Jim Burroway

TODAY’S AGENDA:

Events This Weekend: Aspen Gay Ski Week, Aspen, CO; Midsumma, Melbourne, VIC.

TODAY IN HISTORY:

Transgender Man In the News: 1894. The following item appeared in the Badger State Banner, published in Black River Falls, Wisconsin. It’s interesting that what would have been a normal news item about a larceny case instead focused on the nature of the defendant and his wife.

Anna Morris Given One Year

Anna Morris, alias Frank Blunt, the woman who has tried to be a man for the last fifteen years, was sentenced to the penitentiary for one year by Judge Gibson at Fond du Lac. She was arrested several months ago in Milwaukee charged with stealing $175 in Fond du Lac. It was then discovered that the prisoner was a woman, although she had worn masculine attire nearly all her life. A jury convict her of larceny and a motion for a new trial was overruled. After the sentenced had been passed Gertrude Field, a woman who claimed to have been married to the prisoner in Eau Claire, fell upon the neck of the prison and wept for half an hour. This woman had furnished all the money for Blunt’s defense, and now proposes to carry the case to the Supreme Court.

[Source: Jonathan Katz’s, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1976): pp 231-232.]

A Simple Home Device for Aversion Therapy: 1964. On this date, the British Medical Journal published this article by R.J. McGuire and M. Vallance:

Aversion Therapy by Electric Shock: a Simple Technique

Aversion therapy has been used for many years in the treatment of alcoholism. Apomorphine and emetine are the usual drugs used as the unconditioned stimuli for nausea and vomiting, with alcohol as the conditioned stimulus. More recently the same procedure has been used in the treatment of sexual perversions — for example, fetishism, transvestism and homosexuality. There are several disadvantages to the use of drugs in conditioning procedures. The time between the stimulus being presented and the nausea being produced is uncertain. The patient may not even feel nausea; and, further, the cerebral depressant effect of the drug may interfere with the patient’s ability to form conditioned responses. In addition, the treatment may have to be terminated prematurely because of its dangerous side-effects. Alternative unpleasant responses can be used to produce aversion. In experimental psychology electric shock has been widely used both in animals and in humans. In clinical treatment, however, it has been less often used. The technique is simpler, more accurately controlled, and more certain in producing an unpleasant effect than drugs. This article describes a simple apparatus designed by one of us (R. J. McG.) and its use in the aversive treatment of sexual perversions, alcoholism, smoking, and neurotic symptoms. Apparatus. — The components are cheap (under £1) and fit into a box approximately 6 in. (15 cm.) square and 2 in. (5 cm.) deep (Figs. 1 and 2). It is powered by a 9-volt battery and is therefore completely portable. The shock is administered through electrodes on a cuff around the patient’s forearm. To construct the apparatus requires no special skill, and the technical details are given at the end of the article. …After initial instruction he can treat himself and may take the apparatus home to continue the treatment there. Besides saving the therapist’s time and making frequent treatment possible, this arrangement is to be preferred when the symptom is one usually indulged in alone-for example, masturbation to perverse fantasies. While the patient can use the apparatus whenever he is tempted to masturbate, he should also each day deliberately carry out the treatment at a time when the desire to masturbate is not strong.

This isn’t the first time a device for administering electric shock has been described in the medical literature for treating homosexuality. Electric Shock Aversion Therapy has been discussed since at least 1935 (see Sep 6). But as modern science entered the space age, a few therapists got the idea that there was a demand for an inexpensive home version.

[Source: R.J. McGuire, M. Vallance. “Aversion Therapy By Electric Shock: A Simple Technique.” British Medical Journal 1, no. 5376 (January 18, 1964): 151-153. Available online here.]

Miami-Dade County Approves Gay Rights Ordinance: 1977. An angry mob of anti-gay conservatives led by singer and Florida Orange Juice spokesperson Anita Bryant packed the Miami Commission Chambers in an attempt to shout down a proposed gay rights ordinance which would extending nondiscrimination protections in employment, housing and accommodations on the basis of “affectional or sexual preference.” Despite the evident anger in the room, the Commission passed the ordinance 5-3.

Bryant and her husband, Bob Green, vowed to lead a campaign to repeal the ordinance at the ballot box, a campaign that she subsequently won (see Jun 7). That victory led to similar campaigns to overturn similar ordinances in St Paul, Minnesota (see Apr 25); Wichita, Kansas; and Eugene Oregon. That tidal wave reached its high-water mark in 1978 when California voters defeated the Brigg’s Initiative which would have banned gays and lesbians from working in public schools (see Nov 7).

On December 1, 1998, the Miami-Dade County Commission again passed another non-discrimination ordinance by a vote of 7-6. Opponents again petitioned for a vote, but the law was upheld on September 10, 2002.

First Same-Sex Blessing In Episcopal Church: 1992. Mark Benson, a 47-year-old physician’s assistant, and Philip Straw, a 45-year-old postal worker, both of Pasadena, California, had been together for eight years when they decided to make honest men of each other. And so they did what any normal self-respecting couple would do when they wanted to get married. They went to their church, All Saints Episcopal Church of Pasadena, which just happens to be the largest Episcopal Church west of the Mississippi. It also happened to have a very receptive rector in Rev. George Regas. He had already proposed that All Saints begin blessing gay unions in a sermon two years earlier.

Regas held back from calling the ceremony a “wedding,” calling it a blessing instead. But even that small concession went far beyond what the national denomination at the time was willing to sanction. At the denomination’s national summit in 1991, they were unable to reach a consensus on a wide range of gay-related issues, instead affirming a “traditional” standard which calls for unmarried people to remain celibate. Regas understood that the ceremony, which was attended by 500 guests, would case a stir. “Homosexuality is such a divisive issue, I’m sure there is a great deal of distress” about the ceremony, he told a reporter from The Los Angeles Times. “But the people who were there, who know these men, knew this was appropriate and good. … It had such a sense of rightness about it.”

Of course, not everyone agreed. Two weeks later, a group of fundamentalists marched outside All Saints during a Sunday service holding signs reading “Homosex is a sin,” and handing out flyers asking “What’s worse than dying with AIDS?” to parishioners. The protest was organized by R.L. Hymers, pastor of the Baptist Tabernacle of Los Angeles, who in 1986 had asked his parishioners to pray for God to remove Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan from his seat on the court by death over Brennan’s 1973 vote in Roe v Wade. He also chartered an airplane to fly over Los Angeles trailing a banner reading, “Pray for Death: Baby killer Brennan.” Hymers was simillarly bombastic during this protest. “It’s absolutely the wrong signal with the AIDS epidemic raging out of control, he told reporters. “The last thing a pastor should do is advocate a life-threatening and soul-threatening practice of sodomy.”

Regas remained unapologetic. “We have done what we think God is calling us to do. We believe the inclusive love of Christ welcomes everybody.” Philip Straw died from AIDS the following December.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?