When All Else Fails… Desperate times call for desperate measures, and so it was that proponents of Social Security privatization resorted to attacking skeptics of the scheme by linking them to—are you ready?—same-sex marriage. You could play Find-the-Fit from here to Chicago to make the connection, but here goes: One of the most powerful lobbies in Washington is of course the AARP, which happens to oppose the privatization scheme. So the thing to do was to discredit the AARP by running TV ads similar to the infamous “Swift Boat” ads used against John Kerry in the 2004 election. So they hired an outfit called USA Next that included most of the “Swift Boat” creators. But how to attack a venerable, nonpartisan organization whose members include a majority of the nation’s seniors? Claim the group has a “liberal, activist agenda” and say it supports gay marriage, how else? And don’t be deterred by the fact that the AARP officially takes no position on this issue; didn’t the group’s Ohio affiliate oppose that state’s constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage last fall? Well, yes… And that’s it, all they needed to make the link. Okay, they needed one more thing: a juicy photo of a same-sex wedding. So they trolled the Internet and found a random photo of two Oregon men getting hitched and proceeded to blast it over the airwaves. Long story short: the couple saw the ad and now they’ve launched a 25 million dollar lawsuit against USA Next for unlawful use of their image.
Language Patrol It was a routine conference sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (samhsa) of the Department of Health and Human Services. The subject was suicide prevention, and one panel was to focus on GLBT youths, who have an unusually high suicide rate. That was until samhsa’s director, Bush-appointee Mark Weber, heard about it. What he objected to was not so much the topic itself, whose importance he acknowledged, as the use of the words “gay,” “lesbian,” “bisexual,” and “transgender” to designate a panel on gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender suicide. A flood of irate e-mails from public health officials poured in, so Weber decreed that the term “sexual orientation” would be permissible. Conference organizer Ron Bloodworth pointed out that the name “Sexual Orientation Suicide” made little sense, and ended up going with “Suicide Prevention in Vulnerable Populations”—vulnerable, as perhaps he intended, in more ways than one.
Ex-Gay and Ex-ACA An article in this issue documents the antics of one Richard Cohen when in Poland last year, all part of his campaign to bring tidings of the “ex-gay” movement to people around the world. Cohen, a psychotherapist, was even invited to speak to the Polish parliament about “reparative therapy” as a “cure” for homosexuality. Unbeknownst to the Poles, Cohen had already, as of 2003, been “permanently expelled” from the American Counseling Association (ACA) for serious ethics violations. This fact was uncovered by Wayne Besen, author of Anything But Straight, who found the ACA’s letter to Cohen, a remarkably detailed rebuke of his practice citing violations of six provisions of its ethical code: “fostering dependent counseling relationships, not promoting the welfare of clients, engaging in actions that sought to meet his personal needs at the expense of clients, exploiting the trust and dependency of clients, unethically soliciting testimonials from clients, and promoting products to clients in a manner that is deceptive.” And then there’s the small matter of trying to “cure” people who aren’t even sick.
Ain’t I a (Married) Woman? Judi and Michael Howden were wed four years ago and are still happily married—even though Michael changed his name to Mikayla in 2003 and underwent a full sex change last September. This legally recognized change of sex would seem to render them a legally married same-sex couple—only they live in New Hampshire, one of the many states that bans same-sex marriage. But what if the marriage is already a fait accompli? The question has real consequences for the Howdens, because they have a daughter from Judi’s previous marriage and Mikayla is foreign-born and faces immigration issues. They’re awaiting a ruling from the federal government on their marital status. Their case is doubtless the first of many now that 38 states have hastily amended their constitutions to define marriage as a bond between a “man” and a “woman.” Already the far Right is demanding that state laws expressly annul marriages such as the Howdens’—but doesn’t this force them to acknowledge the validity of the sex change itself? The problem they’re facing is not just one of who’s marrying whom; it’s one that strikes at the very definition of “man” and “woman.” The states have gone their separate ways when deciding whether anatomy or DNA is destiny—which could make it very interesting indeed to sort out who’s allowed to be married to whom, and where.
Chain of Command The story of James Guckert a.k.a. “Jeff Gannon” seems a natural for this column, but is there anything to add? Readers will remember that Guckert was the Bush administration shill who managed to parlay his job at a phony, dot-com news service, Talon News, into a White House press pass and direct access to the President. We then learned that Guckert operated several gay male escort services, one of which, Militaryescorts.com, offered Guckert himself as a weekend sex toy (“Top, 8+ cut”). The plot thickened when it was revealed that the man who had called on “Gannon” so many times at briefings, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, was often seen at gay bars in Austin, Texas, in the late 90’s. Then it was learned that a well-known Republican operative, Bobby Eberle, the guy who hired Guckert at Talon, is known to be a close ally of Karl Rove going back to their Austin days. Speculation ensued that Karl Rove himself was gay—not that one wanted to dwell on this image—and that a full-blown male prostitution scandal was about to break at the White House. Perhaps we knew things had gone over the top when people started noticing oddly gay things that Bush himself has said, such as recently telling the Canadian Prime Minister’s top aide, “you’ve got a pretty face.” But one can still hope that somewhere there’s a photo of Guckert and McClellan having a go after a rousing press conference. Such a revelation could help explain how a complete nobody with zero press experience and a seamy past (and present) got to play reporter in the world’s most exclusive journalistic club.
