunteers no one really had to stay long hours. I mean, this operation was cool.
During those days, leadership was provided mostly by volunteers from CenterPoint. I was impressed by how well and how humbly they lead us other volunteers. There was a lot of group problem solving. Questions were thrown out and people spoke up with possible answers. Other times, a volunteer ran off somewhere seeking answers. We were working like a fully functional family. I was impressed.
But the most amazing thing was this: Between Friday and Wednesday, I only saw two angry incidents at the Convention Center. One involved a thirty-is male evacuee, apparently the father of one or two children. Within minutes, Houston volunteers managed to answer his questions or help him and he left the area calmed.
The other angry incident involved a Houston woman who claimed she wanted to offer a family shelter in her home rather than in the big Convention center. At that point, our instructions were simply to let such host families (and there were lots of them) walk around in the Convention Center meeting people and then extend their invitation to lucky evacuees themselves. The previous informal system moved a lot of families out the GRB almost as fast as they arrived. Now that’s Texas hospitality. I was proud of my home city.
This one woman was angry, in a sanctimoniously soft-spoken way, because there wasn’t more structure to adopting families. She went away promising to file a complaint somewhere. I suspected she had some other agenda. And I was real curious where she might go to file a complaint. I surely had no idea but I hoped she’d find a way.
My volunteering ended almost as quickly as it began on Thursday, September 8 about 6:00 p.m. When I got to Convention Center, all volunteering had been taken over people organized by Ed Young’s mega-Second Baptist Church. Second Baptist volunteers had assumed posts at the volunteers’ entry and were only letting in volunteers who had gone through their training or who would wear their t-shirts. They seemed hell-bent on imposing their name on the whole project. Born Catholic, I was not amused.
I wore one of these t-shirts for about an hour. Then I bumped into another off the street volunteer I had come to know. She was refusing to wear the t-shirt. "On strike," she said. I empathized and took off my t-shirt too. We off-the-streets volunteers had come to associate this t-shirt with Second Baptist Church.
Furthermore, said "Operation Compassion" in three-inch letters across the front. That name made me and many others cringe. If you needed help, would you want someone to come to your assistance wearing a t-shirt bragging about their compassion? I wouldn’t.
When I settled in to work at the Information Center where I had been working previously, I quickly noticed the Second Baptist volunteers had xeroxed flyers with the wrong zip code for the GRB and were entering this in all the Internet posts for people looking for loved ones. I set out to correct this error and met surprising resistance from lead people from the Second Baptist group. I ended up suspecting the Second Baptists had decided to send all the mail addressed to evacuees at GRB General Delivery back to sender. I was ashamed of my city.
After working to resolve this problem for about an hour, I told off the Second Baptist leaders without mincing my words. I even forgot to speak in a sanctimoniously soft voice. I was surrounded by security trained at Second Baptist and physically forced out of the Convention Center. This probable assault on my person was the closest thing to violence I saw at the GRB shelter all week. I was not a happy camper.
During subsequent conversation later with Rogene Calvert, the employee of the City of Houston in charge of volunteer staffed projects, I learned because of fears expressed by the Second Baptist people, Houston families are no longer allowed to sponsor evacuees out of the center as before. People looking for lost family and friends are not allowed to enter the GRB shelter. Houstonians wanting to drive evacuees around to look for housing or jobs have to meet their friends outside the center or go through a procedure that takes about half an hour. This has virtually ended any new contacts between evacuees and Texas hospitality. GRB is under virtual lockdown. I am shamed again.
If more Houstonians knew, I think they'd be pissed too.
I was really proud of my City of Houston during that first week of volunteering at the city shelter. Now, I’m pissed. The City should never have turned its shelter so completely over to a religious group. Most importantly, these Second Baptists should have shown more respect for volunteers not organized by their church. And they should not have been allowed to set up their own security with cops and soldiers standing by. The evacuees at the GRB shelter were really lovable and admirable guests, especially considering what they had already been through.
As far as I am concerned, Second Baptist can take their t-shirts and store ’em where the sun don’t shine.
Tim Campbell
208 Caylor
Houston TX 77011
713 928-6119
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Letter to Houston Chronicle, AP WashPost
Houston Chronicle
Washington Post
AA
To the Editors:
On March 15 (Page A3), the Houston Chronicle ran an article about the recent court victory for gay couples in California. The article was originally written for the Washington Post and someone addended to it a brief summary of national gay marriage legislation and court decisions. The summary was attributed to the Associated Press. That summary omitted Minnesota, the state where the battle for gay marriage began back in 1971.
California Superior (Trial Court) Judge Richard Kramer wrote in the recent decision: "Same sex marriage cannot be prohibited solely because California has always done so before."
The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled virtually the opposite back in 1971 (Baker v Nelson) arguing Minnesota can forbid gay marriage because: "The institution of marriage as a union of man and woman, uniquely involving the procreation an rearing of children within a family, is as old as the book of Genesis."
Furthermore, in 1972, the U. S. Supreme Court refused to review the Minnesota decision for lack of a "substantial Federal question."
I hope the Chronicle, the Washington Post and the Associated Press will all make note of this pioneering gay marriage litigation in future reporting, particularly in chronologies with an historical perspective.
If the California Supreme comes to a different decision than Minnesota, I believe the U.S. Supreme Court will be forced to address this issue. Federal potentates from the prez to the members of Congress have made it a substantial Federal question.
(Baker and McConnell's website is www.may-18-1970.tabcat.com/Quest.html)
Washington Post
AA
To the Editors:
On March 15 (Page A3), the Houston Chronicle ran an article about the recent court victory for gay couples in California. The article was originally written for the Washington Post and someone addended to it a brief summary of national gay marriage legislation and court decisions. The summary was attributed to the Associated Press. That summary omitted Minnesota, the state where the battle for gay marriage began back in 1971.
California Superior (Trial Court) Judge Richard Kramer wrote in the recent decision: "Same sex marriage cannot be prohibited solely because California has always done so before."
The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled virtually the opposite back in 1971 (Baker v Nelson) arguing Minnesota can forbid gay marriage because: "The institution of marriage as a union of man and woman, uniquely involving the procreation an rearing of children within a family, is as old as the book of Genesis."
Furthermore, in 1972, the U. S. Supreme Court refused to review the Minnesota decision for lack of a "substantial Federal question."
I hope the Chronicle, the Washington Post and the Associated Press will all make note of this pioneering gay marriage litigation in future reporting, particularly in chronologies with an historical perspective.
If the California Supreme comes to a different decision than Minnesota, I believe the U.S. Supreme Court will be forced to address this issue. Federal potentates from the prez to the members of Congress have made it a substantial Federal question.
(Baker and McConnell's website is www.may-18-1970.tabcat.com/Quest.html)
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