Mike Gravel’s not going down without a fight!
The former Alaska governor, who this week jumped from Democratic party to the Libertarians, sent us an exclusive letter pledging to fight for gay marriage. The issue, he says, has been ignored during this campaign, an absence he blames on both corporate media and his former colleagues in the Democratic party.
Read what adorable Gravel wrote, after the jump…
This week I dropped out of the Democratic Party and announced that I am now running for president under the Libertarian Party. Over the past year, I tried to convince the Democratic Party to join the fight for marriage equality. I told audiences throughout the country that as long as our government deprives gays and lesbians of full rights, including the right to marry, we are guilty of relegating millions of our fellow Americans to second-class citizenship.
On gay marriage, there’s no difference between the presumptive Republican and Democratic nominees. Neither of them believes you are worthy of equal rights. This disgusts me and it should disgust you.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
Throughout my campaign, the LGBT community has been my greatest ally (especially Queerty!). When HRC refused to invite me to their gay issues debate, you barraged their offices with phone calls and emails until they caved. You stood up for me and I stood up for you by challenging my opponents to grow up and embrace gay marriage.
Did you notice that after the corporate media dumped me from the debates, gay marriage ceased being a major issue? As a third party candidate I’ll make sure marriage equality moves back into the national spotlight. My battle against homophobia in the Democratic Party may be over, but my fight for your rights has only just begun.
Senator Mike Gravel
For more on Gravel’s renegade campaign, check out his website.
-M-
I *heart* Sen. Gravel, always have, and always will. I maintain that it was a huge injustice on the part of the corporate media to effectively marginalise his, and Dennis Kucinich’s, campaigns. 🙁
jordanboston
For the record, I’m not sure Gravel was ever governor of Alaska.
Charlotte
Well it’s always the candidates who don’t have a chance in hell who seem to support LGBT issues tooth & nail. Marriage is a basic civil right that should be attainable by all Americans if they choose. For the truth about gay marriage check out our trailer. Produced to educate & defuse the controversy it has a way of opening closed minds & provides some sanity on the issue: http://www.OUTTAKEonline.com
Gabriel
you’re right, jordanboston, he was a representative in the state house of representatives, and then a US senator for alaska. never a governor. he’s still a crazy outspoken dreamer. i appreciate him for that.
Charley
I appreciate his speaking out. Regret he is not a gay man running for President. He is similar to a parent in PFLAG. I don’t know where he got his empathy for gay causes, but it is good he has it.
Brian Miller
We Libertarians are delighted to welcome Senator Gravel to our party and will do everything in our power to fight for equality under the law for LGBT people.
We invite LGBT people and supporters to join with us too. The record is clear that of the three parties that will appear on the ballot in all 50 states in 2008, only Libertarians are serious about equality under the law.
M Shane
Libertarians generally don’t seem to have a clew that on all important issues i.e. equality of economic opportunity, and democracy: their positions don’t really imply political freedom: Their delusion, which I think is honest is that there is a correlation between freedom and unregulated free-enterprise. They are just another version of right wing but don’t know that the real end product of their idealism.is basically, like the republicans’ closer to Stalinism than to democratic socialism.
Brian Miller
Libertarians believe that you have a right to liberty. We don’t believe you have a right to another’s property.
Socialists like M. Shane disagree, and place their “right” to the properties of others above the equality of LGBT people.
Socialists have done very little for real equality under the law for gay people in marriage, adoption, military service, and tax treatment. In fact, whenever they’re confronted with their dismal records on gay issues by Libertarians, they attempt to change the subject by dragging up failed economic theories of “wealth redistribution.”
Gay people who want real dignity and equality under the law should consider who is fighting for that, versus who is attacking their allies and refusing to fight for their rights.
M Shane
You sound confused Brian.
Most of the countries with rights for gay people are Socialist democracies. Spain’s Spocialist part just legalized Gay marriages, Scandinavia, etc. You have to have political freedom political freedom.
Fascism has had it’s chance and failed again and again and a rose by any other name…
Brian Miller
In Spain (and Scandinavia), gay adoption is illegal. Lesbians seeking to start families are denied access to artificial insemination. And in Scandinavia, gays are denied access to marriage and are instead segregated into separate-and-less-equal “domestic partnerships.”
The average New Jerseyan gets more civil rights under the law, as a result.
I guess you might call a state that bans same-sex adoption a “utopia,” but I call it “Florida.”
As for “fascism,” you’re the one praising the actions of the Cuban government, which is a unitary dictatorship that imprisons political dissidents and claims ownership of most of the assets of production for the benefit of the ruling class. Sounds pretty fascist to me, even if it’s dressed up in the doctrinaire and obsolete drag of anti-individualist socialism.
M Shane
Brian: If it was the case that the countrys’ assets were passed on to the ruling class, that would be just like the US currently and would be fascist.
The actuality is that I have no love for any form of dictatorship-either Stalinist or Corporatist.
The thing that both ofthem fear is democratic politics which has only proven to work well with a combination of Keneysian regulated privatization and socialism so that no one is victimised. Right wingers hate the idea that there is an alternartive to Stalinism which is compatible with democracy. The lie is always that Stalinism is no better than unregulated Corporatism..
It’s been a convenient lie in the anti intelectual and uneducated U.S.to promote the delusion that stalinism is like democratic Socialism.
M Shane
They couldn’t be more different from each other.