Lou Maletta obit, religion, J.E. Hoover, marriage licenses, wedding gala, gay activist, Oscars
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LOU MALETTA, 74, DIES; PIONEERED GAY-ORIENTED TV PROGRAMMING
BY DENNIS HEVESI
c.2011 New York Times News Service
Lou Maletta, who founded the Gay Cable Network in 1982, when the gay rights movement was not receiving broad media attention, died Nov. 2 in Kingston, N.Y. He was 74.
The cause was liver cancer, said Luke Valenti, his companion of 37 years.
The network had its roots as a weekly program called “Men & Film” on Channel 35 on Manhattan Cable Television. Maletta showed gay pornographic movies that he had edited to make less explicit, and the programming grew to become a forum for the range of issues facing gay people.
There had been gay-oriented television shows before the Gay Cable Network was started. But Maletta’s enterprise was considered the first to produce weekly news, entertainment, political commentary, cultural and health-related programs, and it distributed them to public-access channels in 20 cities (at first on videotapes he mailed).
“It was critical to the LGBT rights movement,” said Kenneth Sherrill, a political science professor at Hunter College who has written extensively on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights. “Mainstream television wasn’t rushing to cover the movement, and public access cable provided entree for social and political groups that were traditionally excluded. Lou Maletta’s programming allowed voices of the gay community to speak for themselves.”
Among those voices was Andy Humm, who is now the co-host, with Ann Northrop, of “Gay U.S.A.,” a weekly one-hour cable news program produced by Manhattan Neighborhood Network and distributed nationally. The show originated on the Gay Cable Network, which Maletta closed when he retired in 2001.
“Lou had this grand vision of a 24-hour gay cable network,” Humm said. “That didn’t happen for him.” Still, the continuation of “Gay U.S.A.” and the introduction in 2005 of Logo, a primarily gay-oriented 24-hour cable channel that is part of MTV Networks, have in part fulfilled his dream.
“Lou laid the groundwork,” Humm said. “He developed news programming, entertainment, sports. He had a guy come on every week and talk about the gay bowling league.”
Maletta’s network began in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, and he enlisted officials from New York City’s health department and Gay Men’s Health Crisis, a nonprofit AIDS advocacy group, to provide segments. From 1984 to 2000, he provided coverage of the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, interviewing political leaders from the floor and gay rights demonstrators in the streets. Those were among the dozens of local and national protests the network covered.
In 1988, Maletta traveled with a team of volunteer correspondents to the Republican convention in New Orleans, by way of Mississippi.
“He was this tremendous character, generally wearing spandex, a black leather jacket, the Gay Network T-shirt and a cowboy hat,” Humm recalled. “Not unusual in New York, but try going to a Hardee’s in Mississippi on the way to a convention. I didn’t think we were going to get out alive.”
People just stared, Humm said.
Louis Phillip Maletta Jr. was born in Brooklyn on Dec. 14, 1936, the only child of Louis and Mary Maletta. After serving in the Army, he became a freelance photographer and a travel agent, booking gay cruises. He was outside the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village in summer 1969 when a police raid helped ignite the gay liberation movement, said Valenti, his companion.In addition to Valenti, Maletta is survived by a daughter from a marriage that ended in divorce.
What motivated him to take his programming beyond its sexually explicit origins, Maletta told Gay City News in 2009, was watching a 30-year-old friend “turning into someone who looked 90 six months after being diagnosed” with what at one time was called gay-related immune deficiency.
AMX-2011-11-12T17:34:00-05:00<
Sides of faith collide at Detroit prayer rally
By Niraj Warikoo
Detroit Free Press
DETROIT - Christians streamed into Ford Field on Friday for a 24-hour prayer event led by a controversial group as about 150 protesters demonstrated outside.
Chanting, “Stop the hate” and “Spread the love,” the protesters said the prayer rally inside the stadium promotes division and hatred. Led by controversial preacher Lou Engle of Kansas, the event was organized and promoted by a group that often criticizes Muslims, gays, Catholics, Jews and African-Americans.
Members have used militaristic language against a variety of people, especially Muslims in metro Detroit.
Engle and the organizers of the prayer event, known as The Call, have said local Muslims are under demonic control. They have tried to include local clergy, but over the past week, a growing number of ministers have denounced Engle.
Outside Ford Field, the protesters featured Baptist, Catholic and Methodist pastors who criticized Engle.
“I’m about the separation of faith and hate,” said the Rev. Ed Rowe of Central United Methodist Church in Detroit.
“You can’t hate and be righteous,” said Germany Bennett, pastor of True Oracles of God, a Detroit church. “Hatred is a sin. We believe in love.”
The Rev. Charles Williams of Historic Solomon Baptist Church in Detroit said Engle is promoting an extremist agenda that is anti-Detroit and anti-minority.
Engle and his supporters, with a movement called the New Apostolic Reformation, were behind a controversial prayer rally for Texas Gov. Rick Perry that kicked off his presidential campaign.
“God did not call us to hate,” Williams said.
Cheryl Voglesong of Royal Oak, Mich., held up a sign that read: “Take Thy Fearmongering back to Kansas. We don’t want it.”
“I’m a Christian, and we’ve lived peacefully with Muslims for 100 years in Detroit,” she said. “Lou Engle and these guys are coming here to attack them? That’s crazy.”
A senior Catholic priest, the Rev. Norman Thomas of Detroit, also attended the protest.
“All of us are children of God,” Thomas said. “Not hate, nothing but love.”
AMX-2011-11-11T21:58:00-05:00<
By Kenneth D. Ackerman
(c) 2011, The Washington Post
WASHINGTON -- Tackling five myths about J. Edgar Hoover.
1. Hoover was a gay cross-dresser.
Despite rampant speculation -- that Hoover was gay, a cross-dresser or had no sex life -- the truth about his sex life is nearly impossible to pin down. Hoover was married to his job and zealously protective of his public image. He lived in an era when being outed as gay would cost anyone his career and reputation, and he was not one to risk such consequences.
The story that Hoover, a lifelong bachelor, participated in cross-dressing all-male sex parties in New York hotel rooms, as reported by British writer Anthony Summers in a 1993 biography, has been widely debunked by historians. The story’s source, the wife of a businessman and Hoover confidante, had a grudge from a contested divorce, and other investigations of the story came up empty.
If Hoover did have a gay relationship, most likely it was with his longtime FBI associate director, Clyde Tolson, another lifelong bachelor -- but even this is disputed. Hoover and Tolson worked together more than 40 years. They traveled on vacation and official business, rode to work together, shared lunch nearly every day at Washington’s Mayflower hotel and sometimes even wore matching suits. Hoover, at his death, left Tolson most of his estate. Their relationship, by all appearances, was stable, discreet and long-lasting. But what they did physically behind closed doors, if anything, was between them.
Hoover did have some high-profile female friendships, including with actress Dorothy Lamour. In his 2004 biography of Hoover, Richard Hack cites sources claiming that he was discovered spending the night with Lamour in a Washington hotel -- an isolated incident -- and that when she was asked later about a sexual relationship between them, she said, “I cannot deny it.”
2. Hoover’s secret files kept presidents from firing him.
Hoover had particularly good relationships with at least two presidents he served under: Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. Of the others, Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon all considered sacking him, but, files aside, they had good political reasons for keeping Hoover. Even in the 1960s, he had a strong public image as an honest, competent law enforcement technocrat. While his relationship with John and Robert Kennedy was often tense -- yes, it was Hoover who, through wiretaps of Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana, discovered President Kennedy’s liaison with mob-connected socialite Judith Campbell Exner -- Hoover also could have been covering up embarrassing secrets for Camelot.
Still, Hoover built his FBI files into an intimidating weapon, not just for fighting crime but also for bullying government officials and critics and destroying careers. The files covered a dizzying kaleidoscope -- Supreme Court justices such as Louis Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter, movie stars Mary Pickford and Marilyn Monroe, first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, physicist Albert Einstein, Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller III, among others -- often replete with unconfirmed gossip about private sex lives and radical ties.
By 1960, the FBI had open, “subversive” files on some 432,000 Americans. Hoover deemed the most sensitive files as “personal and confidential” and kept them in his office, where his secretary, Helen Gandy, could watch them. Today, with few exceptions, Hoover’s FBI files are open for any American to see at the National Archives. They make fascinating reading and paint a stark portrait of power run amok.
3. Hoover was a coward.
Critics often accused Hoover of cowardice, pointing, for instance, to the fact that he didn’t join the military in June 1917, when he finished law school and the country was entering World War I. Instead, he took a draft-exempt job at the Justice Department.
Hoover, by most signs, would have preferred to join his contemporaries going “over there” to fight the Germans. At Central High School in Washington, D.C., he joined the cadet corps and was its captain during his senior year. He relished the pomp and ceremony, marching in uniform and palling around with his fellow cadets.Later, at the Justice Department’s Radical Division, Hoover’s craving for action led him in February 1920 to participate in a raid against one of the most dangerous leftist groups of that period, the L’Era Nuova gang in Paterson, N.J. The agents carried guns and confiscated plenty of weapons and explosives. Hoover interrogated the group’s leader and extracted the only direct evidence about the 1919 anarchist bombings that prompted that year’s Red Scare.
Rather than fleeing the draft, the more likely reason that Hoover took the Justice Department job in 1917 was that his 61-year-old father, Dickerson Naylor Hoover, who suffered from mental illness, had been forced to leave his job as a government clerk without a pension, making young J. Edgar financially responsible for the family. If anything, Hoover’s guilt over staying behind probably added to his later zeal against subversives at home.
4. Hoover was African American.
There are two theories that Hoover had African American heritage. One has it that he was born to an African American mother and secretly adopted by the Hoover family, a theory based on discrepancies in certain birth and census records. However, genealogist George Ott investigated the claim, failed to substantiate it, and said he believes it to be false.
More plausible are stories like that told by writer Millie McGhee in her 2000 book “Secrets Uncovered: J. Edgar Hoover -- Passing for White?” McGhee, an African American, claims that, based on family stories and genealogical records, she and Hoover had a common ancestor, a great-grandfather, making him a distant cousin. Hoover’s father’s family had roots in Virginia and Mississippi in the antebellum South, where interracial liaisons were not uncommon. Some mixing in his family tree is a possibility but remains unproven.
Hoover’s attitudes on race reflected those in the old Washington, where he grew up, a largely segregated Southern city. As FBI director, he repeatedly refused to involve the bureau in investigating anti-black race riots or protecting black civil rights workers in the South, insisting that these were matters for local police, even after the Supreme Court’s 1954Brown v. Board of Education decision.
5. Hoover’s legacy is a stain on the FBI’s reputation.
Hoover leaves a bipolar legacy. For better or worse, he built the FBI into a modern, national organization stressing professionalism and scientific crime-fighting. For most of his life, Americans considered him a hero. He made the G-Man brand so popular that, at its height, it was harder to become an FBI agent than to be accepted into an Ivy League college.
But he also stands as a reminder that 48 years of power concentrated in one person is a recipe for abuse. It was mostly after his death that Hoover’s dark side became common knowledge -- the covert black-bag jobs, the warrantless surveillance of civil rights leaders and Vietnam-era peace activists, the use of secret files to bully government officials, the snooping on movie stars and senators, and the rest. Hoover’s name, carved in stone at the FBI headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue, should serve as a caution to the public and the dedicated professionals who work inside. The FBI’s license to intrude into people’s lives gives it a special public trust. If the daily reminder of Hoover’s excesses can help impart that message, it will be the best safeguard for the positive side of his legacy: a modern, professional, science-based and accountable detective force serving the public interest.
Kenneth D. Ackerman, a Washington, D.C. lawyer, is the author of “Young J. Edgar: Hoover and the Red Scare, 1919-1920.”
AMX-2011-11-11T14:06:00-05:00<
N.Y. CLERK WHO REFUSED GAY MARRIAGE LICENSES WINS RE-ELECTION
By SCOTT RAPP
(c) Copyright 2011 Religion News Service
LEDYARD, N.Y. (RNS) The town clerk in Ledyard, N.Y., who drew national attention after refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples won re-election on Tuesday (Nov. 8).
Incumbent Rose Marie Belforti, a Republican, defeated Ed Easter, of Aurora, who launched a write-in candidacy about six weeks ago after learning of his opponent’s stance against New York’s new Marriage Equality Act.
The unofficial results gave Belforti a 305-to-186 victory -- her sixth straight two-year term as the town’s part-time clerk. Belforti thanked supporters and said they “chose religious freedom over religious intolerance.”
Her position polarized residents in this mostly rural town of about 1,900 residents on the east side of Cayuga Lake.
Belforti, 57, unsuspectingly found herself in the middle of an emerging test case after she told the town board in August that her Christian beliefs prevented her from issuing a same-sex marriage license to a Florida lesbian couple that owns a farm in nearby Springport.
Belforti said she should not have to relinquish her religious freedoms to do her town job, which pays $13,002 a year. The town has since asked a deputy clerk to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in hopes that action will be considered to be in compliance with the state’s Marriage Equality Act, which was passed in June.
(Scott Rapp writes for The Post-Standard in Syracuse, N.Y.)
DSB/AMB END RAPP
AMX-2011-11-11T14:11:00-05:00<
Couple wins once-in-a-century wedding on 11-11-11
By TAMARA LUSH
Associated Press
PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. (AP) - On Friday - 11-11-11 - Sheila Barnett and Melissa Patrick will walk down an aisle and stand in front of a giant, crescent-shaped window at the Crowne Plaza in Manhattan, look each other in the eyes and say, “I do.”
The same-sex couple from Florida was one of 11 couples to win the hotel’s “Marry Me 11-11-11 Wedding Contest” on Facebook, which gave away dream weddings on that once-in-a-century day that’s supposed to be lucky for love: Nov. 11, 2011.
Yet as Barnett and Patrick packed their nearly identical dresses for the ceremony (Patrick will wear white, Barnett, purple), they tried not to think about one fact: when they return home, their marriage won’t be legal in Florida.
“I don’t like it,” said Patrick, who sat in her living room on a recent day with her arm around her fiancei.
Same-sex unions aren’t recognized under Florida law. In 2008, Florida voters amended the state’s constitution to define marriage as a union only between one man and one woman. A gay rights group is sponsoring legislation in the upcoming session to provide domestic partnership benefits to committed same-sex couples in the state.
A same-sex couple from New York and another from Ohio also won the contest. Ohio has an amendment similar to the one passed in Florida, but gay marriage is legal in New York. The state also recognizes unions from other states.
The couples flew to New York on Wednesday. On Thursday, everyone was to rehearse for the ceremony and then tour the city.
Barnett and Patrick, who are both 37, haven’t always been in same-sex relationships - and are reluctant to identify themselves as lesbians, saying that their love “blindsided” both of them. Barnett was in a relationship with the same man for 20 years - married for many of them - and Patrick had a long-term relationship with a man. Both have children from those prior relationships.
“I fell in love with a person, for who she is and everything about her,” Barnett said. “Not because she was a female.”
Said Patrick: “Love doesn’t discriminate, I’ll tell you that. You’re able to fall in love with anyone if it’s right.”
The two women met 20 years ago in high school and played on the softball team together. They were friends, but nothing more. After graduating, Patrick moved to Indianapolis and became a firefighter.
They kept in touch throughout the years and in 2010, Patrick visited Florida on vacation. She and Barnett spent every day together, and when it was time for Patrick to leave, they both cried.
“When she left it was one of the saddest days of my life,” said Barnett, who is a hairdresser. “Something was going on, but I didn’t know what it was.”
The couple dated long distance, and then Patrick quit her job as a firefighter and moved to Florida so they could be together. They initially planned to hold a commitment ceremony in the summer of 2012, but a friend told them about the Crowne Plaza contest a few months ago.
“Two women, true love, awesome story and it’s just that simple,” they wrote. They asked friends and family to vote for their entry, and were chosen in October. Steve Ward, a matchmaker who also is the star of VH1’s “Tough Love” show, will perform the ceremony on Friday. The hotel will serve a lavish lunch and provide plum-and-white flower bouquets or corsages, along with wedding photos and video. As part of the promotion, every couple stays at the hotel free and was able to invite 10 friends or relatives.
Patrick and Barnett spent the past week getting ready for the trip: having their nails done in an identical French manicure with black heart details on their ring fingers, buying winter clothes and deciding where to visit once they get to the city. Barnett has never been to the Big Apple.
“She wants to go purse shopping,” Patrick said of her fiancei. “I want to visit Ground Zero and eat some New York pizza.”
---
Follow Tamara Lush on Twitter at http://twitter.com/tamaralush.
Ugandan gay activist wins RFK Human Rights Award
BRETT ZONGKER
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - A leading gay rights advocate in Uganda, where being gay is a crime, is set to receive the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award in Washington.
Ethel Kennedy, the widow of the former attorney general, and Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry will award the prize to Frank Mugisha at a ceremony Thursday.
The 29-year-old activist has been fighting a bill in Uganda’s parliament that would punish gay people with prison or death. It would also threaten jail time for family members, doctors or priests who don’t report gays to authorities.
Mugisha blames U.S. evangelicals for promoting homophobia in Uganda.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Mugisha says the Kennedy award sends a message to Uganda and more than 70 countries that criminalize homosexuality that gay rights are human rights.
Grazer agrees to replace Ratner as Oscars producer
By Nicole Sperling
Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES - Oscar-winning producer Brian Grazer agreed Wednesday to take on the job of producing the Academy Awards telecast in February, stepping into the void left by Brett Ratner, who resigned after an anti-gay slur. Grazer and the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences did not immediately announce a host to replace Eddie Murphy, who dropped out after Ratner exited.
Grazer, who has produced five movies this year including Clint Eastwood’s “J. Edgar” and Ratner’s “Tower Heist,” had been asked to helm the Oscar show earlier this year, but declined. Given Grazer’s ties to Ratner and Murphy, there was some speculation that he might try to persuade Murphy to stay on as host, but a person close to the Grazer who was not authorized to speak publicly said he wouldn’t try to lure Murphy back into the fold.
“It’s very gratifying to be part of a show that honors excellence in the medium to which I have devoted so much of my career,” said Grazer, whose “A Beautiful Mind” earned a best picture Oscar a decade ago. Grazer will share producing duties on the broadcast with industry veteran Don Mischer. “Don is a legend, and I am excited to work with him.”
Grazer could have a horse in this year’s Oscar race with “J. Edgar” (which opened in limited release Wednesday), but his other recent films have disappointed at the box office, including “Cowboys & Aliens,” “The Dilemma,” and the Gus Van Sant-directed indie “Restless.” His high-profile television project “The Playboy Club” was canceled after just a few episodes.
Still, academy president Tom Sherak said: “Brian Grazer is a renowned filmmaker who over the past 25 years has produced a diverse and extraordinary body of work. He will certainly bring his tremendous talent, creativity and relationships to the Oscars.”
Grazer has not been able to completely steer clear of controversy himself. Last fall, the trailer for his film “The Dilemma” was widely criticized for including a scene in which actor Vince Vaughn said, “Electric cars are gay"; the promo debuted in the wake of a series of suicides of teenagers who killed themselves after being bullied because of their sexual orientation. The line was later excised from the trailer, but it remained in the film.
It’s been a tumultuous few days at the academy, an organization which strives to avoid controversy. Ratner came under fire after uttering an anti-gay slur during a Q&A last weekend following a screening for “Tower Heist” and then further discomfited the academy by discussing his sex life on Howard Stern’s radio show. After initially apologizing for his behavior on Monday, he resigned Tuesday.
On Wednesday, his handpicked host Murphy followed suit. Murphy, who co-starred in Ratner’s “Tower Heist,” didn’t give a clear reason for his exit, but it seems he did not want to remain in the job without Ratner, whom he considers his creative partner, at the helm of the show.
“First and foremost I want to say that I completely understand and support each party’s decision with regard to a change of producers for this year’s Academy Awards ceremony,” Murphy said in a statement issued early Wednesday. “I was truly looking forward to being a part of the show that our production team and writers were just starting to develop, but I’m sure that the new production team and host will do an equally great job.”
Murphy’s exit was not a surprise among academy members. Said animator Craig Bartlett in an email the night before Murphy bowed out, “Everyone got an email from Tom Sherak saying that Ratner was stepping down. It made me wonder if Eddie Murphy would go down, too - I figured he came with Ratner. Maybe he will, and Neil Patrick Harris will take the job - that would be poetic justice.”
Still, the sudden flurry of events left some in a bit of shock.
“That’s about as precipitous a fall from grace in Hollywood as I’ve seen,” said one filmmaker who has worked closely with Ratner and doesn’t want to tarnish his relationship. “To go from the ‘Tower Heist’ premiere two weeks ago where he was being embraced by everyone to today is staggering.”
Coming into the job with only about 16 weeks before the Feb. 26 broadcast, Grazer will be under pressure to quickly find a host and assemble a team of writers.
AMX-2011-11-09T22:52:00-05:00<
LOU MALETTA, 74, DIES; PIONEERED GAY-ORIENTED TV PROGRAMMING
BY DENNIS HEVESI
c.2011 New York Times News Service
Lou Maletta, who founded the Gay Cable Network in 1982, when the gay rights movement was not receiving broad media attention, died Nov. 2 in Kingston, N.Y. He was 74.
The cause was liver cancer, said Luke Valenti, his companion of 37 years.
The network had its roots as a weekly program called “Men & Film” on Channel 35 on Manhattan Cable Television. Maletta showed gay pornographic movies that he had edited to make less explicit, and the programming grew to become a forum for the range of issues facing gay people.
There had been gay-oriented television shows before the Gay Cable Network was started. But Maletta’s enterprise was considered the first to produce weekly news, entertainment, political commentary, cultural and health-related programs, and it distributed them to public-access channels in 20 cities (at first on videotapes he mailed).
“It was critical to the LGBT rights movement,” said Kenneth Sherrill, a political science professor at Hunter College who has written extensively on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights. “Mainstream television wasn’t rushing to cover the movement, and public access cable provided entree for social and political groups that were traditionally excluded. Lou Maletta’s programming allowed voices of the gay community to speak for themselves.”
Among those voices was Andy Humm, who is now the co-host, with Ann Northrop, of “Gay U.S.A.,” a weekly one-hour cable news program produced by Manhattan Neighborhood Network and distributed nationally. The show originated on the Gay Cable Network, which Maletta closed when he retired in 2001.
“Lou had this grand vision of a 24-hour gay cable network,” Humm said. “That didn’t happen for him.” Still, the continuation of “Gay U.S.A.” and the introduction in 2005 of Logo, a primarily gay-oriented 24-hour cable channel that is part of MTV Networks, have in part fulfilled his dream.
“Lou laid the groundwork,” Humm said. “He developed news programming, entertainment, sports. He had a guy come on every week and talk about the gay bowling league.”
Maletta’s network began in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, and he enlisted officials from New York City’s health department and Gay Men’s Health Crisis, a nonprofit AIDS advocacy group, to provide segments. From 1984 to 2000, he provided coverage of the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, interviewing political leaders from the floor and gay rights demonstrators in the streets. Those were among the dozens of local and national protests the network covered.
In 1988, Maletta traveled with a team of volunteer correspondents to the Republican convention in New Orleans, by way of Mississippi.
“He was this tremendous character, generally wearing spandex, a black leather jacket, the Gay Network T-shirt and a cowboy hat,” Humm recalled. “Not unusual in New York, but try going to a Hardee’s in Mississippi on the way to a convention. I didn’t think we were going to get out alive.”
People just stared, Humm said.
Louis Phillip Maletta Jr. was born in Brooklyn on Dec. 14, 1936, the only child of Louis and Mary Maletta. After serving in the Army, he became a freelance photographer and a travel agent, booking gay cruises. He was outside the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village in summer 1969 when a police raid helped ignite the gay liberation movement, said Valenti, his companion.In addition to Valenti, Maletta is survived by a daughter from a marriage that ended in divorce.
What motivated him to take his programming beyond its sexually explicit origins, Maletta told Gay City News in 2009, was watching a 30-year-old friend “turning into someone who looked 90 six months after being diagnosed” with what at one time was called gay-related immune deficiency.
AMX-2011-11-12T17:34:00-05:00<
Sides of faith collide at Detroit prayer rally
By Niraj Warikoo
Detroit Free Press
DETROIT - Christians streamed into Ford Field on Friday for a 24-hour prayer event led by a controversial group as about 150 protesters demonstrated outside.
Chanting, “Stop the hate” and “Spread the love,” the protesters said the prayer rally inside the stadium promotes division and hatred. Led by controversial preacher Lou Engle of Kansas, the event was organized and promoted by a group that often criticizes Muslims, gays, Catholics, Jews and African-Americans.
Members have used militaristic language against a variety of people, especially Muslims in metro Detroit.
Engle and the organizers of the prayer event, known as The Call, have said local Muslims are under demonic control. They have tried to include local clergy, but over the past week, a growing number of ministers have denounced Engle.
Outside Ford Field, the protesters featured Baptist, Catholic and Methodist pastors who criticized Engle.
“I’m about the separation of faith and hate,” said the Rev. Ed Rowe of Central United Methodist Church in Detroit.
“You can’t hate and be righteous,” said Germany Bennett, pastor of True Oracles of God, a Detroit church. “Hatred is a sin. We believe in love.”
The Rev. Charles Williams of Historic Solomon Baptist Church in Detroit said Engle is promoting an extremist agenda that is anti-Detroit and anti-minority.
Engle and his supporters, with a movement called the New Apostolic Reformation, were behind a controversial prayer rally for Texas Gov. Rick Perry that kicked off his presidential campaign.
“God did not call us to hate,” Williams said.
Cheryl Voglesong of Royal Oak, Mich., held up a sign that read: “Take Thy Fearmongering back to Kansas. We don’t want it.”
“I’m a Christian, and we’ve lived peacefully with Muslims for 100 years in Detroit,” she said. “Lou Engle and these guys are coming here to attack them? That’s crazy.”
A senior Catholic priest, the Rev. Norman Thomas of Detroit, also attended the protest.
“All of us are children of God,” Thomas said. “Not hate, nothing but love.”
AMX-2011-11-11T21:58:00-05:00<
By Kenneth D. Ackerman
(c) 2011, The Washington Post
WASHINGTON -- Tackling five myths about J. Edgar Hoover.
1. Hoover was a gay cross-dresser.
Despite rampant speculation -- that Hoover was gay, a cross-dresser or had no sex life -- the truth about his sex life is nearly impossible to pin down. Hoover was married to his job and zealously protective of his public image. He lived in an era when being outed as gay would cost anyone his career and reputation, and he was not one to risk such consequences.
The story that Hoover, a lifelong bachelor, participated in cross-dressing all-male sex parties in New York hotel rooms, as reported by British writer Anthony Summers in a 1993 biography, has been widely debunked by historians. The story’s source, the wife of a businessman and Hoover confidante, had a grudge from a contested divorce, and other investigations of the story came up empty.
If Hoover did have a gay relationship, most likely it was with his longtime FBI associate director, Clyde Tolson, another lifelong bachelor -- but even this is disputed. Hoover and Tolson worked together more than 40 years. They traveled on vacation and official business, rode to work together, shared lunch nearly every day at Washington’s Mayflower hotel and sometimes even wore matching suits. Hoover, at his death, left Tolson most of his estate. Their relationship, by all appearances, was stable, discreet and long-lasting. But what they did physically behind closed doors, if anything, was between them.
Hoover did have some high-profile female friendships, including with actress Dorothy Lamour. In his 2004 biography of Hoover, Richard Hack cites sources claiming that he was discovered spending the night with Lamour in a Washington hotel -- an isolated incident -- and that when she was asked later about a sexual relationship between them, she said, “I cannot deny it.”
2. Hoover’s secret files kept presidents from firing him.
Hoover had particularly good relationships with at least two presidents he served under: Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. Of the others, Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon all considered sacking him, but, files aside, they had good political reasons for keeping Hoover. Even in the 1960s, he had a strong public image as an honest, competent law enforcement technocrat. While his relationship with John and Robert Kennedy was often tense -- yes, it was Hoover who, through wiretaps of Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana, discovered President Kennedy’s liaison with mob-connected socialite Judith Campbell Exner -- Hoover also could have been covering up embarrassing secrets for Camelot.
Still, Hoover built his FBI files into an intimidating weapon, not just for fighting crime but also for bullying government officials and critics and destroying careers. The files covered a dizzying kaleidoscope -- Supreme Court justices such as Louis Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter, movie stars Mary Pickford and Marilyn Monroe, first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, physicist Albert Einstein, Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller III, among others -- often replete with unconfirmed gossip about private sex lives and radical ties.
By 1960, the FBI had open, “subversive” files on some 432,000 Americans. Hoover deemed the most sensitive files as “personal and confidential” and kept them in his office, where his secretary, Helen Gandy, could watch them. Today, with few exceptions, Hoover’s FBI files are open for any American to see at the National Archives. They make fascinating reading and paint a stark portrait of power run amok.
3. Hoover was a coward.
Critics often accused Hoover of cowardice, pointing, for instance, to the fact that he didn’t join the military in June 1917, when he finished law school and the country was entering World War I. Instead, he took a draft-exempt job at the Justice Department.
Hoover, by most signs, would have preferred to join his contemporaries going “over there” to fight the Germans. At Central High School in Washington, D.C., he joined the cadet corps and was its captain during his senior year. He relished the pomp and ceremony, marching in uniform and palling around with his fellow cadets.Later, at the Justice Department’s Radical Division, Hoover’s craving for action led him in February 1920 to participate in a raid against one of the most dangerous leftist groups of that period, the L’Era Nuova gang in Paterson, N.J. The agents carried guns and confiscated plenty of weapons and explosives. Hoover interrogated the group’s leader and extracted the only direct evidence about the 1919 anarchist bombings that prompted that year’s Red Scare.
Rather than fleeing the draft, the more likely reason that Hoover took the Justice Department job in 1917 was that his 61-year-old father, Dickerson Naylor Hoover, who suffered from mental illness, had been forced to leave his job as a government clerk without a pension, making young J. Edgar financially responsible for the family. If anything, Hoover’s guilt over staying behind probably added to his later zeal against subversives at home.
4. Hoover was African American.
There are two theories that Hoover had African American heritage. One has it that he was born to an African American mother and secretly adopted by the Hoover family, a theory based on discrepancies in certain birth and census records. However, genealogist George Ott investigated the claim, failed to substantiate it, and said he believes it to be false.
More plausible are stories like that told by writer Millie McGhee in her 2000 book “Secrets Uncovered: J. Edgar Hoover -- Passing for White?” McGhee, an African American, claims that, based on family stories and genealogical records, she and Hoover had a common ancestor, a great-grandfather, making him a distant cousin. Hoover’s father’s family had roots in Virginia and Mississippi in the antebellum South, where interracial liaisons were not uncommon. Some mixing in his family tree is a possibility but remains unproven.
Hoover’s attitudes on race reflected those in the old Washington, where he grew up, a largely segregated Southern city. As FBI director, he repeatedly refused to involve the bureau in investigating anti-black race riots or protecting black civil rights workers in the South, insisting that these were matters for local police, even after the Supreme Court’s 1954Brown v. Board of Education decision.
5. Hoover’s legacy is a stain on the FBI’s reputation.
Hoover leaves a bipolar legacy. For better or worse, he built the FBI into a modern, national organization stressing professionalism and scientific crime-fighting. For most of his life, Americans considered him a hero. He made the G-Man brand so popular that, at its height, it was harder to become an FBI agent than to be accepted into an Ivy League college.
But he also stands as a reminder that 48 years of power concentrated in one person is a recipe for abuse. It was mostly after his death that Hoover’s dark side became common knowledge -- the covert black-bag jobs, the warrantless surveillance of civil rights leaders and Vietnam-era peace activists, the use of secret files to bully government officials, the snooping on movie stars and senators, and the rest. Hoover’s name, carved in stone at the FBI headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue, should serve as a caution to the public and the dedicated professionals who work inside. The FBI’s license to intrude into people’s lives gives it a special public trust. If the daily reminder of Hoover’s excesses can help impart that message, it will be the best safeguard for the positive side of his legacy: a modern, professional, science-based and accountable detective force serving the public interest.
Kenneth D. Ackerman, a Washington, D.C. lawyer, is the author of “Young J. Edgar: Hoover and the Red Scare, 1919-1920.”
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N.Y. CLERK WHO REFUSED GAY MARRIAGE LICENSES WINS RE-ELECTION
By SCOTT RAPP
(c) Copyright 2011 Religion News Service
LEDYARD, N.Y. (RNS) The town clerk in Ledyard, N.Y., who drew national attention after refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples won re-election on Tuesday (Nov. 8).
Incumbent Rose Marie Belforti, a Republican, defeated Ed Easter, of Aurora, who launched a write-in candidacy about six weeks ago after learning of his opponent’s stance against New York’s new Marriage Equality Act.
The unofficial results gave Belforti a 305-to-186 victory -- her sixth straight two-year term as the town’s part-time clerk. Belforti thanked supporters and said they “chose religious freedom over religious intolerance.”
Her position polarized residents in this mostly rural town of about 1,900 residents on the east side of Cayuga Lake.
Belforti, 57, unsuspectingly found herself in the middle of an emerging test case after she told the town board in August that her Christian beliefs prevented her from issuing a same-sex marriage license to a Florida lesbian couple that owns a farm in nearby Springport.
Belforti said she should not have to relinquish her religious freedoms to do her town job, which pays $13,002 a year. The town has since asked a deputy clerk to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in hopes that action will be considered to be in compliance with the state’s Marriage Equality Act, which was passed in June.
(Scott Rapp writes for The Post-Standard in Syracuse, N.Y.)
DSB/AMB END RAPP
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Couple wins once-in-a-century wedding on 11-11-11
By TAMARA LUSH
Associated Press
PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. (AP) - On Friday - 11-11-11 - Sheila Barnett and Melissa Patrick will walk down an aisle and stand in front of a giant, crescent-shaped window at the Crowne Plaza in Manhattan, look each other in the eyes and say, “I do.”
The same-sex couple from Florida was one of 11 couples to win the hotel’s “Marry Me 11-11-11 Wedding Contest” on Facebook, which gave away dream weddings on that once-in-a-century day that’s supposed to be lucky for love: Nov. 11, 2011.
Yet as Barnett and Patrick packed their nearly identical dresses for the ceremony (Patrick will wear white, Barnett, purple), they tried not to think about one fact: when they return home, their marriage won’t be legal in Florida.
“I don’t like it,” said Patrick, who sat in her living room on a recent day with her arm around her fiancei.
Same-sex unions aren’t recognized under Florida law. In 2008, Florida voters amended the state’s constitution to define marriage as a union only between one man and one woman. A gay rights group is sponsoring legislation in the upcoming session to provide domestic partnership benefits to committed same-sex couples in the state.
A same-sex couple from New York and another from Ohio also won the contest. Ohio has an amendment similar to the one passed in Florida, but gay marriage is legal in New York. The state also recognizes unions from other states.
The couples flew to New York on Wednesday. On Thursday, everyone was to rehearse for the ceremony and then tour the city.
Barnett and Patrick, who are both 37, haven’t always been in same-sex relationships - and are reluctant to identify themselves as lesbians, saying that their love “blindsided” both of them. Barnett was in a relationship with the same man for 20 years - married for many of them - and Patrick had a long-term relationship with a man. Both have children from those prior relationships.
“I fell in love with a person, for who she is and everything about her,” Barnett said. “Not because she was a female.”
Said Patrick: “Love doesn’t discriminate, I’ll tell you that. You’re able to fall in love with anyone if it’s right.”
The two women met 20 years ago in high school and played on the softball team together. They were friends, but nothing more. After graduating, Patrick moved to Indianapolis and became a firefighter.
They kept in touch throughout the years and in 2010, Patrick visited Florida on vacation. She and Barnett spent every day together, and when it was time for Patrick to leave, they both cried.
“When she left it was one of the saddest days of my life,” said Barnett, who is a hairdresser. “Something was going on, but I didn’t know what it was.”
The couple dated long distance, and then Patrick quit her job as a firefighter and moved to Florida so they could be together. They initially planned to hold a commitment ceremony in the summer of 2012, but a friend told them about the Crowne Plaza contest a few months ago.
“Two women, true love, awesome story and it’s just that simple,” they wrote. They asked friends and family to vote for their entry, and were chosen in October. Steve Ward, a matchmaker who also is the star of VH1’s “Tough Love” show, will perform the ceremony on Friday. The hotel will serve a lavish lunch and provide plum-and-white flower bouquets or corsages, along with wedding photos and video. As part of the promotion, every couple stays at the hotel free and was able to invite 10 friends or relatives.
Patrick and Barnett spent the past week getting ready for the trip: having their nails done in an identical French manicure with black heart details on their ring fingers, buying winter clothes and deciding where to visit once they get to the city. Barnett has never been to the Big Apple.
“She wants to go purse shopping,” Patrick said of her fiancei. “I want to visit Ground Zero and eat some New York pizza.”
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Follow Tamara Lush on Twitter at http://twitter.com/tamaralush.
Ugandan gay activist wins RFK Human Rights Award
BRETT ZONGKER
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - A leading gay rights advocate in Uganda, where being gay is a crime, is set to receive the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award in Washington.
Ethel Kennedy, the widow of the former attorney general, and Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry will award the prize to Frank Mugisha at a ceremony Thursday.
The 29-year-old activist has been fighting a bill in Uganda’s parliament that would punish gay people with prison or death. It would also threaten jail time for family members, doctors or priests who don’t report gays to authorities.
Mugisha blames U.S. evangelicals for promoting homophobia in Uganda.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Mugisha says the Kennedy award sends a message to Uganda and more than 70 countries that criminalize homosexuality that gay rights are human rights.
Grazer agrees to replace Ratner as Oscars producer
By Nicole Sperling
Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES - Oscar-winning producer Brian Grazer agreed Wednesday to take on the job of producing the Academy Awards telecast in February, stepping into the void left by Brett Ratner, who resigned after an anti-gay slur. Grazer and the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences did not immediately announce a host to replace Eddie Murphy, who dropped out after Ratner exited.
Grazer, who has produced five movies this year including Clint Eastwood’s “J. Edgar” and Ratner’s “Tower Heist,” had been asked to helm the Oscar show earlier this year, but declined. Given Grazer’s ties to Ratner and Murphy, there was some speculation that he might try to persuade Murphy to stay on as host, but a person close to the Grazer who was not authorized to speak publicly said he wouldn’t try to lure Murphy back into the fold.
“It’s very gratifying to be part of a show that honors excellence in the medium to which I have devoted so much of my career,” said Grazer, whose “A Beautiful Mind” earned a best picture Oscar a decade ago. Grazer will share producing duties on the broadcast with industry veteran Don Mischer. “Don is a legend, and I am excited to work with him.”
Grazer could have a horse in this year’s Oscar race with “J. Edgar” (which opened in limited release Wednesday), but his other recent films have disappointed at the box office, including “Cowboys & Aliens,” “The Dilemma,” and the Gus Van Sant-directed indie “Restless.” His high-profile television project “The Playboy Club” was canceled after just a few episodes.
Still, academy president Tom Sherak said: “Brian Grazer is a renowned filmmaker who over the past 25 years has produced a diverse and extraordinary body of work. He will certainly bring his tremendous talent, creativity and relationships to the Oscars.”
Grazer has not been able to completely steer clear of controversy himself. Last fall, the trailer for his film “The Dilemma” was widely criticized for including a scene in which actor Vince Vaughn said, “Electric cars are gay"; the promo debuted in the wake of a series of suicides of teenagers who killed themselves after being bullied because of their sexual orientation. The line was later excised from the trailer, but it remained in the film.
It’s been a tumultuous few days at the academy, an organization which strives to avoid controversy. Ratner came under fire after uttering an anti-gay slur during a Q&A last weekend following a screening for “Tower Heist” and then further discomfited the academy by discussing his sex life on Howard Stern’s radio show. After initially apologizing for his behavior on Monday, he resigned Tuesday.
On Wednesday, his handpicked host Murphy followed suit. Murphy, who co-starred in Ratner’s “Tower Heist,” didn’t give a clear reason for his exit, but it seems he did not want to remain in the job without Ratner, whom he considers his creative partner, at the helm of the show.
“First and foremost I want to say that I completely understand and support each party’s decision with regard to a change of producers for this year’s Academy Awards ceremony,” Murphy said in a statement issued early Wednesday. “I was truly looking forward to being a part of the show that our production team and writers were just starting to develop, but I’m sure that the new production team and host will do an equally great job.”
Murphy’s exit was not a surprise among academy members. Said animator Craig Bartlett in an email the night before Murphy bowed out, “Everyone got an email from Tom Sherak saying that Ratner was stepping down. It made me wonder if Eddie Murphy would go down, too - I figured he came with Ratner. Maybe he will, and Neil Patrick Harris will take the job - that would be poetic justice.”
Still, the sudden flurry of events left some in a bit of shock.
“That’s about as precipitous a fall from grace in Hollywood as I’ve seen,” said one filmmaker who has worked closely with Ratner and doesn’t want to tarnish his relationship. “To go from the ‘Tower Heist’ premiere two weeks ago where he was being embraced by everyone to today is staggering.”
Coming into the job with only about 16 weeks before the Feb. 26 broadcast, Grazer will be under pressure to quickly find a host and assemble a team of writers.
AMX-2011-11-09T22:52:00-05:00<