Bill Richardson's Got Pride
Live in Iowa? Gay? Like Democratic Presidential Candidate and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson? Well, you're in luck, because the 59-year old politico will be appearing at Grand Rapid's Cedar Rapid's Pride Fest this weekend!
Richardson - the first Latino presidential candidate - has a history of supporting the homos: he pushed for a restricted domestic partnership bill in New Mexico. Unfortunately, the bill failed to garner enough votes for passage.
No doubt that political push - and this weekend's dragalicious photo ops - will provide his enemies will plenty of fuel for their fire. Hopefully it will also show gays that at least one of the Democrats cares enough about the purple people to march.
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Methinks it's Grand Rapids, Michigan, not Grand Rapids, Iowa. Anyway, good for Bill!
Unfortunately, he was for DOMA and is still proud of that. I just can't support a candidate who supports DOMA, otherwise I'd LOVE to support Richardson, because he's the most distinguished man in the race.
I agree with Ryan. While Richardson at first struck me as the one Dem candidate I felt I could support, further research has shown me that Richardson's support of LGBT people, as with too mahy of these neo-Dems, is qualified and asterisked. I can't support him, and I don't feel that voting for the "most electable" candidate is better than voting my conscience. I feel more certain that Mr. Gore will actually run again, though.
If like Richardson but disagree with him on DOMA, whom are you going to support? Every Democrat but Kucinich refuses to support marriage rights for LGBLT people.
Richardson was the only Dem to mention LGBT rights at the Winter DNC Convention: "And I want to tell you, too, in New Mexico, our fight for equality extends to sexual orientation. For the first time in state history, we have a hate crimes law and we've extended civil rights protections to include sexual orientation and we're providing state health insurance for domestic partnerships."
Richardson supports extending to federal benefits and equal tax treatment to same-sex couples who are parties to a union legally recognized by their state. He also supports extending federal benefits for same-sex couples and their children.
DOMA isn't going to repealed in one quick action, it will time and smaller steps. With Richardson as President we'll see significant progress and in a second term, building on the gains of his first term, repeal of DOMA.
A bird in the hand is better than two in the bush.