Updated below. According to Christian Grantham at OutletRadio:

Cheryl Jacques, the Executive Director of the Human Rights Campaign,
has been fired. According to sources that wish to remain anonymous,
HRC’s Board of Directors voted to replace Jacques with Hilary Rosen as
interim executive director. The vote took place in an emergency
conference call Monday night.

Read OutletRadio for the developing details. Here’s my own initial reaction:

Rosen is the former recording-industry lobbyist who crushed Napster and ordered onerous lawsuits against thousands of music-sharing youths and their parents. She is, quite obviously, more experienced in successful lobbying and corporate relations than Jacques.

Rosen would not be my first choice for a permanent replacement:  Even though I lean somewhat toward Democratic viewpoints, I also believe that HRC needs to improve its connections with moderate Republicans and to build equal-rights efforts from the local community level upward. I am unaware of what Rosen can do to address these needs.

Conservative Republicans control Fox News and dominate the pundits of MSNBC; meanwhile, CNN’s Anderson Cooper (who should know better) skews equal-rights debates by pitting first-tier fundamentalists like Jerry Falwell against… Al Sharpton. Lacking the largesse of the religious right and corporate executives, gay equal rights advocates have little media access.

Perhap, if the report about HRC is true, then Rosen’s experience in entertainment and media will help out there.

Update:

HRC announcement:

Citing a difference in management philosophy, the Human Rights Campaign’s boards and its president, Cheryl Jacques, announced that she will resign from her position….

The boards announced that HRC Board of Directors Co-chair Michael Berman and Hilary Rosen will lead the organization through the transition while a search for a new leader is underway. Berman is president of The Duberstein Group in Washington and Rosen led HRC’s strategic efforts to defeat of the FMA.  Rosen will be focused on internal, strategic issues and management.

Christian Grantham:

Human Rights Campaign board members Vic Basile and Mike Berman shared the news that Cheryl Jacques has been terminated.

How the Grinch Stole Marriage

by Mary Ann Horton, Lisa and Bill Koontz

(with apologies to Dr. Seuss)

Every Gay down in Gayville liked Gay Marriage a lot……
But the Grinch, who lived just east of Gayville, did NOT!!

The Grinch hated happy Gays! The whole Marriage season!
Now, please don’t ask why. No one quite knows the reason.
It could be his head wasn’t screwed on just right.
It could be, perhaps, his Florsheims were too tight.
But I think the most likely reason of all was
His heart and brain were two sizes too small.

"And they’re buying their tuxes!" he snarled with a sneer,
"Tomorrow’s the first Gay Wedding! It’s practically here!"
Then he growled, with his Grinch fingers nervously drumming,
"I MUST find some way to stop Gay Marriage from coming!"

For, tomorrow, he knew… All the Gay girls and boys
would wake bright and early. They’d rush for their vows!
And then! Oh, the Joys! Oh, the Joys!

And THEN they’d do something he liked least of all!
Every Gay down in Gayville the tall and the small,
would stand close together, all happy and blissing.
They’d stand hand-in-hand. And the Gays would start kissing!

"I MUST stop Gay Marriage from coming! …But HOW?"

Then he got an idea! An awful idea!
THE GRINCH GOT A WONDERFUL, AWFUL IDEA!

"I know what to do!" The Grinch laughed in his throat.
And he went to his closet, grabbed his sheet and his hood.
And he chuckled, and clucked, with a great Grinchy word!
"With this beard and this cross, I look just like our Lord!"

"All I need is a Scripture…" The Grinch looked around.
But, true Scripture is scarce, there was none to be found.
Did that stop the old Grinch…? No! The Grinch simply said,
"With no Scripture on Marriage, I’ll fake one instead!"
"It’s one man and one woman," the Grinch falsely said.

Then he broke in the courthouse. A rather tight pinch.
But, if Georgie could do it, then so could the Grinch.
The little Gay benefits hung in a row.
"These bennies," he grinned, "are the first things to go!"

Then he slithered and slunk, with a smile most uncanny,
around the whole room, and he took every benny!
Health care for partners! Doctors for kiddies!
Tax rights! Adoptions! Pensions and Wills!
And he stuffed them in bags. Then the Grinch, with a chill,
Stuffed all the bags, one by one, in his bill.

Then he slunk to the kitchen, and stole Wedding Cake.
He cleaned out that icebox and made it look straight.
He took the Gay-bar keys! He took the Gay Flag.
Why, that Grinch even took their last Gay birdseed bag!

"And NOW!" grinned the Grinch, "I will pocket their Rings."
And the Grinch grabbed the Rings, and he started to shove
when he heard a small sound like the coo of a dove.
He turned around fast, and off flew his hood.
Little Lisa-Bi Gay behind him sadly stood.
The Grinch had been caught by small Lisa-Bi.
She stared at the Grinch and said, "My, oh, my, why?"
"Why are you taking our Wedding Rings? WHY?"

But, you know, that old Grinch was so smart and so slick
He thought up a lie, and he thought it up quick!
"Why, my sweet little tot," the fake Shepherd sneered,
"The judges are evil, the other states weird."
"I’ll fix the rings there and I’ll bring them back here."

It was quarter past dawn… All the Gays, still a-bed,
all the Gays still a-snooze when he packed up and fled.
"Pooh-Pooh to the Gays!" he was grinch-ish-ly humming.
"They’re finding out now no Gay Marriage is coming!"
"Their mouths will hang open a minute or two
then the Gays down in Gayville will all cry Boo-Hoo!"

He stared down at Gayville! The Grinch popped his eyes!
Then he shook! What he saw was a shocking surprise!
Every Gay down in Gayville, the tall and the small,
was kissing! Without any bennies at all!
He HADN’T stopped Marriage from coming! IT CAME!
Somehow or other, it came just the same!

And the Grinch, with his grinch-feet ice-cold in the snow,
stood puzzling and puzzling: "How could it be so?"
"It came without lawyers, no papers to sort!"
"It came without licenses, came without courts!"
And he puzzled three hours, till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before!

"Maybe Marriage," he thought, "doesn’t come from the court.
Maybe Marriage…perhaps… comes right from the heart.
Maybe Marriage comes from all the words the Gays say.
Words like Husband, like Wedding, and Spouse who is Gay."
And what happened then…? Well…in Gayville they say
that the Grinch’s small brain grew three sizes that day!

And the Gays had their Weddings. They promised for life.
They swore to be faithful, to Wife and her Wife.
The Husbands were happy, to each other they vowed
To be Out and be Honest, be Gay and be Proud.
They told all their neighbors and friends of their Spouse,
They told of their Marriage and sharing their house.
They said "We got Married." They shouted it loud.
Their marital status was "Married and Proud."

And the minute his heart didn’t feel quite so tight,
He whizzed with his load through the bright morning light.
And he brought back the rings, cake and Gay birdseed bags!
And he… …HE HIMSELF… hung the Gay Rainbow Flag!
…
The Lord looked down, at the proud and the tall,
and said "These are my children, and I love them all."

The moral of this story is that we don’t need a piece of paper and the approval of the state to get married. We can just get married. Instead of having a commitment ceremony, we can have a wedding. Instead of partners, we can have husbands and wives. Instead of calling our relationship a Domestic Partnership or a Civil Union, we can call it a Marriage. Whether any government recognizes it is separate from what we call it. It’s a free country and we can call ourselves what we like.

In 5 or 10 or 20 years, with plenty of visible same-sex married couples, the world won’t see us as strange or scary, we’re just the married couple down the street that happens to be gay. Eventually, the legal recognization of our marriages will follow.

If we allow ourselves to voluntarily sit in the back of the bus, we’ll never make any progress. Rosa Parks had to sit in the front of the bus to make a difference. We must as well.

Copyright (c) 2004 by Mary Ann Horton. Permission granted to copy in whole, with attribution. This is a parody of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas."

From Kirk Talley’s e-mail newsletter today:

Sunday morning I sang in Kilgore, Texas at the First Bapt Church of Danville. Pastor Freeman Pierce invited me to share my testimony and sing. The church is a new church, only been established 9 weeks. Freeman shared with me before the service how the church was started and the outreach and the vision of the people there. I was blessed to be there already. I shared my testimony that morning and I noticed lot’s of people wiping tears. After I concluded, Freeman came to the stage and shared with me that in the audience that morning were a lot of people that were dealing with strongholds in their lives. A murderer, a cocaine addict, a heroine addict, a doctor who was going to prison for illegal drug use. …. He even shared that a prostitute had tried to solicit sex with him a few weeks prior. He witnessed to her and his wife went and picked the girl up and took her to the church. The young girl accepted Christ as her savior and has been free from drugs for the past 16 days.

The desire to help troubled souls is honorable, and I’m glad that people have been given solutions to their addictions and other wrongs.

However, the limited list of sins is instructive: murder, drug addiction, prostitution. There is no mention of sins discussed most often in the Bible: greed, sloth, war, hubris, usury, exploitation of the poor and vulnerable. And sadly, there is no obvious indication whether Pastor Pierce can make rational distinctions between same-sex affection and manslaughter.

If Talley disagrees with this buffet-style morality — an "ethic" in which churches freely indulge in sin at Food Table A while judging those who eat from Table B — then he does not share that disagreement publicly.

At the risk of overgeneralizing, I’ll phrase this another way: I see a pattern in the testimonies of deliverance given in the southern gospel music circuit. In limiting their moral vision to stereotypical red-state cliches, many of America’s churches and religious spokespersons seem to have blinded themselves to blue-state (and purple-state) moral imperatives.

We’ve previously addressed PFOX’s undiplomatic statements against public officials who are skeptical of exgay ideology. In the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., PFOX fought unsuccessfully for the inclusion of exgay propaganda with the school system’s proposed sex-education curriculum. The curriculum, sans PFOX literature, was approved unanimously for a test run by the school board.

The Washington Times notes Nov. 18 that the proposed curriculum has a potential opponent in a newly elected member of the board who will take office Dec. 1. Stephen N. Abrams says the curriculum may overstep the boundary between tolerance and advocacy.

The Times gives no clue to Abrams’ opinion about PFOX’s conflicting positions:

• opposing comprehensive sex-education programs while using them to distribute exgay ideological tracts;
• supporting antigay discrimination while claiming to affirm diversity.

(Hat tip: John L.)

Lisa Miller and her partner, Janet Miller-Jenkins, exchanged vows in a civil union ceremony four years ago in Vermont. Through artificial insemination, Lisa conceived and gave birth to Isabella in Virginia in 2002.

In 2003, Lisa adopted an exgay sexual identity, took Isabella and fled to Virginia, where she found a judge willing to violate Vermont custody orders. From Vermont’s perspective, Lisa is now a law-breaking fugitive who has turned her daughter into a political pawn in the culture wars. (Previous XGW coverage. Washington Blade article, Nov. 26.)

Last week, Vermont Family Court Judge William Cohen named Janet as a legal parent of Isabella. This week, The Winchester Star in Virginia reports that Frederick County continues to ignore the Vermont rulings.

The Washington Post included an antigay "magazine" insert in last Friday’s edition of the newspaper. The insert was loaded with disputed statistics, some from discredited researchers, according to critics.

John Aravosis brings us up to date today (Nov. 24) — providing links to the insert and weak responses from the Post, and urging letters and phone calls to the Post.

Wayne Besen challenges the integrity of insert editor Derek Grier and writer James Canady. Besen also notes that Focus on the Family was a major contributor to the magazine, which features articles by Focus chairman James Dobson and Focus staffers Glenn T. Stanton and Pete Winn.

The insert is just the first of many that are planned by Grace Christian Church, according to the magazine web site. Other sponsors are listed here.

“YOU BELONG TO ME”

The Truth about Sexual Abuse

By Joe Kort, MSW

This article’s title reflects the perpetrator’s belief, that the victim now belongs to him/her, to do with as he/she desires; that his or her sexual needs, wants and sexuality overrules those of the victim’s. The victim will spend a lifetime unconsciously reenacting their original sexual abuse or, hopefully, working on healing it and removing the ill effects of the perpetrator’s abuse. For sexual abuse survivors, the nightmare is that they are forced to keep a sexual secret. Their tormentor threatens to harm them or someone they love if they ever tell.  So they don’t—giving the perpetrator even more power. By not going through the healing process, the victim does belong to their perpetrator.

Sexual abuse complicates and confuses an individual’s developing awareness of sexuality. It does not make a person gay, straight, bisexual or force sexual or romantic orientation in any direction.  However, it can imprint unwanted behaviors or absence of behaviors and desires—and herein lies the problem—leaving a person’s real sexual desires hidden, even to him/herself.

A Definition of Sexual Abuse

Whenever one person dominates and exploits another person through sexual activity or suggestion, using sexual feelings and behavior to degrade, humiliate, control, injure or or misuse, this qualifies as sexual abuse. In The Sexual Healing Journey: A Guide for Survivors of Sexual Abuse author and educator Wendy Maltz equates sexual abuse with a violation of a position of trust, power and protection, “an act on a child who lacks emotional & intellectual maturation.” It promotes sexual secrecy among its victims, so that even their own sexual drives, libido, orientation and desires become secrets to themselves.

Overt sexual abuse involves direct touching, fondling and intercourse , against a person’s will. A few examples include French kissing, fellatio, sodomy, penetration with objects, genitals and fingers, and masturbation. Use of force is typically involved—often physical, but more often psychological or emotional, such as difference in status or experience, as in employee/employer, adult/child, older boy/younger boy.

Covert sexual abuse is more subtle and indirect. Examples of this include prolonged hugs, sexual stares, inappropriate comments about body parts such as buttocks or genitals, shaming someone for the kind of man they are, (or more frequently, homophobic name-calling), or treating a child as an adult or even a partner for emotional support. Books like Pat Love’s Emotional Incest Syndrome: What to Do When A Parent’s Love Rules Your life and Kenneth M. Adams’s Silently Seduced: When Parents Make Their Children Partners: Understanding Covert Incest do a great job in reviewing and detailing covert sexual abuse’s negative effects.    

Both gays and straights make the mistake of connecting sexual abuse with homosexuality. Their main rationale is that gays and lesbians, must have been sexually abused; and that being “homosexual,” means you are a pedophile. This derives from the old psychoanalytic theory that one’s sexual orientation is created in the first few years of development, and that if any trauma or negative influences “impair” it, then adolescence offers a second chance at correcting one’s heterosexuality gone wrong.  Sexual abuse was assumed to be one of the primary reasons that one could get “confused” and turn away from innate heterosexuality.

Too many of today’s therapists still consider this true. Some therapists, even gay and lesbian therapists, still see adolescence as a time to help homosexual teenagers re-learn “how to be heterosexual.” Many insist that homosexual clients must have been sexually abused  I have many gay and lesbian clients who still believe this, telling me they must have been sexually abused in their past, even if they have no memory of such a thing.  And those who were sexually abused assume that the abuse explains why they’re gay. So the myth persists, and confusion continues over sexual abuse and its effects on gays and lesbians.

            Contrary to what so many psychotherapists would like to believe, there is no evidence that sexual abuse can shape, much less create, anyone’s sexual orientation: The only thing it can do is confuse young people about what their sexual orientation really is. However, with good therapy and healing, the sexually abused can come to know their true sexual and romantic orientation, be it gay or straight.

Disclosing Your Sexual Abuse

Male survivors of sexual abuse often worry that in seeking help, they’ll be perceived as “less of a man.”  They worry they will be seen as less masculine. Of course the male survivor of sexual abuse fears what others will think of him because, as Maltz says, “our society gives boys the message that men should be able to stand up for themselves and fight off danger. They’re also told that if a man gets hurt, he should go it alone instead of seeking help.” 

Many people already believe the old stereotype that gay men are “more like women.”  Even gay men themselves will discriminate against effeminate men, saying, “If I wanted women, I’d have been straight,” and many gay personal ads specify, “No fems.”  This all creates the mindset that being gay—or at least, not a macho man—makes you less than masculine. So for gay men to tell others about their abuse would only add to the insult that they are less of a man. Imagine the profound double bind of being gay and having been sexually abused! “Because most abuse of males is perpetrated by other males,” writes Maltz, “heterosexual male victims may worry that they will be seen as homosexual if others hear the details of what occurred. Gay men,” he continues, “may wonder if the abuse made them gay.”

On the other hand, women are more inclined to go to therapy. They may not initially realize that they’ve been sexually abused, but should they discover it during therapy, they are more willing to deal with it head-on than their male counterparts. Lesbians are concerned that their therapist will try to insist that this abuse is what “turned them into” lesbians and/or might worry that this is in fact the case.  Gay men also get this type of feedback and can worry about this. It’s important to arm yourself with as much information about sexual abuse as you can. Learn—for yourself,—where you stand as a sexual abuse survivor. Do not accept how your perpetrator, therapists, family or anyone else want to define you. You need to belong to yourself, as you really have all along!

CNN reports that the FBI knows of six homosexuals reportedly murdered in 2003 because of their sexual orientation. The 1,200 hate crimes committed due to sexual orientation amount to about one-seventh of the total for the year.

The FBI counts are no doubt artificially low for all demographics, due to underreporting by victims and poor recordkeeping by authorities. Of 11,900 law enforcement agencies reporting, only about 16 percent reported hate crimes of any kind in their jurisdictions, according to CNN.

The category of hate crimes includes acts of intimidation, vandalism or property destruction, murder, assault, robbery, burglary, theft, and arson.

I think it’s reasonable to assume no one was killed because they are heterosexual or ex-gay. But still, considering how often ex-gays complain (in religious-right propaganda) of being victimized by unnamed gay bogeymen, I think it would be interesting to see whether any of them have really pursued such complaints through official channels that can be properly documented, monitored, and prosecuted.

Kevin Rector, a student at the University of Maryland, writes in an op-ed
about the bigotry of a university physics department staff member, Bill
Norwood, who sent out a mass e-mail to students and faculty who had listed themselves in an ad as "allies" of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people. Rector ably disputes Norwood’s prejudices, up to a point. He says:

Norwood
argued students wishing to "dissociate themselves from AIDS-connected
identities" would feel discriminated against because of this list [of allies]. He
also claimed support for the LGBT community would deprecate the use of
"ex-gay" programs. This is an aggressive and narrow-minded message, no
matter what language. The AIDS epidemic is not limited to gay
populations, and claiming that to escape an AIDS-connected identity one
must separate himself or herself from the LGBT community here on the
campus only isolates and hurts LGBT students.

My identity is not determined by my sexual preference, nor should I
be associated with AIDS because I am gay. To identify yourself as part
of the LGBT community or alliance is not to assume an "AIDS-connected
identity," but Norwood’s language implies this.

When you are gay, finding yourself can sometimes be difficult.
Society says being gay is incorrect while your heart and mind tell you
otherwise. Out of this societal impression come "ex-gay" programs -
programs that look at homosexuality as something that can or cannot be
pursued.

Norwood wrote that the LGBT organization showed a "lack of
objectivity regarding whether individuals experiencing varying degrees
of same-sex attraction should pursue straight or gay lifestyles."

Being gay is not a game of tag. You are not gay if you pursue the
lifestyle and straight if you do not. Being gay is an internal
experience first. In suggesting that "ex-gay" programs can help people
get rid of same-sex attraction, Norwood suggests being gay is incorrect.

Norwood, the antigay staffer, promotes the religious-right myth that gay and exgay people cannot co-exist. While the student, Rector, defends Norwood’s freedom of speech up to a point, he also seems to reinforce the myth when he suggests it is inappropriate for antigay faculty to express their views via university e-mail.

Half-truth = whole truth? Exodus reprints Prof. Warren Throckmorton’s recent article of half-truths about the failure rate of exgay ministries. Exodus’ headline for Throckmorton’s article is "The Whole Truth."

Slapping the other cheek: The New York Times’ Maureen Dowd comments on the religious right’s angry-mob response to the re-election of George W. Bush.

Politics, hate corrupt the faith: Michael Crowley, a senior editor at The New Republic, writes at length about James Dobson — "the religious right’s new kingmaker" — at Slate.

PFOX mom: Betty DeGeneres, mother of comedian Ellen DeGeneres, advises a 24-year-old male on what to do about a mother who harangues him with exgay propaganda.

Exgay moderate: The Northwest Arkansas Times profiles Chad Thompson, founder of Inqueery and author of the new book, "Loving Homosexuals As Jesus Would." XGW has a copy of the book and will be reviewing it.

Meet Mat Staver: The St. Petersburg Times profiles Mat Staver, antigay legal expert and a major figure in national and state efforts to deny marriage and civil unions to gay couples.

Servant of the religious right: I have previously mentioned the incompetence of The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank in reporting about conservative churches’ battle against marriage and civil unions for gay couples. AlterNet does a better job of explaining how the churches’ 2004 war against gay couples was orchestrated not by a spontaneous groundswell of morality, but by highly political and influential religious-right organizations. The article also asks where the religious right might take the Bush administration next.