Presidential candidate Mike Gravel would like to share a few words on Barack Obama‘s recent gay drama. Read what the gay-marriage supporting Democrat has to say for himself, after the jump.
Barack Obama’s refusal to dump the anti-gay singer from his South Carolina event shouldn’t surprise anyone, especially gays. The fundraising phase of the campaign is over; now the candidates are focusing on courting voters. Gay fundraisers lined the pockets of Clinton, Obama and Edwards despite their refusal to support your marriage rights. Now they’ll further distance themselves from your cause to get votes in places like SC. When the general election starts, forget it.
This is what happens when the LGBT community doesn’t stand up and insist that their candidates express a total commitment to equality. One piece of advice: Be suspicious anytime you hear politicians talk about their ‘moral values.’ No one collects $100 million without compromising his or her moral values constantly.
Dennis Kucinich and I are the only candidates who support marriage equality. I constantly say that anyone who refuses to support your right to marry is keeping you in second class citizenship. Yet, the gay leadership was silent this week when NBC kicked me out of the next debate because I didn’t raise enough money. (The gay press was also silent except Queerty! Love you guys.) Eventually your community will learn to embrace your true allies. Until then, expect more anti-gay politics from Democrats as well as Republicans.
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For more of Gravel’s progressive politics, check out his campaign site!
Rt. Rev. Dr. RES
I happen to like former Senator Mike Gravel. He is a first generation American, born in New England of French-Canadian parentage. He was educated in parochial schools where Quebec was the cultural capital of their lives.
Somehow, Mike Gravel went to AK and won election to the Senate several terms. He lost in the Raygun landslide of 1980, to a man who was in the back pocket of Big Oil and both GOP senators are in deep doo-doo with federal investigators.
Yes, the two NON-DLC democrats vying for a DLC nomination are Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel. Before one vote is cast, the corporate MSM has dismissed Gravel as the AARP librul looney and Dennis as the boy wonder elf pencil necked LIBRUL.
HRC and Salmonese – wanting a Hillary coronation event – tried to remove Mike Gravel from the LOGO forum. Imagine – one of two men who vote for FIRST CLASS CIVIL MARRIAGE and you try to remove him. You may now use your “motion discomfort bag”.
The HRC dismisses Kucinich and Gravel and applauds those who offer civil unions and second class citizenship. Got it!!!!!
Rt. Rev. Dr. RES
The Human Rights Campaign, if it has an ounce of integrity, should support either former Senator Mike Gravel or Congressman Dennis Kucinich for the office of President of the United States of America.
It should invite members and others to vote for them in the Democratic primary. They should at the time of the general election, suggest that they vote for the party who will best serve their interests, or failing that reality, the party that will do less harm than the other. The GOP sins by committing harmful acts; while the Dems sin by omitting harmful acts from occurring.
adamblast
He’s not even remotely electable, but he’s right on target with his comments.
*Of course* Barak couldn’t dump McClurkin. McClurkin is one of the most popular and successful gospel acts going. And they’re *all* homophobic. That’s the state of the black gospel world today: anti-gay and openly so.
Barak was dumb as hell to inadvertantly pit the two groups together. But don’t pretend McClurkin is an isolated case, or that preaching against gays isn’t perfectly mainstream as far as the black gospel world is concerned. We’ve all got a long way to go.
rock
The Human Rights Campaign is a corporate elitist organization designed to perpetuate their own salaries and self interests and get on MSNBC as a consultatant/commentator (ala Hillary Rosen) who isn’t even neutral since she said early on she is a Clinton supporter.
HRC officials have made it clear they are for Clinton…they don’t serve the GLBT’s community interests..if they did, they would be for Gravel or Kucinich and pushing the other candidates to support same sex marriage and GLBT issues…HRC is a joke…tell us something else we don’t know.
Rt. Rev. Dr. RES
Yes, Adam, he is “right on target with his remarks, especially the one when he says that someday the American gay community will learn to support their allies.
In Canada, politics is parliamentary and therefore by law, adversarial politics. We face each other and there is a line in the middle of the floor where the purpose was to make sure that a sword could not reach someone on the other side of the line.
The collegial seating in your congress suggests that political parties were not initially envisioned and that laws would be achieved by compromisory consensus.
We activists were able to count on the votes of all but two Bloc Quebecois MP’s; all NDP (left) MP votes, all but a dozen Liberal MP’s and of course, to please them, an open vote. The Tories were first all opposed except for two votes in 2005.
Our last vote under Tory minority government even added a few Tory libertarian votes. The Liberals, now in the loyal opposition, was purged of several pseudo liberals in the party riding contests, or if not, replaced by NDP MP;’s
You do not compromise with evil, even when you lose you win in the long run of things. The opposite is true as well.
Rt. Rev. Dr. RES
This old bishop says ” You ROCK, ROCK !!!!!!!
Charley
Mike, I support you because I respect myself as a gay man, truly proud to have survived 73 years of unfair treatment being treated as a second class citizen. I thought about suicide alot when I was young. Glad I didn’t do it because there is light of truth at the end of the tunnel. Thank you for all you do.
James
Look. I am talking to the gay community. Let me try to understand this, you are angry at Barack Obama because he will be on the same stage as someone who says he used to be gay and that it was his choice and not by birth? Would this be correct? Guess what? We still need Obama to bring our gay soldiers who are fighting for us, safely home from Iraq. We still need Obama to reform our health care so that my gay brothers and sisters will have the reasonable and affordable care they need. We still need Obama to use his international relation experience to put an end to the nuclear threat to Iran so you do not have to live in fear creating a World War 3. We still need someone like Obama who unlike the other candidates worked as a community organizer in communities in Chicago like Cabrini Green to improve conditions to make a better place for you. You remember Cabrini Green don’t you? “Candy Man†ring a bell? My point is all of these issues domestic and international are so much bigger than the issue on one man who who says who used be just like you. Would you agree?
ilnazhad
Gravel is the best candidate.
Check out a Gravel rap/campaign video made by a bunch of sluts I know:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pw9oJgf4UTc
HOLLLAAA!
PeaceBrother
Apathy and inertia are killing this country! Let’s not be so quick to dismiss the possibility of being governed by a government that is OF the people and FOR the people. Why are we so willing to throw our hands up in the air and surrender to those who would lead us all into eternal chaos?
Stand up now for Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich (wouldn’t that be an easy vote to cast with both of these courageous and honest leaders on the ticket!).
Get involved! Write letters to NBC, CNN and anyone else to call attention to NBC’s travesty of democracy and excluding Mike Gravel from the upcoming debate.
We can use this as a springboard to energize people in this country to take back their government from the corporate special interests who worship war and abhor peace, at all costs. No cost to them. Only profits.
Let’s all show a little SPINE for once and stand up and be counted.
Resist the temptation to surrender and hold fast to the dream that we can all live in a nation we are proud of!
It all starts with US! We don’t have to settle for leaders who care only about their own “special interests”.
If we don’t all do whatever is in our own powers to make it happen then we will have no one to blame but ourselves if we fail.
However, if we succeed in making our dream of a peaceful and prosperous nation come true, we will have only ourselves to thank. Do your part please!
Steven
I also think it’s important to hear what Senator Obama has to say on this topic:
http://www.advocate.com/news_detail_ektid50021.asp
Shawn
I am an independent voter, and I could care less about people I don’t know having sex or getting married. Why do conservatives have such a fascination with what consenting gay adults choose to do with their lives? It’s none of their business!
For people that claim to despise the liberal “nanny state” and want government out of their affairs, they sure don’t walk the walk.
underbear1
Rev Sidden STAND with your brothers and sisters OUTSIDE this gospel Hate-Fest, at the candle light vigil.
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2006-8/1210139/STAND2.jpg
if Obama takes the stage with McClurkin, I’m SO OVER obama