I just read this comment via "Bangor Daily News" and am apoplectic:
On 1/17/09 at 07:58 AM, JoyJessun wrote:why not just bend the two "Bills" over and give them a shot at each other! haha
does anyone else find it insane that it is even a question if two gays should be allowed to marry? There was a time, in the good old days when they'd just be tossed off a bridge!
The person "tossed off a bridge" that JoyJessun is referring to was Charlie Howard.
Charles O. Howard (January 31, 1961 - July 7, 1984) was an American hate-crime victim in Bangor, Maine in 1984.
As Howard and a male companion, Roy Ogden, were walking down the street, three teen-aged men, Shawn Mabry, Daniel Ness, and Jim Baines, aged 15-17, harassed Howard for being gay. The youths chased the pair, yelling homophobic epithets, until they caught Howard and threw him over the State Street Bridge into the Kenduskeag Stream, despite his pleas that he could not swim. He drowned, but his friend escaped and pulled a fire alarm. Charlie Howard's body was found by rescue workers several hours later.
This event galvanized the Bangor community in ways similar to the killing of Matthew Shepard, although the case never attained the same level of national notoriety. Baines later spoke to various groups in Maine about his involvement in the case and the damage that intolerance can do to people and their community. His story, Penitence: A True Story by Edward Armstrong, was published, although Baines received no royalties from the book.
The Bangor City Council and members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community have been working on a monument to be installed along the Kenduskeag Stream honoring the memory of Charlie Howard as the victim of a hate crime.
On November 14, 2007, the Bangor City Council approved the monument, and the Charles O. Howard Memorial Foundation is raising money to install the monument.
On July 7, 2004, a twentieth anniversary walk was held in memory of Howard. The Maine Speakout Project maintains the Charlie Howard Memorial Library in Portland, Maine. The library is open to the public.
This incident inspired a similar scene in the beginning of Stephen King's novel It, where three homophobic teenagers throw an openly gay man, Adrian Mellon, over a bridge and into the Kenduskeag, there to be set upon and murdered by the monster Pennywise.
Mark Doty wrote a poem about the tragedy called Charlie Howard's Descent.
The murder is also the inspiration for a novel by Bette Greene titled The Drowning of Stephan Jones.
Back in 1984, there were no blogs for discussion of the crimes and travesties that occur daily like we do now. The local media coverage was limitted to the Bangor Daily and the 3 TV channels' evening news coverage. Discussions occured via gossip in homes, at the country store where one got the morning paper and coffee.
One of the lingering memories I have of those days is a sick "joke" passed among my father's friends- that gays arm-in-arm or holding hands were walking around downtown Bangor, wearing life jackets.
Apparently these memories are not mine alone.
I realize that alot of work needs to be done to create true equality and fairness in Maine, let alone the rest of the nation. But right now I am sick, knowing that someone has taken a bit of humor out of a tragic and criminal act and let it fester in their craniums for 25 years.
This time it was Cardinal Ennio Antonelli at the mic sticking his foot in his mouth at the World Meeting of Families in Mexico City, but he inadvertently went off of the reservation and suggested that homosexuality within a personal relationship was OK.
"the homosexual experience must stay within the confines of a private relation, a relation between friends."That didn't go over well after being published in a French paper, so The Vatican's Pontifical Council for the Family had to quickly issue a lengthy homophobic "clarification" :
1. Homosexuality is not a necessary component of society, as is the family. Society is organized around the relationship of the couple that is formed by a man and a woman. They find each other in conjugal life and in family life. In this sense, the couple and the family enter into the sphere of social life, and because of this, of civil law. The relationship between two persons of the same sex is not the same as the relationship of a couple that is based on the sexual difference. These two situations depend on structures that are not of the same nature. The homosexual relationship does not enter into this social sphere. It is, as such, a private question. Legislators make an anthropological error when they want to socially organize homosexuality. They run the risk of provoking an intellectual confusion, as well as confusion of identity and relationships. It should not be forgotten that confusion frequently favors insecurity, unstable relationships and violence, when legislators don't respect the fundamental sense of human relationships. The family is a common good of humanity that is not at the free disposition of legislators to respond to the subjective and problematic demands of today. The individual desire cannot be the foundation for the law. Here we find ourselves in the presence of a confusion between the law, which is of the public domain, and the desire, which is subjective.2. Affirming that homosexuality is a private fact, the president of the Pontifical Council of the Family is not justifying it. The cardinal simply underlined that homosexuality does not contribute favorably to the organization of individuals and of society. The exercise of homosexuality does not reflect the truth of friendship. Friendship is inherent to the human condition in that it offers relationships of proximity, help and cooperation, in a courteous and amiable climate. Friendship should be lived chastely.
3. The Church maintains its preoccupation of welcoming and accompanying homosexual persons. Every person that has difficulties to live their sexuality properly is called to find Christ and to live, consequently, in accord with the demands of liberty and responsibility of faith, hope and charity. On the other hand, it is contrary to the truth of the human identity and the design of God to live a homosexual experience, a relationship of this type, and even more to attempt to demand same-sex marriage. It is contrary to the true interests of the persons and of the needs of society. It constitutes a transgression of the sense of love as God has revealed to us through the message of Christ, of which the Church is a servant, as an expression of love toward the men and women of our time.
1) There aren't already gays and lesbians serving (closeted and openly) in the military.
Having openly gay men and women in close living quarters with heterosexuals would make straight soldiers uncomfortable, to say the least. The morale of units would decline almost immediately, and re-enlistments would most certainly suffer.They are already there, bub. And many of their colleagues and superiors know they are gay or lesbian. Re-enlistments suffer when you have endless military actions like those our soon to be former Dear Leader sends troops out to engage in.
2) There's a ton of homosex and aggressive pick up action that's going to happen if DADT is repealed. He must have deep conversations with Elaine Donnelly.
[Y]ou need to understand that homosexuals predominantly want to serve in the military in order to have access to people their own age with whom to engage in sex. It's just that simple. It's all about sex, and not about serving the nation. It is not unheard of to have a lesbian officer coerce a lower enlisted woman into engaging in lesbian sexual activity. "I'm an officer and you're a private, who are they going to believe if you tell them I forced you to have sex with me?" Or two male soldiers go out on the town. One has too much to drink, and when they return to the barracks, he passes out in his buddy's room. When he wakes up, his "buddy" is performing fellatio on him. These are two actual cases, and many more like them have occurred, which prompted the ban to begin with.3) Lee has some serious issues with his masculinity and delusional heterosupremacy.
I'll tell you why having openly homosexual military members in the military is an awful idea. Go to West Hollywood or San Francisco the last weekend in June during "Gay Pride" festivities and take a good look at what these people are doing. Then ask yourself if any of them should have anything to do with national security, and if they should serve with, or be in charge of you, your son or your daughter if they were in the military.What are these increased costs he's talking about? Does he mean unprotected sexual activity of the nature some gays and straight folks engage in? Are we to believe that STDs the sole province of gay folks? Go take a look at any stats in any community that has abstinence-only education before lobbing that lunacy over the fence....Could the Army stop a homosexual transvestite soldier from wearing a female soldier's uniform while on duty? Should gays be allowed to form civil partnerships in the military and be allowed to occupy military family housing and adopt children? Is the military prepared to handle increased health care costs associated with homosexual activity?
Since Lee says there will be an exodus of heteros from the military should homos will be allowed to openly serve, he's afraid there will be a return of the draft to stem the bleeding. Well, that would certainly reduce any half-cocked military misadventures right quick, wouldn't it?
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