Democratic National Committee chairman and convenient amnesiac Howard Dean simply doesn’t understand gay, black or any other minority Republican: “They can’t become more diverse. Who in their right mind, if they were African-America or Hispanic or Asian-American, if they were gay or lesbian, would join the Republican Party?” Log Cabin leader Patrick Sammon’s not pleased and wants the candidates to issue reactionary statements.[GCN]
Dismissal.
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todd
The self-loathing ones love the repubican party!
abracadaver
I guess no one has ever heard of changing the system from within. Why traditional values such as hard work, personal responsibility, less government, and spiritual/community values are something gays and lesbians shouldn’t or can’t have is something I just don’t get.
Oh, wait, I remember…gay Democrats are usually just as small-minded, mean-spirited, and knee-jerk reactionary as their more conservative brothers and sisters, and sometimes more so.
Aaron
I think it is more to do with how the republican party is viewed now that people seem to have a hard time wrapping their heads around. My bf is a Republican. The real kind. Not the phonies that have been passing themselves off as we see currently.
abracadaver
I wonder what qualifies a person to be a “non-phony” Republican. Being willing to eat children rather than abort them? Taking from the poor through outright strongarm robbery, rather than a reverse-socialism redistribution of wealth upward? Hmm.
emb
And how has “changing the system from within” worked for you, LCRs? Has the demand for an anti-gay constitutional amendment been pulled from the party platform? Has the party embraced ENDA or rejected DADT, pushed for gay adoption, or hate crimes legislation? Are openly gay and lesbian families welcomed into the big tent?
Right. All that change from within does a lot of good.
Conservative gays and lesbians should look to the libertarians if they don’t like the “liberal” dems. Staying put in the repub party is self-defeating, supportive of oppression and intolerance, and suggestive of a considerable self-loathing. Don’t see many black folks joining the KKK, or atheists getting baptized as catholics, hoping to institute reform from the inside.
Dom
Here’s what the response should be from Obama and Clinton:
“Fuck you, you delusional Republican fucks. Keep supporting the people that want to burn you at the stake, and when they finally fuck you over for the last time you can join the gay Dems at the 2009 Inaugural Ball.”
abracadaver
“[F]*ck you, you delusional Republican fucks. Keep supporting the people that want to burn you at the stake, and when they finally fuck you over for the last time you can join the gay Dems at the 2009 Inaugural Ball.â€
…where they will promptly “reach consensus” (read: cave in) with the other side of the aisle, and bring about nothing more than even more stringent legislation restricting your rights, such as DOMA and DADT…while smiling and telling you we did our best.
Once Dems finally do something more than pay lip service to the LGBT community, maybe I’ll become a one-issue voter and join them. Until then, I’ll stick with the party that most broadly represents my values.
emb
Glad the repubs most broadly represent your values, Abracadaver. Honesly, though, I don’t see how that trick’s possible when they reject you as a human being, even while you share their warmongering, regressive, and theocratic values.
The dems are surely not perfect, nor do their policies necessarily represent mine; but on the broad spectrum that lies between outright rejection of my rights as a human (i.e., the repub party platform), and full acceptance of the diversity that is humanity, the mealy-mouthed baby-steppers make a lot more sense to me.
abracadaver
Then, by all mean, have a mealy-mouthed party with Dems. I don’t see where anyone here has said that you shouldn’t, or accused you of being some sort of apologist (or worst) for LGBT equality just because you choose to affiliate yourself with the Dem party.
Thank you for assuming that I share G.W.’s and D.C.’s “warmongering, regressive and theocratic values”. I’ll return the favor and assume that you’re a fetus-murdering, race baiting socialist bent on the evisceration of the Bill of Rights in order to accomplish the destruction of our constitutional republic and replacing it with a quasi-fascist welfare state propagated on a historically hostile & revisionist agenda. One good turn deserves another, after all.
CT-n-SF
Dean asked a simple question: “Who in their right mind, if they were African-America or Hispanic or Asian-American, if they were gay or lesbian, would join the Republican Party?â€
I dont think the candidates have to apologize or distance themselves from Dean’s statement. All one has to do is look at how the last three Repuklican administrations have treated these groups and it is easy to agree with Dean’s conclusion.
I suspect that the Log Cabin members are either kicking up dust to create controversy and/or their miserable party affiliation is compounded when they are reminded about it during an election year. Stop whining and keep working to change the GOP from within…we can ice skate in hell together when you get that task accomplished.
DanGOP
As someone who is in his right mind, and is Gay and a Republican, I am sorry to hear Chairman Dean, a man I do actually respect on a lot of issues (rarely agree with, but greatly respect) issue a statement of such idiocy.
As someone who does share the so-called “warmongering, regressive, and theocratic ways” of the GOP, or so it is implied from my membership therein, I find it hilarious that Democrats accuse the Republicans of being small-minded, when the Democrats, as a general rule, are just as small minded and petty and petulant. For those who wonder why I am not a Libertarian or a Democrat, I’ll give you plenty of reasons: foreign policy (I’m a Kissingerite/Nixonian), abortion, hate crimes laws, taxation, the Drug War, entitlement reform, agricultural and manufacturing subsidies, trade, the War in Iraq, and even, to a certain extent, values. I rarely, mostly on the courts, the environment, religion/speech, criminal procedure, and marriage, side with more liberal or libertarian groups. That’s why I am a Republican, not a Libertarian, and not a Democrat. I am truly disgusted by Chairman Dean’s insinuation that his party has something to offer me. As a hard line, card carrying member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, I don’t want Chairman Dean’s handouts.
Miss Understood
I agree with Dean. The republican party is by nature anti gay, racist, and classist. It’s not worth changing from within. It’s an evil organization and if you can’t see that you are in deep denial.
chandler in lasvegas
I have found that Gay conservatives have great issue by being defined by their sexuality. Their greed, however, is not an issue as it permeates every corner of their lives. That is how a homosexual can be a Republican.
Bill Perdue
“And how has ’changing the system from within’ worked for you, LCRs?” About as well as it has for you Democrats.
EMB, how could anyone with an ounce of decency support the party of genocide in Iraq? There’s more than just naiveté or delusion involved in supporting the Democrats and/or Republicans. Its rank hypocrisy to claim that “the dems are surely not perfect’ but want us to support them anyway because “the mealy-mouthed baby-steppers make a lot more sense to me.†Did they make sense during the Korean and Vietnamese war? Does the murder of over a million Iraqis by invading US armies make sense? Does it make sense to support their bipartisan polices that bust unions, wreck the environment, slash our standard of living , give us the worst health care in the industrialized world, and are deeply eroding our constitutional rights?
Does it make sense to go back for more beatings after the Democrats single handedly trashed our agenda, gutting ENDA to the point of uselessness, tossing the hate crimes bill in the garbage and refusing, although they controlled Congress, to even consider repealing DOMA and DADT. I’m speaking about Democrats, but the same criticisms apply to the Republicans.
When you vote for the Democrats you vote for a package, and the contents of their package are the same as those of the Republicans; no better, no worse. If enough people are naive enough or self destructive enough to vote for them we’ll get four more years of war, GLBT bashing and economic disaster. Please explain exactly how that makes sense.
tommy
Miss Understood the repuclicans are the party of Lincoln who freed the slaves. Look to Robert Byrd Senator from West Virgina who was A Klan member.
Bill Perdue
Tommy – you’re dead wrong. Lincoln gave legal recognition to what former slaves accomplished by themselves. They fled in enormous numbers to the Union lines and then supported the war effort by enlisting and working in labor battalions.
The Emancipation Proclamation was a desperate measure to promote and approve what had already happened. Its primary purpose, from the point of view of the Republicans, including the radicals, was to deal an economic body blow to the turncoat slavocracy.
Soon after the war ended the Republicans cut a deal with the Democrats, withdrawing Federal troops and betraying the Second American Revolution. The result was the imposition of Jim Crow measures across the former Confederacy which in fact reinstituted a form of slavery. Large numbers of former slaves were charged under draconian and racist Jim Crow laws and sentenced to multi-decade terms of penal servitude.
Today both parties are cesspools harboring bigots against immigrants, African Americans, unionists, women and the GLBT communities.
Afroguapo
+1 Bill Perdue. Are you a history teacher or political science professor? Your points always show judgment/reason and a trace of history/facts. It’s tiresome how people always simplistically reference Lincoln as the Great Emancipator, more revisionist history in this country. Both parties are indeed cesspools with the democrats engaging in subterfuge that they are for the common working man, blacks and gays and the Republicans trumpeting moral values when there are a lot of immoral people at the helm.
Tommy, this is Lincoln in one of his finer moments:
“I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races – that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything.”