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Campaign seeks to claim honorary Harvard degrees for gay students expelled in 1920
In 1920, Harvard president Abbott Lawrence Lowell formed a secret court to hunt down gays. Nine students – Donald Clark, Eugene Cummings, Kenneth Day, Stanley Gilkey, Joseph Lumbard, Ernest Weeks Roberts, Edward Say, Keith Smerage and Nathaniel Wollf – were expelled.
Today, a campaign is under way to grant posthumous degrees to the students, who were ousted not only from Harvard, but also from Cambridge, Mass.
A demonstration on the university campus is planned for Feb. 29.
Two of the students eventually were allowed to return – Gilkey and Lumbard – but the others were permanently barred. And one, Cummings, 23 and three weeks from graduation, committed suicide.
The reinstatement campaign is called “Their Day in the Yard” and is about two years old.
The Their Day in the Yard petition, posted on Change.org, asks the university to issue the honorary degrees, clear the expelled students’ records, reverse the ruling of the secret court and officially abolish the court.
More than 2,000 people have signed the petition, which will be delivered on Feb. 29 to the office of Harvard president Drew Faust.
Kaia Stern, a visiting faculty member at Harvard and a supporter of Their Day in the Yard, said, “We’re challenging the Harvard community to live up to its mission to ‘liberate students to explore, to create, to challenge, and to lead… to advance knowledge, to promote understanding, and to serve society.’”
“It’s time to ensure these seven students receive justice, and are honored officially by the University with posthumous degrees,” she added.
Petition signer Nyani Martin said, “I’m a Harvard alumna, and my degree is tainted by the injustice of having denied it to these students.”
The letter to Faust states:
“The Harvard Secret Court Victims of 1920 deserve ‘Their Day in the Yard.’ This petition seeks to end the disgrace. I write to ask that you officially abolish the Harvard Secret Court of 1920. Furthermore, I urge you to grant the seven expelled students posthumous honorary degrees. These students have no justice until their records have been expunged and the Court’s decision is reversed. Until this is done, the Court and its work is still very much alive.”
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Advocate names 2012 gayest U.S. cities
The Advocate magazine has released a list of its gayest cities for 2012, choosing to bypass the traditional gothams and resorts.
The list includes Salt Lake City, No. 1; Orlando, Fla., No. 2; Cambridge, Mass., No. 3; Fort Lauderdale, Fla., No. 4; Seattle, No. 5; Ann Arbor, Mich., No. 6; St. Paul/Minneapolis, No. 7; Knoxville, Tenn., No. 8; Atlanta, No. 9; Grand Rapids, Mich., No. 10; Little Rock, Ark., No. 11; Portland, Ore., No. 12; Austin, Texas, No. 13; Long Beach, Calif.; No. 14 and Denver, No. 15.
The magazine also offered a list of honorable mentions:
No. 16, Washington, D.C.; No. 17, New Orleans; No. 18, San Francisco; No. 19, Pittsburgh; No. 20, Salem, Ore., No. 21, Madison, Wis.; No. 22, Eugene, Ore.; No. 23, Oakland, Calif.; No. 24, Boston and No. 25. Kansas City, Mo.
City to cover added federal taxes gay employees must pay
The city of Cambridge, Mass., is paying a stipend to gay and lesbian married public employees to cover an additional federal tax they’re forced to pay due to the Defense of Marriage Act.
The city council voted to pay quarterly stipends to 22 public employees who must pay federal taxes on the value of the health insurance benefits that their same-sex spouses receive from the city. The same benefits for heterosexual spouses aren’t taxable. But same-sex couples must pay the tax because federal law doesn’t recognize their marriages, even though they’re legal under state law.
Republican leaders in Congress are defending the Defense of Marriage Act in court at taxpayer expense, even though two federal judges have found portions of it to be unconstitutional. The White House has stopped defending it for the same reason.
Republicans hope to amend the United States Constitution to permanently ban marriage between couples of the same-sex.
The Human Rights Campaign says at least 17 private employers have adopted policies similar to the one in Cambridge to compensate gays and lesbians who are forced to pay additional taxes due to their sexual orientation. But Cambridge is the first municipality in the nation to take this action.
City officials estimate that gay and lesbian public employees must pay an additional $1,500 to $3,000 a year in taxes for healthcare benefits. The stipend will cost the city a total of $33,000 annually.