Hey Robert Gibbs, listen up: Every time you stand in front of that podium, from here until Barack Obama acts to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, you should expect to be grilled about the president’s ABSOLUTE LACK OF ACTION in protecting gay men and women in the military. As this reporter points out, the president had no problem intervening to stop the release of terrorism suspect abuse photos and yet he refuses to intervene in the active and on-going dismissal of gay servicemembers.
So why not issue an immediate executive order to at least halt DADT dismissals?
GIBBS: The president, as you know, supports changing that because he strongly believes that it does not serve our national interest. He agrees with former members of the Joint Chiefs in that determination. Unlike photos, the durable solution to Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is through the legislative process, and the president is working with Congress and members of the Joint Chiefs to ensure that that happens.
REPORTER: But couldn’t he in the meantime put a moratorium on these discharges until that can be accomplished?
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.
GIBBS: The president has determined that’s not the way to seek any sort of lasting or durable solution to the public policy problem that we have.
REPORTER: How would you respond to the criticism that dismissing qualifying linguists endangers the troops?
GIBBS: I would respond by saying the president has long believed the policy doesn’t serve our national interests.
Now just so we’re understanding this correctly: Obama intervening in the release of torture photos is supposed to be a “lasting or durable solution” to the problem of U.S. officials TORTURING DETAINEES, but not stopping the dismissal of gay men and women doesn’t even help, like, keep them from being dismissed? HUH?
rsun
Makes me glad to be Canadian.
Tony
Hmmm. Are we finally getting the picture on this guy. He just does not like the gays, period, end of story. He needed our votes when the election looked like it would be close. Since the Repubs have totally become the brand of last choice, he does not need us, and we are immediately thrown under the bus like a used condom.
Brand Obama is a typical douchebag politician. White libs fell in love with the fact that he could be called “black” while having the same cred as the other so-called Ivy League “progressives” carry without actually caring about those who are facing the reality of economic hardship and real discrimination.
Obama. Bigot. Empty suit. All around douchebag. Bush’s third term. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Michael W.
@Tony: I’m starting to see the light, Tony.
I definitely agree that Obama never would’ve made it if he was white. Also if the media wasn’t in the tank for him from the beginning and did their job, they could’ve uncovered the Jeremiah Wright tapes before Super Tuesday last year when he ran up the delegate count and we wouldn’t be in this mess.
marius
Empty promises and I fell for it.
He even brought back Gitmo – just moved it back to the US.
Indeed, just what we need, more Bush.
Jerry Priori
@Tony: “Brand Obama is a typical douchebag politician”
Quoted for truth!
slider
I saw the light during the primaries and was screamed at by just about every Gay person I know for stating that Obama is a huge homophobe. Obama continues to sadly prove me correct. I did not vote for him nor will I ever vote for him! Tony hit it dead on correct. I indicated in more posts wherever I could blog that Obama would throw us under the bus and then drive the bus over us again and again and that is proven to be correct.
Obama’s tortured reasoning is beyond stupid and if Bush had come up with the same reasoning we would be screaming and protesting and yet the idiots of the likes of HRC stand proudly with Obama.
Dan Savage correctly stated that Obama gets an F for failure..indeed a Minus F, when it comes to his horrible efforts (or dare I say non efforts as evidenced by the moron Robert Gibbs’ responses to the reporters question.)
TheJohnV
Obama = Bush Third Term as far as LBGT equality.
In 2010 and 2012, myself and my straight allies are voting for the third party candidate. I encourage others to do the same. As long as they think we will always vote fot them, they’ll never do anything for us except hold out a carrot.
Matt Deco
We, the gays, are simply a demographic to the rest of America – including Obama. Give us fake promises or fake support and we will support you with our vote or our money.
And not just our votes and money, but our activism as well. Canvasing, going on drives, actually giving a damn about a politician…
Obama, you mention gays and lesbians in your effing presidential acceptance speech and then you never mention them again.
I guarantee that if gays and lesbians were poor and didn’t have the right to vote, no one would ever give a damn. Because it’s not about civil rights, but about financial rights.
Here’s to us with our disposable income, and our ability to conceal who we are – guaranteeing us the right to vote.
*steps off soap box*
homo politico
People please, DADT is not a policy that can countermanded by the Prez, it is federal law. If the last election is any indication, Americans do not want their President to be acting outside the law.
Were Obama to put a moratorium in place without a legislative change the moratorium would become the battle. I could see that becoming a divisive distraction that may jeopardize winning full repeal.
The guy has been President for like four months of a 48 month term. He has had a cluster f*ck of national and international economic and security crises to deal with. He has reiterated his support for the repeal of DADT and he has laid out a strategy to do it.
I believe we have the best friend the LGBT community has ever had in the White House (remember; DADT is Clinton’s legacy). It is good to keep the pressure on, but if we abandon our friends so quickly what is their motivation not to abandon us?
Tony
” believe we have the best friend the LGBT community has ever had in the White House”
LOL homo politico, and Rhianna had the the boyfriend a woman has ever had in Chris “Slapdown” Brown. Grow a pair, a spine and some self-esteem.
Faeelin
I do have to question “DADT was Clinton’s legacy.”
Yes. And, umm, was the legislative compromise after his effort to allow gays to serve openly failed. Whereas this is Obama refusing to act.
fin
@TheJohnV:
excellent idea
Chitown Kev
@Rhydderch
That’s hilarious.
People forget that Obama got into Harvard, in very small part, because of the oldest affirmative action program known to man, really.
His dad was a legacy and received his MA from Harvard in economics.
Chitown Kev
and Obama as a legacy made him no different from either Bush or the Kennedy’s (although Harvard would not take John-John).
Forrest
I think there would be a lot less ire if Obama would at the very least speak to us directly about his plans for the longterm, instead of hiding behind his mouthpiece.
If all we get is condescension from Gibbs and hearing about a “plan” from Joe Solomnese @ HRC that is apparently secret from the community it impacts, we are going to be angry.
Tony
@Chitown Kev Harvard has many categories for admission besides being a legacy. Legacy + another category (and LGBT is not one of them) certainly helps gaining admission. This is a simple fact, not a racist rambling. Diversity at Ivy League law schools enables people who do not have the typical numbers (grades + LSAT score) admission.
Once again, simple fact, sorry. Not meant to be “racist” but rather to merely be factually correct.
Tony
And from what I understand JohnJohn pick NYU (a top-five law school, by the way) as his first choice. Maybe that is part of the reason he got in.
Tony
Oops, I mean picked. Gotta proof-read.
Forrest
@rhydderch:
Being angry at Obama does not make me a racist. He can clearly multi-task on many other issues. If I was not gay I would still be a liberal democrat because I am pro-choice, ( as a man I don’t feel qualified to even have an opinion on that, and can’t fathom telling a woman what to do with her body). And I support universal healthcare, stem cell, and generally believe that government can work to improve the lives of all Americans.
So, think before you type.
Michael W.
@Forrest: Obamabigot won’t speak to us directly because he doesn’t think we’re worth fighting for. To him we’re just another “culture war” and he wants to avoid us as much as he can because he’s scared that it’ll be fodder for a Republican comeback.
Tony
@ Forrest, didn’t you know that ANY critique of Obama renders a person an insta-racist?!?!? Where ya’ been?!?!?
Sort of like how any critique of Bushtard right after 9/11 made a person unpatriotic and an insta-terrorist.
The more things “change” the more they stay the same.
Different faces, same blind faith and stupidity.
Ken in 212
From “his” first “decision” to send Dollars to kill unborn babies around the world to his torrents of “executive orders,” sleazy appointments, and decisions -which I lost counting- he is putting America on the path of self-destruction.
My advice to all of you who care about this country and your families: if you don’t own guns, start buying.
Hussein is up to no good. His socialist government will not protect you, he is siding with the enemies of America against you. Hussein is accumulating more power and he is fooling the idiots with a teleprompted rhetoric to blind and brainwash his cheerleaders and die-hard fans. Buy guns before he bans them, he might not do it directly and even object to the idea, but he will do it from a back door as his some of his unpopular “decisions” are made, like the fairness doctrine, for example. We are living in the worst time America has ever seen.
We have a douchebag, clown, SOB, usurper, empty suit in the White house who shouldn’t have been there except because he is half-Black, who will ruin America more than any other president ever did. In fact, under Hussein, America will truly never be the same. From Capitalism to Socialism. From Freedom to Government Control and Censorship. rom a strong Military to a weak one that will be the mockery of the world. From standing up and fighting terrorism to submitting to the Muslims. From border control to open borders. From teaching values to more government sponsor depravities in schools and colleges.
You idiots who selected him, I hope you feel good about your Hussein. I know every time he goes on TV, you have an orgasm.
You and your Hussein make me sick
Cameron
You can measure a politician’s principles by his willingness to do something which he believes to be the right thing, but which carries a political cost. Before he was ever elected President, Ronald Reagan did just such a thing, showing political courage in standing up against anti-gay bigotry. In 1978, he came out publicly against the Golden State’s Briggs Initiative which would have banned gay people from teaching in public schools. At the time, that pernicious proposition led in the polls. Not just that, the Gipper was gearing up to run for the Republican nomination for President in 1980. Opposing that initiative would have hurt him among social conservatives, then beginning to migrate to the GOP. And yet gay people prefer Bill Clinton to the Gipper, even though when that Democrat had the choice between keeping a promise he made to us during his successful campaign for the White House (repealing the ban on gays in the military), he cut and run because of the political cost. Unlike Ronald Reagan, when it came to gay people, Bill Clinton showed no political courage. Obama surely senses that there is a political cost to doing these things, so like his most recent Democratic predecessor, he’s cutting and running. Just like when it comes to standing up to a bigoted preacher (whose church he once frequented), when it comes to standing up for gay people, Barack Obama lacks political courage. There are only a handful of issues where we gay people really need the government to act on our behalf. Repealing DADT is once such issue. Federal recognition of same-sex unions is another. It would be nice if there were a politician or two who would act on our behalf, even if doing so meant risking their political careers. Some times, however, when they take such risks, as did the Gipper in 1978, they reveal themselves as men of principle. The short-term loss they suffer to special interest politics, they more than make upin the long term for they help burnish their images as men who transcend petty politics.
Ronald Reagan was such a man. And despite what dewy-eyed Democrats promised us last fall, Barack Obama is not.
Kevin
@homo politico:
At least someone here makes sense! I just think we need a little more patience. People need to remember he wrote a HANDWRITTEN letter to a recently discharged lesbian promising her to repeal DADT. I don’t think it’s fair to call him a bigot or homophobe.
Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com
@homo politico:
@homo politico:
“I believe we have the best friend the LGBT community has ever had in the White House”
Unless you know him personally or are telephathic you base that belief on what? His promises to gays? NONE of them kept….one COULD add “so far” but he’s getting his integrity hung out to dry more and more even by the gay-clueless mainstream media, being hoisted on his own petard as the saying goes, because HE explicitly defined…not racists…not Andrew Sullivan…not Dan Savage…not Richard Socarides…not Nathaniel Frank…not Aaron Belkin….not any gay person…not Hillary or the Hillaryettes…in November 2007 when and how he would keep his DADT promise more than any of the other promises.
HOW? “I will work with Congress and place the weight of my administration behind enactment of the Military Readiness Enhancement Act … I will task the Defense Department and the senior command structure in every branch of the armed forces with developing an action plan for the implementation of a full repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. And I will direct my Secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security to develop procedures for taking re-accession requests….”
HE added, “That work should have started long ago.”
WHEN? “It will start when I take office.”
Note not “100 days after I take office” nor 200 nor 300 nor a year and a half nor 2 years nor in my second term nor “unless I’m too busy” nor “unless the Pentagon don’t want to” nor “unless Congress is dragging its feet.” Or was all the hoopla on January 20th just an elaborate SNL sketch and Bush is really still President?
HE added, “All that is required is leadership.”
To which I add, since he’s done none of this he is by his own definition not a leader. Even accepting the disingenuous assertion that he really is too busy with “more urgent issues,” a leader would not be silent; a leader would not let his assistants make excuses for him. A leader would take five minutes [the time it took Obama to film a promo for George Lopez’s TV show] and say, “I’m sorry that I have been unable to keep my promise as quickly as I’d imagined. You deserve an explanation. This is it. …..”
As for “remember; DADT is Clinton’s legacy, uh, no, it’s not. It is the legacy of homophobic Bob Dole who was angry that Clinton had defeated him; it is the legacy of homohating Sam Nunn who was angry that Clinton beat him to the Presidency and enraged when Clinton passed over him for Secretary of Defense, and a veto proof majority of bigots in Congress. It is the legacy of Nunn’s close friend Charles Moskos, a sexually insecure, homophobic researcher who spun the “unit cohesion” myth all the bigots wrapped themselves in but later admitted all he was really worried about was gays in the shower. It is the legacy of bigot Gen. Colin Powell, then head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and far more popular than Clinton was at the time, who threatened to quit if gays were integrated. It is the legacy of rabid homohater General Carl Mundy, Jr., a predecessor of Obama’s National Security Advisor James Jones among the Joint Chief as Commandant of the Marine Corps, who distributed copies of the rabidly homohating video, “The Gay Agenda,” to every hand he could put it into, and the video’s ruthless producer who saturated the country, Congress, and the Pentagon with over 55,000 copies. It is the legacy of bigot Gen. Merrill McPeak who represented the Air Force among the Joint Chiefs then [and was an early Obama supporter and has told him not to work to repeal DADT]. It is the legacy of the then much larger Antigay Industry who generated 433,000 calls to members of Congress IN ONE DAY…five times the daily average. It is the legacy of some gay “leaders” who were either so naive that they thought Clinton need only wave a magic wand to wipe away Pentagon homophobia or so concerned about protecting their own organizational turf that they couldn’t unite with others in a more powerful front. It is the legacy of a then much more homophobic public [and up to twice as many support lifting the ban now].
And to those who hiss, “But Clinton could have issued an Executive Order to override Congress,” listen to your own excuses why Obama isn’t acting now. To those who scream, “But he signed it,” remember his need to repair for the greater good for the whole country his relationship with Congress and the military and listen to your own excuses for Obama now.
Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com
Correction: of course, George Bush pere was the first to run against Clinton and Dole when he was up for reelection. So let’s just chalk it up to Dole being a homophobic contrarian asshole eager to trip up any Democratic President any way he could.
stevenelliot
I got behind Obama after I realized Hillary had lost. I just wonder a lot if Hillary would have been a ball breaker for us OR if she would have been just like obama.
We’ll never know.
Obama is trying to please the repugnant party until he gets health care reform and a couple of Supreme Court nominations. After that I will judge his actions (or lack there of) on gay rights more harshly.
BUT he did lose my overall support after Rick Warren. There was no turning me around after that!
Mark M
While it would take an act of congress to repeal DADT, it would take a stroke of Obama’s pen to say “this is not a priority for me, I am not going to fund prosecution of military personnel accused of homosexuality”. A phone call and a stroke of the pen.
alan brickman
The people who wanted to prove they weren’t bigots by voting for a black president just voted in another black bigot…big surprise
Michael W.
@alan brickman: Liberal guilt over slavery played a major part. It was as if some cycle of payback to the blacks had to be completed. If it’s done and we can finally stop feeling bad that African-Americans are too lazy to pull themselves up by their bootstraps like everyone else, then maybe it’ll be worth electing him for one term if we can get rid of him by 2012.
John
didn’t the guy just get in office a few months ago? I’m still hoping that things will change in time. maybe it’s a pipe dream, but the day I stop dreaming about what MIGHT be is the day I might as well call it quits. I don’t know the reason why he can’t step in and give an executive order, or why he wont…I just hope that it’s a good reason and not just because he’s another religious finatic who wants to run our country based on what the bible tells him to do.
natt
@alan brickman:
Indeed so. What a horrible irony.
James P. P.
i’m not going to jump on the “Obama is a homophobe” bandwagon… (we as a community always seem to think that the best method of getting our way is by throwing stones). BUT i am very disappointed, and here’s why:
i know that right now, outside of our gay bubble (and i like my gay bubble), there is a political mess coming to head… Pelosi vs. the CIA, the detainee photos and reports, Dick Cheney doing Dick Cheney things…. it’s all a mess. Obama is caught in a corner.
he can’t repeal DADT because that would be a political nightmare… maybe even suicide. there are so many ‘trickle-down’ policies that have to be taken into consideration AND every section of our armed forces (not just the homophobic Army) has to be consulted and EVERYONE must agree. MESS!!
he can’t put a moratorium on gay discharges because it would have to be a written statement/law that was quickly conceived, and it would only be a Band-Aid. if anyone here is old enough to remember, we are stuck with DADT because our community (rightly so) got in an uproar about gays being court marshaled if they didn’t name names. Clinton wrote a quickly written statement AS A BAND-AID. look what that has become!
now, have we as a community learned anything from this? apparently not. here we are in the SIMILAR (albeit less dramatic) situation and all of us are ready to hand over Obama to be lynched.
and the process repeats… again.
so everyone who wants to throw stones, throw them. go ahead and feel like the biggest victims on the planet. i get it… i half agree with you. but don’t ask me to join in because i don’t want this president to crater to pressure and make the same mistake Clinton made.
I AM DISAPPOINTED that Obama (1) has not made some gay movement in his first 100 days and (2) has not made some statement, from his own lips, about what he PLANS to do in the future. i think we deserve that… and yes, we are not getting it. so my frustration is there, and it’s slowly rising…..
Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com
@James P. P.:
Regretfully, you either misremember history or have been deepthroating Obama Inc.’s self-serving rewrite of it. First, your “band aid” analogy is wrong regarding what Clinton attempted, and I’d say the 100+ gays that have been discharged since Obama took office, including the two who have written him personally asking not to be fired, would damn well be thankful for a “band aid” with the Obama logo on it until Dr. Congress arrives. Ironically, in his gay pride statement last year, Candidate Obama wrote about “THE LESBIAN SOLDIER WHO WANTS NOTHING MORE THAN TO SERVE HER COUNTRY OPENLY AND HONESTLY.”
Nathaniel Frank, professor of history at NY University, DADT expert, and author of “Unfriendly Fire, in “The New Republic,” May 12, 2009:
“Some think Clinton’s mistake that year was to move too quickly on this issue, without consulting the military. Indeed, it seems this has become the current White House’s rationale for delay. But this is the wrong lesson. Although Clinton spoke up early about this issue, usually in response to press inquiries, he opted not to issue a quick executive order, instead letting the debate spiral out of his control. Clinton did consult with the military, MEETING WITH THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF WITHIN WEEKS OF HIS ELECTION; they simply didn’t like what they heard, and their resistance crushed the resolve of the first president in half a century who hadn’t served in uniform. Clinton’s error was not moving too quickly–IT WAS MOVING TOO SLOWLY. Indeed, it was during his proposed six-month “time-out” that religious conservatives hijacked the debate, eroded public support for change, and defeated the president. . . .
Congress has already granted the president authority to halt military discharges in the interest of national security. Under 10 U.S.C. 12305, ‘the President may suspend any provision of law relating to promotion, retirement, or separation applicable to any member of the armed forces who the President determines is essential to the national security of the United States’. …Though the executive option might seem controversial, it would be a less explosive way to carry out a campaign promise than dragging the nation through a protracted debate in Congress. And once people see that gays can serve openly without incident, it will be easier to push a repeal of the law through Congress down the road . . . . Some worry the debate over gay troops will distract Obama from other pressing issues and force him to expend valuable political capital. But unlike solving the economic crisis, reforming health care, or combating climate change, ending the gay ban takes few resources, little imagination, and no mystery. We know exactly what to do, and it can be done with the stroke of a pen.”
[img]http://image.examiner.com/images/blog/wysiwyg/image/ObamaPride.jpg[/img]
The Gay Numbers
James
I do not live in a bubble. That’s why I can read your post, and realize you are making shit up. The time line is off for your claims to be relevant. the things you mention are issues that came up in the last weeks , and Obama was backing off his DADT position for quite some time. Your arguments are what some of Obama’s more ardent supporters are doing. When faced with the cognitive disonnance of what he is doing, they use other unrelated events to rationalize it. “Well, good thing Obama did not release the torture fotos because he’s dealing with healthcare.” Yes, someone wrote that. They are excuses. Not reasons. The reason is that he’s cautious and surrounded by a cautious team that wants to punt on this. Our job is not to understand him here. It’s to make him do it.
Chitown Kev
@Tony:
Actually, that was precisely my point. People kept alluding to only one category (race) for admission. Obama actually fit under 2 catgories, in fact, he chose Harvard Law School in large part because of his father.
Still, he had to have an excellent academic record and test scores to be considered. Harvard actually rejects quite a few potential legacies. John Kennedy, Jr. being the most famous one. John-John wasn’t accepted to Harvard for undergrad or for Law School.
Chitown Kev
@Tony:
Uh, and he was the editor of the law review too. He had to know his stuff.
Chitown Kev
@Cameron:
I know you are not coming on here trying to [praise Ronald Reagan and his enlightened LGBT views. While he deserves credit for his opposition to the Briggs Amendment, the man is burning in hell for the inaction of his Administration at the height of the AIDS crisis.
BrianZ
@Chitown Kev: Can I be your friend, maybe sit on your knee while you tell me stories? You always have such an even temperment in your posts: While I might not always agree with you (or anyone else for that matter) I do appreciate your method.
Happy Friday 🙂
Chitown Kev
Boy, I just read through this thread and golly gee, the racism is all over the fucking the please.
Criticize the man’s views and actions, as you should. As you must really.
The other interesting thing about this: African American community in Chicago used to say the exact same thing that Tony did in post #2 (that he was a lapdog for white liberals).
As if any of you could get elected President (or anything else) and run the country. Please.
Chitown Kev
[REWIND]
Boy, I just read through this thread and golly gee, the racism is all over the fucking place
Chitown Kev
@BrianZ:
Thanks.
Blame it on The Middle Way that the Buddha taught. I used to be a raving madman (and still can be at times).
As far as my lap, sure, have a seat, but you had better be naughty and not nice.
TANK
Look, if you want comprehensive federal protections from the government, you’re going to have to burn things down. It’s a time honored american tradition. Rioting, burning, looting, killing, etc. That’s what wins the war.
James P. P.
@The Gay Numbers:
@Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com:
both of you are assuming that i don’t think DADT can be done right away… and you are both assuming that i don’t WANT to do it right away. i do think the president can get DADT repealed. i don’t know that HE should. if there was anyone in the democratic party watching and wanting to put their neck out there, then one of them should stand up and take the helm for this and start the repeal process (as this will be a VERY long process). this removal of DADT does not have to come from the president himself, you know. we shouldn’t be attacking the president ALONE… we should be asking why the entire DEMOCRATIC PARTY has failed to produce anyone who will step up on our behalf.
with the removal of DADT, something else HAS to go in it’s place. a resolution that can be agreed upon and followed by all branches of the armed forces. this is tough to do, and takes many many re-writes. every branch of our armed forces thinks they are the best… so every branch will be making demands to the fine print.
i do think that Obama, and the democratic party as a whole has had enough time so that SOMEONE should stand up and get the ball rolling. this is why i’m frustrated. there is nothing you really need to convince me of. i do think the time is now… i just also think that it’s a sucky time politically.
what i will not do, however… is toss out Obama as a homo-hater and go to extreme Obama-bashing. either as a nation or as a gay community – our greatest fault in our herd mentality is the over-reacting panic in times of POSSIBLE stress. of course, whether or not the stress is real is irrelevant. don’t believe me? i have two words: swine flu.
in our case, repealing DADT is very relevant… and should be addressed and answers should be demanded, but i’m not going to throw stones or a tantrum in the meantime.
michael
@rsun: I fall on my knees everyday and thank God for privilege I have of living in Canada and that within the next 6 months my citizenship application will be approved. Anytime I get home sick and think of going back all I have to do is turn on the internet or the news and I get over that real quickly.
James P. P.
(and I agree with Tank… if you are going to revolt… do it the RIGHT way… burn shit down. we can play the Nickelback song in the background if it helps gather people….)
LOL.
boytroy
Its really funny because all this “fighting” about Obama is rather futile don’t you think? Trying to convince each other he will be our savior or he will be our anti-christ. Time is going to tell. My gut has always told me consistently that his presidency was designed to awaken people in a way they never thought possible. America always thinks in terms of black and white, right and wrong, good or bad, my way or your way. Gray is not a shade in the color wheel of U.S. thinking. Third forces seldom if ever come into play, hell, the entire political system is designed to keep that from happening. So grab your pop corn and sit back and keep watching this flick, the ending is pretty predictable but they say miracles do happen. Who knows? Maybe he is the Christ! Or maybe he’s not, cause nothing in the middle is remotely possible.
TANK
@TANK:
It sounds extreme, but it’s a integral part of any civil rights movement: that implicit threat of violence behind the gentle words of equality. Going through the cortex of your average house member in 1963 leading up to the vote for the civil rights act was this thought: “Oh my oh my. If we don’t do something quick and soon, cities across this great white country of mine are going to burn! It’s terrible. It’s just terrible. So let’s not have our valuable white cities burn and give the n****** what they want. Yeah, they’ve got some pretty talkin’ leaders, but white cities are going to burn if we don’t act now! Besides, I’ll get to look like I saved the day and be all over that moral superiority trip due to the hard work they’ve done in exposing racism for the disgusting ethical iniquity it is. Win win.”
Chitown Kev
@TANK:
I can’t remember who said this nor can I remember exactly what was said but it goes a lil’ something like this:
The powers that be decided to deal with King because they realized that if they didn’t they would have to deal with Malcolm X.
James
Obama has sold out gays for their votes. All talk and no action. Just stupid Iowa jokes at a dinner.
rsun
@michael: Welcome. I live in the most conservative province of Canada and I STILL have more rights than the USA’s most liberal state.
sad
Sam
Who are all these anti-Obama folks who comment on the Obama posts but NOTHING else? Are they real or Memorex?
BrianZ
@Chitown Kev: My hubby also reads Queerty so I shall refrain from saying too much. I will post to clarify that I said “knee”: If I wanted to sit on your lap, it would not be to hear stories! ;p
lol I’m in trouble.
Tony
@Sam
I feel the same way about you Obamabots.
Tony
Uh, and he was the editor of the law review too. He had to know his stuff.
Well, he doesn’t know that separate but equal is per se unequal, either that or he just hates the gays.
I also went to a top law school.
Personally, I think he is just a douche.
Tony
Correction, a gay hating douche nozzle to be more specific.
Tony
Oh and another of my anti-Obamabigotdouchenozzle:
And um,how long since uber-douche Obama gave his famous and often quoted by right-wing bigots speech ” I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman because God is in the mix”. DJ Obama remixed my rights while many of the gays danced and gyrated in unison proclaiming Obamabigot the savior of “teh gays”.
His words were then used on the Yes on 8 people in their robocalls days before the election, because Obama is an antigay bigot. And unlike Bush, Obama is a Consitutional Law Scholar (LOL) who doesn’t seem to comprehend the idea that “separate but equal is NOT EQUAL”.
Just another sweet talkin’ douchebag politician. I am sick of the abusive relationship the LGBT Community is in with Obama, giving him alibis and excuses everytime he pulls a Chris Brown on us. I like Rhianna as much as the next gay, but even she got tired of the abuse and walked away from the abuser.
Enough!
Keep licking Obamabots, rim him with your money, time and energy. Go Rhi-Rhi.
Tony
Remember the last douchenozzle who screwed the nation also went to HAVAAAAAAARD. GW Bush, yeah at least he didn’t LIE about his antigay bigotry.
Leave John-John alone, he was handsome and didn’t have Obama’s sagilicious breasteses. Okaaaaaaaay!
Chitown Kev
@Tony:
trust me, I never had a problem with John-John. What did one of our local radio talk show host say:
“John Kennedy Jr. is the only white man that could wear a full length fur coat and get away with it.”
Please, Obama’s not a bigot. But many of his voters are (ethnic minorities, Reagan Democrats, a smattering of Dixiecrats, union workers, Obama Republicans (?)).
The AA religious community in Chicago didn’t listen to him here in Chicago when he gave quite a few speeches about not hatin’ on teh gays. It fell on deaf ears for years.
That’s why so much of this stuff on this thread is so funny to me. I’ve heard a lot of this stuff about Barack Obama for years. And it didn’t come from gays.
jason
When are we gays going to realize that Obama and the Democrats treat us as politically useful idiots?
TANK
@jason:
Give us more credit than that. We realize it. The question is when are we going to start giving a fuck about it.
Chitown Kev
@TANK:
Give it another…19 days at the most.
We need to go back to the old style Stonewall/ACT UP stuff instead of the Mattachinist type stuff that most of our “gay organizations” like to do. Although I do like Lambda Legal, they get things accomplished.
TANK
@Chitown Kev:
It’s a twofold approach. We need it all. Someone has to bring the violence, and someone else has to apologize and condemn it with a wink and a nod.
Chitown Kev
@TANK:
or, the threat of possible violence…we need a King and a Malcolm.
Or a Milk and a Kramer(?), if you prefer.
Bill Perdue
Comparing Obama to Bush, “Bush’s third term” is right as far as it goes.
The thing is that reality goes a lot further and Obama’s anti-GLBT bigotry is the least of his crimes.
Obama is expanding Bush’s policies of mass murder to secure control of South Asian oil and gas. He’s adopting most of Bush unconstitutional attacks on privacy rights and hiding, by exporting them, Bush’s torture/kidnap politics. Obama fully supports the Bush policy of picking up the tab for zionist ethnic cleansing and apartheid practices against Palestinians.
Obama and Bush worked closely before the election to ram the $700 taxpayer financed gift to the looter rich who wrecked the economy and the standards of living of tens of millions. Since then Obama has supported the allocation of more trillions to save the fortunes of the looter class while demanding harsh austerity measures for working people.
That he’d play the role of a piss-ant, anti-union lap dog for the rich while expanding the oil war was well know before the election. So was his bigotry and the fact that his campaign was based on pandering to christite bigots.
Liberals and other right centrists who voted for Obama or who would have voted for HClinton now have to accept full responsibility for what he’s doing. That’s important because these same policies of bigotry, racism, sexism, and immigrant bashing combined with war and economic chaos characterized the Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bushminor and now Obama administrations. The parties they represent and the apologists for those parties are bankrupt.
Bill Perdue
I am a dumb windbag please think I’m smart.
Pay attention to me. Please.
The Gay Numbers
James
I am assuming that I have followed politics for 20s years, and undersand politicans. That’s bout it. You are assuming Obama is some how so unique that’s he’s not a politician. That’s pretty sad.
Bill Perdue
I’m the big bad woLf be afraid
I have not been laid since 1973
I’m so scared
strumpetwindsock
I think the authorities have no problem dealing with violent protest. Why do you think it is often their plants doing the agitating?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St1-WTc1kow
It gives them an excuse to bust heads, use emergency powers they wouldn’t ordinarily have an excuse to use and terrorize innocent people.
And it makes advocates for change look like a bunch of fucking lunatics without a plan that can neither be trusted nor negotiated with.
And if anyone actually DID pose a threat they would get dealt with like MOVE, AIM or the Branch Davidians.
I don’t think anyone who had any experience with violent insurrection or civil breakdown, certainly no one who had children or vulnerable people to worry about would have any romantic illusions about violence bringing about positive change.
If the only way we can convince people our cause is just is by terrorizing them we have lost the struggle already.
The Gay Numbers
I am not in favor of violence, but let’s not go crazy with the generalization. If violence never worked , the American revolution and the civil war would have produced no changes. This is not a statement in favor of violence. It’s one in favor of banning simplistic constructions of reality that suit temperment rather than well, reality.
TANK
@strumpetwindsock:
Go away, canadian. I’m talking about america here. A real country with real problems and real people. You can’t appreciate our history being one of those…canadians.
strumpetwindsock
@The Gay Numbers:
I’m not saying change has never been brought about through violence. You are talking about war.
I am just saying that it’s not a game, and it’s certainly nothing we should wish for as the only means to accomplish change.
Anyone in our movement who thinks we are prepared for violent or deadly protest, and that it will accomplish anything is simply deluded.
And if anyone thinks I’m wrong I invite them to go out and put their words into action. I sure won’t be there.
Chitown Kev
@Tony:
I do seem to recall, though, that when Obama applied for Columbia and Harvard that he never identified his race.
strumpetwindsock
@The Gay Numbers:
And look at how your government responded to the violence of 9-11. You have far less freedom, and far more restrictions and invasion into your privacy than you had before that act.
Your cops are far more prepared to deal with crowd control, vandalism and bombs than your movement is for the backlash.
More importantly, it’s unnecessary, and you have nothing to gain or prove by even considering it.
Chitown Kev
@strumpetwindsock:
Well, I don’t think we are anywhere near the violence point.
Besides, they read these blogs, so the government would be well aware of the upcoming violence.
Betrue
@Matt Deco: The cynicism on this page is not only uninformed, but mis-informed. Prop. 8 in CA passed with a mere 600,000 votes even though our side totally dropped the ball. We are clearly amidst a massive cultural, intellectual, political and generational shift toward acknowledging progressives and the LGBT community as a whole.
This is all historically documented by national poll after national poll.
Obama is the most pro-LGBT president in History, bar none. He’s made extraordinary overtures to the LGBT community. Even our leadership recently left a meeting with him expressing confidence in his plan going forward to address these issues.
The way you belly ache you should join the GOP. You sound exactly like them and your facts are just as reliable. You’d fit right in.
ProfessorVP
I still see it occasionally- and just saw it here- that Clinton gets credit for “trying” to end the ban, then got stuck with the compromise of DADT. Anyone remember in 1992 he promised to strike down the ban by Presidential Order, the way Truman ended racial segregation in the military? No, he didn’t promise
to “try” and he didn’t promise to have a meeting with dry asses Colin Powell and Sam Nunn and work something out and he didn’t promise to consult his focus group and figure out a compromise. He promised to end it with the stroke of his pen.
Golly gee, you don’t suppose he just said that to get gay votes, many of which are in electoral college-rich states, and never had any intention of keeping his promise? Gosh, you don’t suppose?
michael
@TANK: Your a great example of a very typical egocentric, ill traveled, ill informed product of the worst education system in the western world. A prime reason why the U.S. has turned into one of the most hideous, backward places on the planet. Its no wonder that everything in America from its auto industry to its pharma industry is being stomped into the ground. The U.S. will end up being the shortest lived empire the world has ever known if people like you are an example of a typical American. I just feel sorry for those Americans who are not like you because its always the trashy, stupid, big mouthed ones that get the limelight and leave the rest of the world in disgust.
Lee
@ProfessorVP:
You don’t suppose that even if you were entirely right about Clinton, you’re really just indicting Obama, too? Or, to paraphrase Nixon, are you’re saying it’s not wrong if THIS president does it? [Or you could use the ballsiest excuse I’ve read yet: he’s not done anything because the Clintonites he’s hired won’t let him.]
You don’t suppose the shelf life of your Messianism has long gone stale, moldy, and is stinking up the place?
You don’t suppose there’s any worse sign for a star created by the media to worry that he’s in deeper trouble than he’d like to believe when the same “couldn’t actually care less about the gays” media start snapping at his heels, and at the heels he sends out to make excuses for him while he can’t even show us the respect of telling us HIMSELF why he feels it necessary to “postpone” keeping his multiple promises “to put the full weight of my administration behind” working with Congress to fill-in-the-blank?
Oprah showed him pissing away five priceless Presidential minutes in a video skit with comedian George Lopez to promote the latter’s TV show.
Lee
@Betrue:
“Obama is the most pro-LGBT president in History, bar none”
As someone asked above: unless you know him personally or are telepathic you base that belief on what?
Think of Obama as someone you dated a while [I KNOW this will be REAL easy for some of you. It would be a bloodbath fighting VP to give him a lap dance.]
“Oh, Mama, he’s dreamy. All the other girls say the same thing. He reminds me a little of Billy, but though Billy paid me more attention than anyone before and came to my parties when Barry wouldn’t, and did some nice things for me that I still appreciate, he…well, you know, Mama, how that turned out.
But MAMA! Barry gave me lots more attention. He said he was going to do this for me and he said we’d do that and then he said he’d do this for me. You should have heard the things he said on our first dates; you should read what he wrote back then. How could I choose anyone else. And, Mama, it’s time you knew: I gave Barry my love blossom last November.
So what if I haven’t heard from him since then? So what if it’s been months now, and he started hanging around with people who hate me? He said it was for my own good.
What? Oh, Mama! So what if he won’t return my calls! You’re so negative. He’s just so busy with his neat new job. Sure we hear about him running around all over the place, and I have to admit he’s been dating some other girls. So what?! Those guys who work for him tell me he still loves me. I just have to be patient a year or two more.
What? Why doesn’t he tell me himself? MOTHER! My friends, the dwarfs Joey and Rea…remember all that money I gave them? Well, they saw him at a cocktail party at his big new house …can you imagine how dreamy they felt…and THEY say he STILL loves me. And later Joey and Rea met with some of the people who work for him….can you imagine how dreamy they felt about that, too…and they came back and they said he DOES still love me and there’s a secret plan for us to be together again and live happily ever after.
Someday my prince will come
Someday I’ll find my love
And how thrilling that moment will be
When the prince of my dreams comes to me
He’ll whisper I love you
And steal a kiss or two
Though he’s far away I’ll find my love someday
Someday when my dreams come true
Someday I’ll find my love
Someone to call my own
And I know at the moment we meet
my heart will start skipping the beats
Someday we’ll say and do
Things we’ve been longing to
Oh, MAMA! Sing with me!
Someday my prince will come
Someday we’ll meet again
And away to his castle we’ll go
To be happy forever I know
Someday when spring is here
We’ll find our love anew
And the birds will sing and wedding bells will ring
Someday when my dreams come true ….
Night, Mama. Be true!
[img]http://www.disneyclips.com/imagesnewb4/imageslwrakr01/clipsnowprinceembrace3.gif[/img]
strumpetwindsock
@Chitown Kev:
Agreed, absolutely.
That’s why I don’t like the foolish talk about real violence and murder I have seen on here in the past few days (and before that, too).
Chitown Kev
@strumpetwindsock:
It’s not a political solution AT ALL, strumpet.
And the sad thing is, our “advocacy groups” don’t seem to have any political groups other than “the secret plan” which they won’t tell us because it’s, you know, secret.
strumpetwindsock
@Chitown Kev:
Yeah, I know there can be trouble when your advocates go “professional”. You don’t have to look any further than some (not all) unions.
Animal Farm, and all that.
schlukitz
@Bill Perdue:
LOL
ProfessorVP
@Lee:
Well of course I’m indicting Obama, but Obama was cunning enough not to promise to end DADT by presidential order. Clinton did. We can second guess all we want about how Obama feels about us. (Personally, I feel he regards us as shit he’d like to scrape from the bottom of his heel.) But in Clinton’s case, we know exactly what he promised to get elected, then welched. And aside from DADT, we have Clinton to thank for DOMA. The myth still persists that Clinton was against the Defense of Marriage Act, but, like a pressured ten-year-old, HAD to sign off on it because the adults made him. Not true, but that’s not the topic of this thread.
ProfessorVP
Oops, what I wrote suggests Clinton promised to end DADT by presidential order; I meant promised to end the gay ban by executive order.
The Gay Numbers
Is someone here advocating violence? Like I said, I disagree with the use of violence, but your claim, Stump, is broader than the moral behavior that we both believe in. You are making claims as to what violence does and does not do. More than that, your arguments, to be quite frank, is always on the side of us doing nothing. Let’s agree that we both do not agree with violence and would fight against it. That’s an easy one. But then let’s also remember that everytime an argument comes up over gays becoming aggressive in non-violent ways you always somehow manage to side with the timid position. This is your temperment. I get it. But you confuse what you feel to be the case with what works. Practical example- folks such as yourself made the same argument about marriage. Go for less. Do less. Yet, that’s not what has worked. What has worked are those gays saying “no, I will not accept someone trying to ban my rights as the conservatives tried to do.” Again, I am not advocating violence because I do not believe it on a moral level, but your arguments often come out a constitutional inability to deal with any confrontation- including the non-violent ones of directly pushing for rights rather than quietly begging for them.
TANK
@michael:
Yeah, but until then…we’re the wealthiest, most powerful country in the world. I assume you’re canadian…look, your entire country’s population is about the size of california’s…that’s just one of our states. A big state, admittedly, but one of ’em. So calm down, and realize you’re a teeny tiny little country, and you can’t just extrapolate your country’s policies and their successes (?), and duplicate that in the u.s. YOu also have no appreciation of our history, it would seem.
Michael W.
@ProfessorVP: The only “myth” that Clinton was against DOMA and/or DADT but was forced to sign it is in Lee’s head. Nobody forces a president to sign legislation. Even if you feel congress might have enough votes to override it, if it’s really something you feel passionate about then you veto it anyway and make them override you, not the other way around.
Clinton was happy to sign DADT cause he was tired of getting hammered and wanted to put it behind him. Then he signed DOMA with glee to neutralize a Republican campaign position that would’ve become a larger issue had he stood up for us and against it. Instead he used it to brush up on his “moderate.” credentials. He was a coward who threw us under the bus for what he felt was his survivial; plain and simple.
If Obama maintains the status quo without pushing our progress backward through more harmful legislation, he’d still be a better LGBT president than Clinton. Of course it would be very disappointing as well since we expected more from him.
Chitown Kev
@Michael W.:
??????
Anywho, or you cannot sign it, as clinton could have done with DOMA. By signing it then running ads on redneck talk radio, he put that albatross around his own neck.
Also, Hillary Clinton campaigned on only getting rid of one section of DOMA, not the whole thing. Obama’s opposition to DOMA (which is the EXACT same position he ran on in 1996 as a state Senate) was to the whole law and he’s never changed his position on that.
strumpetwindsock
@The Gay Numbers:
Go up and read through this thread again. There are calls for violence and murder. And it’s not the first time I have seen it, as well as claims that the only way to effect change is through force. That is simply not true.
The only thing I was commenting on is that violent confrontation only changes things when the stakes are MUCH higher than our current struggle – struggles on the order of wars, civil wars and coups. Such confrontations end in with brutal crackdowns more often than with a positive outcome.
The best example I can think of regarding recent use of violence is the attacks and murders committed by anti-abortionists. They are certainly working in terms of driving people away from providing abortion services for women, but is terror and murder the right way to change society?
There are native groups here and in the U.S. which have resorted to armed defense. We certainly do not have the solid foundation (nor as much on the line) as they do.
As I said, violence is not a game.
And regarding what tactics and goals I support, you shouldn’t confuse recognition of political reality and working to change the minds of those who oppose us with capitulation. And you shouldn’t confuse arguing against violence with arguing against standing up to oppression.
Show me where I have ever argued for anything less than recognition of full marriage rights (and allowing the fundies their meaningless clause is not the same thing). I have always stated that the only way you will ever have secure marriage equality is when it happens at the federal level and is sealed by your supreme court.
The fact is we have full marriage equality here in Canada – not “secular” and “religious” nor any other half-measure. It was not won in the streets or with violence, but in the courts, and a lot of it was accomplished from the top-down, not through a groundswell of public support.
I’m not saying it to lord it over you Americans, but to point out that not all change has to come about through force.
@TANK:
We are 10 percent of your population, but we are actually the fifth largest economy in the world, and we provide more of your oil and electricity than any other country in the world.
strumpetwindsock
@strumpetwindsock:
Oh… I just re-checked and it seems we’ve slipped to number nine (out of 200 or so).
Teeny tiny.
TANK
@strumpetwindsock:
Actually, canada’s behind california in terms of GDP worldwide. No one, not even me, is saying violence is the only way to effect change.
You’re useless, strumpet. You’re a canadian…you don’t get how things are done. You have been granted your rights in that tiny little country of yours, which is good. I’m not saying that violence is an inherently bad tool of social change. I’m saying that many of the successful civil rights movements in the united states depended upon the implicit threat of violence, and actual demonstrations of it, too. Here is an american principle that has been true since its founding: if you want something, you’re going to have to take it because no one is going to roll over and give it to you regardless of its ethical status.
TANK
@strumpetwindsock:
That’s right. It’s two notches behind a state.
TANK
@strumpetwindsock:
And let’s be real…if canada bordered, say, colombia, you wouldn’t be anywhere near 7. It’s proximity to the united states which has boosted your economy. You owe us everything.
TANK
@TANK:
9, rather.
strumpetwindsock
@The Gay Numbers:
The biggest problem I see here is people who have no strategy other than to play the victim and turn everyone who is different than us into our enemy, including a good many straights and religious people who have done a lot of work to support us.
It is a simple fact that we will never form a large enough majority to force our agenda without the help of some of those “enemies”.
For all the bluster that we have to band together and rise up against our oppressors, it is never going to happen without their help.
And you are (falsely) accuse me of arguing for doing nothing? This other strategy may be a stirring piece of fiction, but it will never get off the ground.
TANK
strumpet is still pursuing the bridge building strategy of failure. It is a failure in the united states because it’s been occurring since the late eighties early nineties…to today…look at how much we’ve accomplished nationally.
TANK
And it started in the sixties, actually, and before…bridge building… That’s one strategy that needs others in conjunction with it to work, because alone, it’s a proven failure. Once again I remind you, canada is not the hotbed of diversity that the united states is (we’re not talking about paler shades of white in quebec, either)…it’s not the u.s. Your perspective and opinion has little weight.
strumpetwindsock
I figured I should check on our military policy WRT gays.
I wasn’t able to find when it got changed, but I did find this:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D04E0DD163BF936A25755C0A9639C8B63
@TANK:
Not a hotbed of diversity?
I guess you don’t know that is the biggest difference between our countries. You can go to parts of Vancouver and be the only white person there and not see any written English.
Where I live about every third person is native. About the only people up here insisting that you “speak english” are the rednecks.
Chitown Kev
@TANK:
Gosh, you’ve never been to Toronto, either TANK. You can’t go too many places in Toronto without bumping into an interracial couple.
TANK
Not a hotbed of diversity?
I guess you don’t know that is the biggest difference between our countries. You can go to parts of Vancouver and be the only white person there and not see any written English.
Where I live about every third person is native. About the only people up here insisting that you “speak english” are the rednecks.
Are you denying that canada has a comparatively homogeneous culture and racial composition? Really? A country that has a black population of 2.5% compared to the united states’ 12.3%…
Chitown Kev
@TANK:
But whose fault is that, TANK
Actually, groups like the SCLC and the SNCC were quite successful in pursuing civil rights because they never cozied up with the insiders of either party nor did they go around bragging about their access as the HRC seems to do. Because most black civil rights groups refused to be co-opted by the establishment and, indeed, were oppositional to the establishment (even their allies within the establishment) they were better able to effect public opinion and change.
Our civil rights groups are now part of the establishment, by and large. And because of that their loyalities are to the establishment and not our gay communities.
TANK
@Chitown Kev:
Well, I’m talking about a country, not a city within it.
TANK
@Chitown Kev:
Right, whose fault is that?
The Gay Numbers
Stump
Your last comment is what progressives like to call Rovian. Up is down. Black is white. If you prefer, it’s a version of Orwellian speak. So, because people are advocating fighting for their rights, they are acting as victims? By the way, although I am loath to do so your ignorance about American history is shown when you repeat the same arguments that other minorities fighting for their rights have faced in America. You do realize everything you are saying is exact response that the African American civil rights movement heard? That by standing up for themselves blacks were being victims. That by standing up for themselves that means that they do not want to work with others or that they need to accept working with others means not standing up for themselves. Your arguments have been discredited in American history along time ago. This is why I wrote to you before that you have no skin in this game. You simply don’t understand America. It would be like me arrogantly telling you what has and has not worked in Canada. And yes, ultimatel you advocate doing nothing. I don’t care if you call that false because you have problem here that you are no better than Karl Rove at how you use language and meaning.
Chitown Kev
@TANK:
Well, Joe S. wouldn’t make that nice fat healthy salary without our donations.
I’d say it’s our communities fault for naively thinking that access and access alone will lead us to civil rights legislation.
The Gay Numbers
by the way, while I am loath to do so, I must agree with tank in the assinine comparison of canada to the US regarding cultural issues. First, we are a much larger country with a history of bigotry that canada does not have. Second our governmental structure is different, which is designed to make it hard to change things (the us system is designed to make change hard to happen deliberately). Third, the demographics are as follows:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_states#Demographics
Versus Canada’s demographics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada#Demographics
While Canada is more diverse now that is a product of recent immigration.
Forth, the other big difference is that of religion. Here we got the puritans. You did not have that as far as I remember in Canada.
You also did not have our problem variously with slavery and Jim crow, di d you? The point is there is an entrenched history thats very different. If you look at some of the states now passing gay marriage it is the same states that were anti slavery. If you look at whichs tates are more likely to remain anti marriag, even after the rest of the country moves on,it will almost certainly be the South-t he seat of slavery. My point here is that there are things you do not understand about American history and politics that are at play over the generations here. THose things are hard to explain to you. The South, for example, being culturally conservative is not new. Our political map,f or the most part, has existed since the civl war. As in what people for for and why.
Lee
@Chitown Kev:
“Positions” of CANDIDATES are nothing more than sexual come-ons, “Hello Gorgeous! If you go to bed with me, I’ll do this and you do that and POW, ZOOM, ORGASMA CITY, Baby!”
Once they take office, “positions” are only meaningful in the presence of that ACTION, and MEANINGLESS without it. So let’s stop the intellectually insulting nonsense about what his positions are, or what in his in heart, what he really believes, what he’d really like to do blah fucking blah. Hr ain’t DONE ANYTHING so far that CLINTON DIDN’T DO…in fact, LESS. E.g., he hasn’t appointed a gay US ambassador. [You can’t fairly flame anyone, even the Prez Obambots love to use to distract from their Messiah’s botched magic act, without also being willingly to acknowledge what they did right.]
But, Kev, I am particularly disappointed that someone with as good a nose for bullshit as you, as good at reading between the lines and hearing what isn’t being said as well about what is, are among the unthinking herd that blindly deepthroated the Big “He’s better than Hillary on DOMA” Lie during the campaign. The only real difference was that he didn’t have the balls to be as honest as she was [even if it was about something where she was inherently wrong].
She was honest enough to say that she didn’t support repeal of Section 2 because she thought “states’ rights” was an overriding issue. The strange thing is that not only did she have to soon realize it would cost her gay votes but that she didn’t immediately see it was a wrong position, and that the federal government recognized in terms of civil rights for blacks [and some for women] that they had the right and responsibility to override the limits placed upon them by individual states.
That also was, and remains OBAMA’s wrong position, too: “The President … continues to believe that states should make their own decisions when it comes to the issue of marriage.” – April 6, 2009. For those needing it spelled out: that means he supports their right to legalize gay relationships [or recognize those legalized in other states] AND their right to REFUSE TO do either. Raise your hand if you agree with that.
One could blame those who refused to understand his real meaning every time he made the basic statement in the campaign, but he intentionally obscured that reality with his DOMA sleight of hand trick, “Don’t look there, look here.”
In the same Feb. 28, 2008, statement in which Obama said, “I will never compromise on my commitment to equal rights for all LGBT Americans.” and “As your President, I will use the bully pulpit [gee, what happened to all that?] to urge states to treat same-sex couples with full equality in their family and adoption laws [except for marriage]”, he said, “the federal government should not stand in the way of states that want to decide on their own how best to pursue equality for gay and lesbian couples — whether that means a domestic partnership, a civil union, or a civil marriage. Unlike Senator Clinton, I support the complete repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).”
Sweet , as far as it went, but totally, purposefully reinforcing the MYTH perpetuated even by gay media that DOMA Sect. 2 DOES “stand in the way of states that want to decide on their own.”
It doesn’t, and it never did. Don’t believe me? Read the actual law, emphasis mine:
SEC. 2. POWERS RESERVED TO THE STATES. “No State, territory, or possession of the United States, or Indian tribe, SHALL BE REQUIRED to give effect to any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of any other State, territory, possession, or tribe respecting a relationship between persons of the same sex that is treated as a marriage under the laws of such other State, territory, possession, or tribe, or a right or claim arising from such relationship.”
Nota bene, that still means THEY CAN IF THEY WANT TO. Do I have to explain that it does NOT forbid states from recognizing such relationships. The most it does is give states federal permission to refuse to recognize marriage, something which HE KNEW they DIDN’T NEED. Section 2 was nothing but a word game. In other words, he was winning votes for promising to give states something they already had while, bizarrely she was losing votes for not promising to give them something they already had.
Don’t believe me? How about his campaign advisor/Constitutional law prof at Harvard, Lawrence Tribe, who “called ABC News at the request of the Obama campaign” after the LOGO forum?
ABC News: “Obama believes states should be under no obligation to recognize same-sex marriages from other states. He wants to fully repeal DOMA, however, because he views the statute as ‘ineffectual and redundant’, in the words of Tribe. Obama believes a long-recognized public policy exception to the Constitution’s Full Faith and Credit Clause exempts a state from having to recognize a same-sex marriage from another state which runs counter to its own public policies.
‘Marriage is not something that states have EVER been obliged to recognize IF IT’S BEEN AGAINST THEIR OWN PUBLIC POLICY’, said Tribe, who has testified on the subject before Congress. ‘Same-sex couples in Massachusetts are neither better NOR WORSE OFF WITH DOMA REPEALED except that the repeal of DOMA is a way of telling that couple that their marriage in Massachusetts is not going to be made the subject of A SYMBOLIC AND INEFFECTUAL SLAM by the federal government’.”
Tribe said all that after being tasked with a silly attempt to paint Hillary’s position as a “symbolic insult,” but apparently revealed too much of the truth for you’d be hard pressed to find any subsequent instance in which he was allowed to speak to the press. But the spell Obama had already cast on gay media, and the fact that straight media really didn’t care, saved him, thus even bright, passionate people like you missed it. I only stumbled upon it one day online, and, am still stunned over a year and a half later that he got away with creating a phony difference between their “positions”…and people are still trumpeting it even after he HAS comprimised on his “commitment to equal rights for all LGBT Americans.” Guess he forgot to add, except for gays in the military.
[img]http://citizenchris.typepad.com/citizenchris/images/2008/02/28/obama_lgbt_ad.jpg[/img]
TANK
@Chitown Kev:
That salary is disgusting with between 13-16% of lgbt americans living below the poverty line.
But I don’t think it’s just the fault of those organizations. It is also the fault of legislators/politicians and parties who welcome their endorsement, but fail to come through with substantive reform. It’s not just them having a vested interest in, essentially, defending the status quo and apologizing for politicians that they “depend” on…
strumpetwindsock
@The Gay Numbers:
Have I ever said anything about not standing up for our rights?
And I think I challenged you already to show me anywhere I have argued for anything less than full recognition of our rights.
My problem is with those on this site who:
a)insist on demonizing and refusing to work with anyone whom they see as different than us
b)demonizing those of us who have beliefs and strategies that differ from their dogma
c)feel that the only way to forward our cause is through force or the threat of it
But by all means, dismiss my argument by telling me I am a foreigner and don’t understand how things work in your country.
The fact is those of us outside your country probably see a few things you are not aware of because you are in the middle of it.
@TANK:
Actually if you really want to get away from white people the place to go is outside of the city… and in some places you don’t have to go too far before you’re the only white person around.
TANK
I’m waiting for that irrational mind of yours to call me a bigot of some kind, strumpet…because that’s the last resort you often rely on. You are a passionate defender of mediocrity…of the status quo in the states, even. Look, you don’t have a dog in this fight. FUCK OFF.
Chitown Kev
@TANK:
A good example of this.
Kay Hagan in North Carolina received a glowing endorsement from the HRC. Why wasn’t she the first to speak out against that cross-eyed cunt Virginia Foxx? Why isn’t she one of the sponsors of the hate crimes bill in the Senate? And why isn’t the HRC out in front of that, putting the pressure on Hagan?
I wouldn’t mind that salary so much if HRC was, like, doing or accomplishing anything.
ProfessorVP
@Chitown Kev:
I’m glad somebody besides me remembers that Clinton BOASTED about signing DOMA and made hay with it in advertisements. In selected areas of course.
I’ve got to say that one unfortunate difference between Billy Jeff and Obama is that it was usually easy to tell what Clinton was thinking, but Obama is the ultimate poker face. If he is just pretending to loathe us, and might throw us a few crumbs, that’s one thing. If he sincerely despises us, we’re in for a rough ride, especially when it comes time to re-fill the Supreme Court.
Chitown Kev
@Lee:
I have to get back with you on this distinction.
Gotta go get some DOMA crib-notes.
strumpetwindsock
@strumpetwindsock:
And no history of bigotry?
You might be surprised to know about the anti-french/catholic/Indian activities of the Orange Lodge here in Canada, our version of the KKK (and that the KKK itself was a force here in Saskatchewan in the 30s).
Or that the South African Apartheid system was modeled on our reserve and Indian residential school system.
Or the suppression of French Canada by the English majority (aided by the Catholic Church) until the late 60s.
Or the suppression of Metis and Native nations out west in order to prevent American manifest destiny (an evil trade-off, but one I am thankful for).
Or discrimination by French Quebecers against anyone who did not come the original settlers stock.
Or discrimination in the east against blacks who came to Canada through the underground railroad.
If I seem to be arguing for bridge building between our community and others it is because our country, (to much a greater degree than yours) was built on balance, cooperation and compromise between very different communities (different nations within a nation, actually).
It is still that way. Our country would fall apart if not for that delicate balance.
I don’t actually give a shit whether you believe me or not, but I am telling you that you will never achieve your goal so long as you see it as an adversarial fight in which you have to overcome some imagined enemy.
TANK
@strumpetwindsock:
That’s awful cute.
Chitown Kev
@ProfessorVP:
And even Clinton’s treatment of Jocelyn Elders (Elders and DOMA were the primary reasons I sat out the ’96 election) come into play.
TANK
you see it as an adversarial fight in which you have to overcome some imagined enemy.
Right, there’s no family values coalitions or fundamentalist religious right, or actual homophobes that vote away our rights in referendums…they’re just figments of our imagination…oy vey…you are just too much.
InExile
As long as the LGBT community remains soooooooooooooooo passive, nothing will change for us! Were the African Americans passive? I think not! Until Washington DC has so mant gays protesting that the city is shut down for a week, we will not be taken seriously!
We are the invisable, the forgotten, and it is too late to elect Hillary and 2016 is too long to wait!
Lee
@ PROFESSORVP:
Ah, so you’re a professor of mind reading, except when it comes to Obama. Well, at least you’ve finally acknowledged that something is stinking in Denmark, DC.
BUT, as unapologetically critical I am of Obama, the concept of his possibly “loathing” us is one of the more assinine things you’ve ever written here [and there are so many from which to choose].
I’ve always felt the problem was that he simply doesn’t “get” the seriousness of gay inequality, and he’s not alone. While one of our main problems with hoi polloi is that our large numbers are invisible, inconceivable to them, the problem with straight progressives is that they’re typically only exposed to LGBTs who have succeeded by most standards of success despite legalized inequality. Some such as David Geffen, David Bonnett, Tim Gill, Bruce Bastian, and, of course, Ellen, Rosie, and Elton, have become millionaires. Microsoft First Fiver Ric Weiland left $65 million in his will to various gay rights group.
While a smaller scale example, one doubts that the $300,000+ a year Joe Solmonese is wearing a suit from Sears when he shares White House cocktails with Obama.
Sure, he hears the stories of gays being killed and fighting for custody of their children and still being fired, not to acknowledging receipt of at least one letter from a lesbian getting shit canned from the military under his own watch, but hearing/seeing and feeling are two different things.
White Americans, in most places, saw blacks all around them their whole lives; were more often than not an active participant in oppression if not the direct oppressors [when I was in high school, all the cool kids went to the “private” lake which everyone knew didn’t admit blacks]. But, still, FDR’s actions rarely matched his words until he was forced to. The same with JFK. Johnson, ironically a prototypical Southerner in other ways, might have been different, he certainly was by the time he died.
And guess who used to get awards for black civil rights work, including from the NAACP:
Fred Phelps.
Of course, there’s no question he loathes us. I only use him as an example of someone who, like Obama, could totally get the lack of equality and need for action for one group and be blind to the needs of others.
The Gay Numbers
You know- I think anyone thinking that it would be different under Clinton is fuckign delusional. Sorry, but you are. Obama is cut from the same cloth as the CLintons. He just does the same triangulation in a different way,b ut its the same underlying subtext (how can I seem middle of the road and split the baby).
Lee
Should have read: “not to mention acknowledging receipt of at least one letter from a lesbian….”
Chitown Kev
@The Gay Numbers:
Yep. I don’t see a difference, really.
The Gay Numbers
Chi
The difference is a result of the environment in which Obama inherits rather than anything he is doing in particular. Clinton came into power at the rise of the REagan revolution in its second generation of politicians like Ginrich. Obama is going into power at the tail end as the power is all but destroyed and is being replaced by an electorate that is moving much further to theleft than the America of 1992. Obama to me is trying to stem that rising progressive tide by moving progressive “enough” rather than than too progressive. In other words, he’s the hedged interest in powerful interests trying to hold back the true depth of what Americans want as change.So in that sense his trinagulation will be to the left if because of nothing else that he’s entering a political environment that’s to the left. Gay rights are a good example of this. The country in many ways is frar to the left of Obama on DADT and ENDA, yet he ‘s dragging his feet. Why? It’s not because of the country’s stance. It’s because of the politics of triangulation in DC. Be cautious- which translates into don’t go too far to the left. Clinton was the same way but again he was in the 90s. I do not think Hillary would be any different form Obama because they both are DC insiders.
Chris
Just go back and look at his past. Maybe he was successful at hiding from the world his REAL view of white people and gay people, but in the end he is going to prove he is the racist bigot people first thought he to be. He’s a shameful disappointment. If you look at the time he’s been in office what is it that he’s actually done for this country? NOTHING. So it should come as no surprise to us that he doesn’t care about gay rights, just ask his pastor.
Sceth
Is Gibbs implicitly acknowledging that the Executive Order is indeed a short-term solution?
RichB
People here have no clue how politics work.
Clinton and Obama aren’t homophobes. Obama supports gay marriage (check his state senate campaign), and I’d wager Clinton does as well.
However, like most politicians, they’re both cowards. They’ll sell a group down the river for political points, not because they hate them, but because it’s convenient for them. They don’t want to “rock the boat” and get the homophobic bigots in a frenzy.
So go ahead, insult them. But insult them for what they are: pathetic cowards.
Chitown Kev
@Chris:
Obama as a RACIST? Now that is some really, really FUNNY shit.
Troll.
Bill Perdue
@strumpetwindsock: I suspect you were referring to Tankies pea-brained flirtation with threats of violence but you’re further off the mark than he is, if that’s possible, when it comes to understanding the role of social violence.
Adopting terrorist tactics is an admission of defeat, a useless attempt to shame the ‘masses’ into action. It’s very rare: the last big upsurge occurred it towards the end of the radicalization of the 60’s-70’s when the SDS liberals morphed ultraleftists and launched their insipid “attack” on Chicago the Weathermen campaign. The Chicago cops had a field day and their bombing campaign only succeeded in blowing themselves up.
Typically, sellout liberal Democrats like Tankie, confronted with the damage their support of bigots like Obama caused sometimes flirt with ultraleftism. The other response of liberal Democrats is to forget they voted for Obama and are responsible for his errors. They think criticizing him is enough, but it’s not. They have to acknowledge that the idiot theory of voting for the lesser of two bigots has any validity.
Terrorism is very different from the self defense practiced by unions, native Americans and groups like SNCC’s Lowndes County Freedom Party and the Organization of African American Unity led by Malcolm X. We need to attempt self defense groups in that tradition and demand that local governments cooperate with us in ending the violence against GLBT folks.
The vast majority of social violence is perpetrated by the right, not the left. We don’t run around killing christers, they kill us. We don’t kill GIs, Iraqis, Pakistanis and Afghans, the right centrist Democrats and Republicans do. Etc. If you have complaints about social violence present them to the governments run by homobigots, the looter class and racists, including your own. But don’t pretend social violence comes from the left, the LGBT movements, etc.
Bill Perdue
Comments 66 and 68 are childish attempts at diverting the discussion by the reverend getsevenwithgaymen, aka getreal. Notice how she flaunts her signature hatred for gay men and the fact that she has the IQ of a child. She pulls this stunt because I called her on her bigotry and she flew into a rage from which she has yet to recover.
http://www.queerty.com/morning-goods-colter-johnson-20090203/ Go to comment 7 where she baits tallskin, accusing him of being a pederast.
http://www.queerty.com/michael-lucas-takes-on-black-porn-stars-not-in-that-way-20090327/ Go down to comment 254. This is getsevenwithblackgaymen commenting on the plot of AA gay men to spread HIV/AIDs. It’s pretty sick stuff. You can tell from her comments that she’s not very successful at converting or seducing gay men to her sick lifestyle.
strumpetwindsock
@Bill Perdue:
Actually I wasn’t putting down self defense groups at all, Bill. I think they are an important and essential part of organizing our community.
Note that I am talking about protection and resistance of violence – not hotshot vigilanteeism.
I was talking about wanton violence with no other design but to shock or to appear to be doing SOMETHING. As I said, the cops are more than happy to deal with that kind of shit – so much so that they are often the ones who instigate it.
Except for the hyperbolae in your last paragraph (and the personal insults) I agree with your post entirely.
I mentioned native standoffs because they have had to take legitimate stands (which involved military force, and death) in much more dire circumstances than most of us find ourselves, and they also have the social foundation which can support that kind of dedication.
Talking about violence without an understanding of what it entails, and its consequences is dangerous and irresponsible, IMO.
The Gay Numbers
richb. Please stop telling people they don’t understand politics just because they disagree with you.
The Gay Numbers
stump
a) people are just talking. b) the underlying thesis is not about violence, but the need for more aggressive posturing than why can’t we all just get along.
strumpetwindsock
@The Gay Numbers:
To fall back on the defense that it is “just talking” on the one hand a call for “more aggressive posturing” in the same sentence is a little bit contradictory.
Either people are talking about burning, looting and killing as real tactics or they are just bullshitting, and if they are just bullshitting then I’m not the one you should be lecturing about “doing nothing”.
strumpetwindsock
@The Gay Numbers:
Actually, have you ever read “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie”?
You probably should. Words do have meaning, even if the speaker tries to pretend they do not.
The Gay Numbers
Stump-whatever. good luck.
strumpetwindsock
@The Gay Numbers:
Yeah, thanks.
Though I should probably be wishing you good luck.
I sure don’t envy you having to deal with that shitty business.
ProfessorVP
@Lee:
Yes, Pollyanna, there is the distinct possibility he loathes us, and wishes we would go away.
I’m reminded of something Edmund “Pat” Brown, Jerry’s father, said about homosexuality. Now, I’m paraphrasing as best I can, but it’s pretty accurate. “The way to get rid of it is to make it unpopular, like bad breath.” Nixon, when told by his spies that so-and-so liked to chase young girls, replied, “Well, it’s better than chasing young boys.” Yeah, maybe “loathe” is a bit heavy-handed a word, but it is entirely possible that Obama does have the very ordinary feelings that many very ordinary people do.
At one debate, I recall, I could not help but notice his somewhat pained expression when asked what he would tell his young daughters about gay people. I couldn’t help thinking he actually felt sorry for me, as if I were a spina bifida baby. The most accurate comment around here, which I saw earlier, was that he just doesn’t get it. No truer words were ever spoken.
Of course, if he knew more gay people, or at least realized he knew gays and lesbians, it wouldn’t hurt. Oprah, for one.
Foster
“clintons legacy”
Your jokiing right?
That man and his administration has done more for gay rights as a nation then any other predecessors have done. DADT, was an incredilbly huge step forward for gay rights in the military, ony coming to effect after Clintons goal too have Gay men and Women to serve frrely and openly.
Obama is a terrible president, not as bad as bush but close. It seems more and more like the Leaders are becoming puppets on a string. Open promises of change Change CHANGE the only change thats happening is the increasingly large amount of disapprovals from more and more people thjis does not make me or anyone else a racist it makes us a citizen thats outraged too what the world has become from the past decade.
It is a sad sad world we are livng in today my friends, very very sad.
InExile
@The Gay Numbers: There is wone big difference, he is much, much weaker!
InExile
@InExile: ONE
Brian Miller
Well golly gee, when are all the people who supported Obama and slammed all his critics going to apologize and concede that he’s just another homophobic empty suit?
C’mon Obamamaniacs, ‘fess up.
*crickets*
Hmmm.
Brian Miller
@Matt Deco:
We, the gays, are simply a demographic to the rest of America – including Obama. Give us fake promises or fake support and we will support you with our vote or our money.
But that’s what we’ve trained politicians into expecting from us.
We give them money and votes, they give us DOMA and DADT and platitudes, and anybody who criticizes them gets told to “get over themselves” or that “the world isn’t only about you” and “there are more important priorities.”
So many gay people, most of the gay press, and most queer commentators and journalists swooned over a ticket that had a guy at the top who actively courted homophobic religious leaders (and who was primarily responsible for the passage of Proposition 8), and a VP candidate who voted for the anti-gay DOMA and anti-gay military ban as a Senator.
Before one can expect politicians to change, they have to change themselves. All the trippy mooncalves who were part of the Hope-N-Change Express and donated $2,300 to the campaign and apologized for every stupid move Obama made on gay issues are just as responsible for this outcome as Obama himself — and the uncomfortable truth is that a large number of them are in the LGBT community.
Brian Miller
@Chitown Kev:
The AA religious community in Chicago didn’t listen to him here in Chicago when he gave quite a few speeches about not hatin’ on teh gays.
Wow, Kev, you’re right.
All criticism of Obama’s policies are unwarranted. After all, he gave a few speeches in Chicago! He has done his part!
Chitown Kev
@Brian Miller:
Wrong answer again, though I agree with your general sentiment.
Kennedy offered, at best, tepid support to the the black community on civil rights prior to the 1960 election and the black community didn’t vote for Kennedy in the large monolithic blocs that African Americans vote for Democrats nowadays. King and the civil rights movement made sure that the inequalities facing African Americans was square in his face. By 1963, he (and LBJ)couldn’t avoid the issue (Truthfully, RFK deserves a little more credit than JFK).
That is the charge of our community right now, to put the inequalities that we face squarely in the face of the country, the country is with us on MOST things as it is.
Prop 8 is in fact a good example of what we did wrong in spite of Obama. No On 8 hid our community in closets, opting for vague abstractions until after the election.
Chitown Kev
@Brian Miller:
Of course we should criticize, but you are taking my argument out of context.
The context of that argument is if you replace the word gay (and gay concerns and issues) with the word black (and black concerns and issues) then much of the criticism I see of Obama sounds no different than the criticism of Obama that I have been hearing for many years.
And it sounds just as catty, too.
Chitown Kev
@Brian Miller:
But has the gay community TRULY done its’ part? Be honest.
Juanita de Talmas
@Ken in 212: LOL Is this queen for real?
ProfessorVP
@Foster:
If DADT was a step forward, then swine flu is wonderful since it’s better than cancer.
I’m still not sure if you were pulling our collective leg.
The Gay Numbers
ProfessorVP and Chitown
Honestly, I would stop wasting your time if I were you. When someone can seriously say that Clinton was better than Obama on gay rights issue you can assume that the person making such a comment is not dealing with a full deck. I had forgot there are Clinonites who are cult-like as Obama supporters. This is not a discussion of facts and reality. It’s one of religion. Forget DADT for a second, one of DOMA,a nd what Bill Clinton telling Kerry to support the anti-marriage amendments in 2004- well those acts were necessary. Here’s the thing- Obama is wrong. He should support our rights. He’s being a political coward not to do so. He is also not actively creating these laws. He does not have to do so. Clinton did it for him. They are two peas in a pod. Only a worshiping child could not admit to this truth.
Lee
@Lee:
“The most accurate comment around here, which I saw earlier, was that he just doesn’t get it.” Glad you agree with what I wrote in post # 121. “I’ve always felt the problem was that he simply doesn’t “get” the seriousness of gay inequality, and he’s not alone.”
And, though I never saw the exchange about what he would tell his daughters about gays, I can well imagine that it made him uncomfortable because interlocked with not getting it is that HE remains uncomfortable personally.
When I protested the sophomoric attitude he displayed during the primary season debate at “black” Howard University, the majority of responses were, “Obama homophobic? You’re crazy. He supports this, he supports that, he walks on water.”
In this case, I meant “homophobic” as in uncomfortable, holding onto ignorant concepts about gays including an attitude of “otherness.” Not “homohating” which should be used not as a synonym for “homophobic” but an extreme form of it.
To recap, at one point in the debate, when the subject of stratospherically disproportionate rates of HIV infection among black teenagers came up, then nomination competitor Joe Biden urged people to be tested for HIV. Here’s the official transcript:
“SEN. BIDEN: … I got tested for AIDS. I know Barack got tested for AIDS. (Laughter.) There’s no shame in being tested for AIDS. It’s an important thing. Because the fact of the matter is, in the community, in the communities engaged in denial, they’re engaged in denial, no one wants to talk about it in the community, and we do not have enough leaders, in the community and outside the community, demanding we face the reality, confront the men in the community, as well as the women, letting them know there are alternatives. (Applause.)
MR. SMILEY: Thank you.
SEN. OBAMA: Tavis, Tavis, Tavis, I just got to make clear — I got tested with Michelle. (Laughter, applause.)
MR. SMILEY: Ah.
SEN. OBAMA: In — when we were in Kenya in Africa. So I want to —
MR. SMILEY: All right.
SEN. OBAMA: I don’t want any confusion here about what’s going on. (Applause continues.)
MR. SMILEY: All right.
SEN. BIDEN: And I got tested to save my life, because I had 13 pints of blood transfusion.
SEN. OBAMA: I was tested with my wife.
MR. SMILEY: And I’m sure Michelle appreciates you clarifying it.
SEN. OBAMA: In public. (Laughter.)”
The characterization “Laughter” was a ridiculous understatement. It should read, “Roar of laughter” and “Roar grows. Stomping, howling.” And it leaves out, understandably, that the same Harvard-educated Obama who had just a few minutes earlier soberly, courageously said, “It has been an aspect of sometimes homophobia that we don’t address this issue as clearly as it needs to be,” virtually, verbally “grabbed the mike” and broke into his “ghetto accent lite” with that, “Tavis, Tavis, Tavis, I just got to make clear….”
A CLIP: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZzWYCxjdnY
Biden deserves being dinged, too, after Obama’s nonsense stimulated his own, but Edwards didn’t join the fray and yell, “And don’t believe Ann Coulter—I’m not a faggot.” Nor did Hillary jump in to say, “And she’s wrong about me, too. I’m no lesbian, and for the record, my husband’s not a closet queen either.” [Anyone remember Coulter’s claiming Bill was a closet queen because he “hates womenn”?]
But the greatest, indefensible sin was by the black male candidate supposedly concerned about homophobia in the black community who felt suddenly impelled to convey the idea that he was concerned someone in a mostly black audience at a university whose enrollment was then 86% black might think he was gay. Huh?
OF COURSE, it was a “joke,” but no less a transparently “fag joke.” Note the audience did not just laugh, they APPLAUDED mention of his WIFE. If there was any doubt this was an audience ripe for such mocking, consider this passage from an article in the school newspaper five months later as quoted by Queerty:
“… Howard University students are concerned with the high number of bisexual and/or gay men and women [on campus].
According to [psychoanalysis], homosexuality is a mental illness, symptomatic of arrested development. People believe that homosexual desires are a consequence of poor familial relations in childhood or some other trauma.”
Then consider the millions of Americans, of all races and ages, who watched a candidate for President of the United States get them rolling in the aisles with his, “I don’t want any confusion” … AS IF there was … “I ain’t no punk. I gotta wife. No down low going down here! ME a batty-boy?”
Which brings me to the Obamafags and Obamadykes and straight Obamafools who gave him a pass for his lame “going to the chapel in Iowa with ASSlerod” “joke” a week ago. It would have been inexcusable EVEN IF he supported marriage equality instead of condemning it, even if he hadn’t gone back on his promise to put the full weight of his administration behind repeal of DOMA and federal rights for gay couples.
I have a sense of humor, but I also have the sense that all of these problems derive from a straight man who doesn’t get it despite all his pretty words to the contrary.
Lee
Good Lord, it’s too early. The above re “get” was @ ProfessorVP.
The Gay Numbers
@LEE
If Obama does not get, it’s because in part all too many gays do not either, and many of them are probably in positions of power telling him what he says and does is okay.
Lee
@The Gay Numbers:
I agree totally. When Wolf Blitzer is doing a better job of challenging Obama’s Retreat than HRC’s Joe Solmonese, aka Nevilla Chamberlain, when straight mainstream reporters who don’t really give a damn about justice for LGBTs are won’t take his shills’ bullshit for an answer while NGLTF’s Rea Carey is channeling Sally Field with her, “He loves us. He REALLY LOVES US,” AND when even those public profile gays who are daring raise questions still don’t get that we’re DECADES past mere letters and “being nice” working…we are up Potomac Shit Creek without a paddle.
NO, I am not suggesting violence as apparently some loons did above.
I AM urging NONviolent civil disobedience, DISRUPTIVE disobedience at the White House, chambers and offices of Congress, the State Department, IRS, and Pentagon.
The Gay Numbers
Or how about they just correct him and not give him a pass on poor behavior just because its Obama. I say the same of Clinton whom people here defend. We defend the indefensible. I can speculate why. It’s like a child starved for attention. Any little bit is enough to make us gush over the person giving it to us. Rather than having a standard outside of what politicians say and do- we empathize with what politicians do. But, this is America. That’s what this country is about now. Orwellian logic.
Lee
@The Gay Numbers:
And, now, we disagree. It may have become a virtual “industry” but it is intellectually dishonest to claim Clinton did NOTHING “good” for us. The good is no more deniable than the bad.
The double standard of the Obambots in this regard is dishonest at best. They’re willing to forgive Obama’s having DONE little concrete for LGBTs [yet] because they’ve got a box full of leftover pretty WORDS, while they wash away, deny the concrete “good” Clinton did because of the concrete “bad.”
Just one example, most of Obama’s high profile gay appointments causing the Obambots to wet their pink panties with glee are the same people Clinton appointed nearly 20 years ago. And in what government paid for padded room are those who fell into a catatonic state when Obama made Mrs. AntiChrist his Secretary of State?
buster
Last night I got a really good taste about how gay folk are feeling about Obama. I went to a party of about 50 people. With the exception of a few all were gay. The majority of those at the party were professionals, a lot of Doctors, university professors, therapists and such. A heated discussion between two individuals about Obama’s performance came up. When one individual began to sing the praises of Obama, all hell broke loose. This group of people may not be the perfect scientific control group to gauge the opinions about Obama from the gay community but it was definitely a pretty intelligent bunch. I could not believe the anger, the outrage, the animosity toward Obama. The same grievances were aired that you hear on these threads. Obama is a bigot because of his stance on marriage, Obama’s choice of Rick Warren was a kick in the teeth right out of the gate. Obama’s inaction about DADT, of course thats the one that a few people responded with, “just give him some time”. Basically, there were only 2 people in that crowd that defended Obama, 1 being a gay professor and the other being a straight guy, of Iranian descent and a practicing Muslim, who’s response was that he was just glad we have a person of color in office and that because he was not gay that he realized he could not fully empathize with what gay people are going through. I know, we could start an entire thread just on that remark.
What I learned from this was that there are a lot of intelligent, informed and well educated gay men, at least that are done with him and all I can say is that Obama better come through before the end of his term or he is likely to have an entire group of people retaliating by working against him.
When the pro Obama professor I spoke of earlier stated that at least he was better than what we had another individual asked “and how are things any better or with his position on many things going to get any better”? He then went on to say that if he did not have any more rights under Obama than he did under Bush then in reality it would serve him better to be a Republican. He said as a high income individual if his civil rights were not being served then all that left him was to be concerned with taxes, making sure their were plenty of right offs and loopholes and to work toward lower inheritance taxes because he expected several large ones from his family one day.
I thought, your right, for many not being a Democrat might be of more benefit to them if there lives were not going to improve.
There is a lot of anger, disgust and lack of faith toward Obama and its not just on these comment threads. I know that he has not had a lot of time to do anything for us but as it was pointed out last night, what do we really have to expect from him even given time?
spindoc
Everybody told us to just sit back and be quiet while Clinton was president. Saying that we just needed to be patient and in his final term he would enact gay rights initiatives. Well what did we get? We got DOMA and Don’t Ask Don’t tell. There is NO WAY that I’ll sit back and wait. If the Obama doesn’t want my vote or money next time he should just keep doing what he’s doing.
mikeandrewsdantescove
I’m a democrat and was surprised by Obama’s choice in Robert Gibbs. The man has no personality and falls flat continually.
Obama needs to resolve Don’t Ask Don’t Tell by the summer if not sooner.
Mike
Who is Man of the Year?
http://theqtube.com/view/554/mike-andrews-tell-me/
The Gay Numbers
Lee
I am not really interested in talking to people who want to play pretend with either men. Clinton in 2004 called up Kerry according to both Kerry and Kerry’s staffers to request that Kerry support the ban of gay marriage. There is really nothing left to be said if you can raitionalize this.
Dabq
@buster: How can they retaliate? Its not as if they or the most of the loud posters here voted for the guy in the first place for crying out loud. Let them keep on harping and just write the check to Palin, she’ll save them and welcome them into the fold!
Lee
@The Gay Numbers:
“Clinton in 2004 called up Kerry according to both Kerry and….”
Please document that Kerry himself ever said that.
Thank you.
vdanker
100 days in office and he hasn’t accomplished everything we wanted…yes, we really should impeach the loser.
The Gay Numbers
Why do people insist on saying retarded things like mentioning the amount of time Obma has been in office. How is that relevant to him back peddling on or flipping on his previous positions? How does that explain his remaining silent when several state passed gay rights efforts.You have all these memorized responses. too bad they do not really apply.
The Gay Numbers
By the way- an even better example of Obam flipping is the recent discussion fo the torture photos. WHen pressed, some ardent supporter says he’s only been in office 100 days. Like that’s a response to the fact 2 weeks ago he said he was going to release the photos,a nd 2 weeks later he says he is not. Like I said, retarded.
The Gay Numbers
Lee
Your ignorance about yoru hero is quite stunning.
Here is Americablog discussing the issue. I remember a few others discusing it in MSM items, but quite frankly, I am not going to do much more research than this:
http://www.americablog.com/2007/06/bill-clinton-reportedly-told-john-kerry.html
John Aravosis site, Americablog, is well respected and he has strongly went after Obama on his positions on gay rights. Indeed, he wrote a great column last week about how the behavior of Obama is a sign that he’s punting. What I like about Americablog is that it does not choose to hero worship Obama or Clinton.
michael
@Dabq: They can retaliate by focusing on their pocket books and voting for the party that is pro rich, who will make sure the middle class are the ones who bare the burden of taxes and being high income wage earners have plenty of deductions and loopholes. In other words living well is the best revenge.
If you cannot marry your partner, then maybe buying a second home on the beach is the next best thing. And what is Mrs. Palin gonna take from us that we already don’t have? Is she going to take away our right to marry? Is she going to overturn Ark. ban on gay adoption? No, but then if Obama is not going to do anything about these things then what does it matter if she is president? Anyway, most stupid societies don’t change anyway until they find themselves in ruins, ask Germany. Maybe the sooner the U.S. eats dirt the sooner it can be rebuilt from scratch. There is a teaching in the Kabbalah that a new creation takes place when an old one is shattered. Maybe all Obama is doing is trying to control the drinking of a drunk society instead of just letting it go and allowing it to hit bottom. People usually do not change until staying the same becomes to painful.
The Gay Numbers
Ditto what michael said- they need to realize we are a political force to be feared at the ballot box and in money before they will change. The problem is too many gays have issues overcoming the baggage that the majority places on us about how we should discount the fact we are gay. If we operated as a political voice, we are gaining enough numbers to sway electoral outcomes. No one is galvanizing this yet.
Lee
@The Gay Numbers:
All you’ve “documented” is the accusation of others [someone at Newsweek, the magazine that dug Monica Lewinsky out of the woodwork; an unnamed “Kerry/Edwards staffer,” Bob Shrum, who also claimed Edwards was a homophobe, but, wait, he meant in the past, blah blah blah]….. NOT, as I reasonably requested PROOF that KERRY confirmed it. You even ignore the caveat in the title of the very Americablah you link to:
“Bill Clinton REPORTEDLY told John Kerry….” Just like you focus on my documentation that Clinton did do some “good” for gays [while ignoring my acknowledgement of the “bad” he did] to slur me as ignorant, and a blind hero worshipper. I’m far from either, thank you, but you have made a case for your own blind “devil hating.” Just plead guilty and throw yourself on the mercy of the court of rationality.
As for Aravois allegedly objectivity, Mary, PLEASE! His finally seeing the light about Obama NOW, as so many other former Obamaniacs are, does not erase the fact that he was a tireless producer of Hillary Haterade/Obama Is the Messiah Smoothies during the primaries.
“Hillary’s top NC surrogate bashes gays in front of her this morning” April 2008
“Why are Hillary and John McCain refusing to release their tax returns?” March 2008
ad nausem, not to mention his tireless sexism/guilt by association: Bill will tell Hillary what to do/he is the Antigay AntiChrist, therefore she’s Mrs. Antigay/AntiChrist. AntiChristess?
As another blogger summed up Aravois “objectivity” in June 2008: “I just love, Love, LOVE John Aravosis – his Hillary rants are the BEST!”
Far from being fair to both, he had declared for Obama at least by Spring of 2008, describing him as “our candidate” and said “We [the Obama campaign] lost West Virginia last night” in this May 2008 MSNBC video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-h071Qnw16g
Chitown Kev
@The Gay Numbers:
Having lokked at the numbers…
We can already sway Florida on our own, given the closeness of the elections there. I’d have to look at more numbers to see what else is possible. But, as a community, we are very widely dispersed.
The Gay Numbers
Lee
I didn’t even bother to read past the use of accusation. You are willing to condemn Obama on very little, but will go to extraordinary lengths to rationalize Clinton. As I said, I am not interest Obamabots OR Clintonbots.
The Gay Numbers
Chitown:
About our rising electoral influence as more people accept their sexual orientation:
http://www.openleft.com/diary/13208/electorate-becoming-increasingly-lgbt
This is actually a conservative article regarding the numbers.
You should not assume that we know the distribution. One of the ideas that I wish the gay groups would start to push is that even if people do not come out – to convince them to start voting their interest regarding sexual orientation because this unknown variable could then start working in our favor regarding what politicians do. but, I am just a random guy online without any connections to point out these ideas.
The Gay Numbers
PS
Clearly the prefer result is for people to come out because that increases the likelihood it seems of them identifying with gay issues at the ballow box. Now, if they do not, I wish we could find someone to convince others to identify with those issues. We should target the closet cases with “don’t you want a better future” and use their fears in our favor. Since the ballot boxes are private, no one will know for whom they vote. but we can use that as a ploy- to say to politicians- the part you do know is growing in power, and the part you do not will only increase that power. This is all to explain myself better.
Chitown Kev
@The Gay Numbers:
That’s a good article, Gay Numbers, I have to read it more closely.
I am thinking in Electoral College terms, though.
“In Florida, where a typical distribution of the gay votes – historically (70 percent) – would have provided the Democrat with about 275,000 votes, Obama won by only 199,000 votes. And while the Sunshine State overall gave Obama 51 percent of the vote, heavily gay Miami-Dade – home of gay popular resort South Beach – gave him 58 percent.”
http://www.gaylesbiantimes.com/?id=13426
Now in Florida, the African American vote and the Jewish vote was also critical for Obama’s win but…in a close election, at least in Florida (and unlike California or NewYork, which are liberal; and would probably go Dem in a Presidential election regardless) we CAN make a difference.
Lee
@The Gay Numbers:
We agree in so many ways, and yet you refuse to even read a different opinion.
Whether you choose to read this or not, for everyone without their fingers in their ears, their hands over their eyes, as Tom Hanks might say, here is what I know.
1. Despite a modest gay rights history in office, Bill Clinton was annointed the First Great Messiah for the Gays based on the number of positive things he SAID about gay rights and the promises he made contrasted with any candidate before [tho Jesse Jackson’s pro gay statements in the 1984 are wrongly forgotten].
2. After being elected he delivered on some of those promises, tried to deliver on others and failed, abandoned some, and acted against us in some ways that remain wrong today but whose SYMBOLIC significance must not blind us to their FUNCTIONAL inconsequence [gays weren’t allowed in the military before DADT; gay couples weren’t given benefits before DOMA Section 3, and Section 2 is irrelevant because it’s redundant to preexisting law].
3. It is a recent myth that the majority of gay people hated him from those failures forward. In fact, even AFTER DADT and DOMA, 1500 gays paid $250 dollars a piece to hear him speak at the 1997 HRC annual gala. According to the “Windy City Times,” and other contemporaneous gay media, he received “thunderous applause.”
HRC director Elizabeth Birch said that night, “Because our needs were almost as great as our expectations, it was inevitable that we-you and this community -would experience both shared disappointment and some disagreement. But, Mr. President, you have played a brave and powerful and indispensable role in the march toward justice for us, and all Americans. Mr. President, we thank you not only for being here tonight, but for being the first President in history to stand up for our civil rights.”
As recently as November 2006, he was treated as a rock star at an NGLTF fundraiser in Miami.
4. The “He’s ALL Bad/We ALL Hate Him/You’re An Idiot if YOU Don’t” myth was born out of the contest between his wife and Obama for the Presidential nomination, and it was pure historical revisionism for political manipulation: Hurt Bill, hurt Hillary = good for Obama.
Ironically, many of those manipulators duplicated the same mistake vis-a-vis Obama as those who had canonized Clinton prematurely. Despite a modest gay rights history in office, Obama was annointed the indisputable Great Messiah for the Gays simply based on things he said, promises he made. In fact, some of them were the SAME people who had first annointed Clinton.
5. We can judge Clinton’s presidency relative to gay rights and progress, one way or the other, because it is over. We can only and should only evaluate Obama’s as it unfolds. Not because of any pretty words, not because of any promises…for by that criteria Clinton was just as “great”…but by ACTION and INACTION. We do NOT have the luxury listening to further cooings of “trust me.”
Therefore, his first semester grade is at best a “D,” that high only because he has made some gay appointments…though, again, that is something that Clinton originated…that low because those are the easy things to do and NOT ONE of his promises in relation to legislation have yet to be kept BY THE DEFINITIONS HE SET HIMSELF when asking for our vote.
I’ll applaud if that changes but will not apologize for booing him until then nor give him a pass because of the myth of Clinton the AntiChrist for the Gays.
Chitown Kev
@Lee:
Yeah, hence the reason HRC and NGLTF has the ever dwindling rep it does in most of our community.
Gropus like these are paying for access. However, they become a part of the technocracy, they tend to behave, well, like technocrats. Hence getting Obama elected by any means necessary is more important than maintaining marriage rights in California.
Our community is getting little or no return on the money, it seems. It ain’t trickling down to the rights level.
Of course, those that advocate for our community should develop relationships with those in government but must always maintain a sort of oppositional stance.
The Gay Numbers
Chitown
Thanks, I had not seen that article. I appreciate someone who is as interested in the numbers game as I am. Interestingly, what NY signifies is the reverse- that the gay vote can make up the difference for the GOP trolling for votes in state wide races. This is the strategy that is being threatened to the Democrats there. That gays will support whoever supports our equality.
By the way, as a practical matter, the gay vote is larger than the Jewish vote. Again, a lot of this is that the national gay groups are not capitalizing on the voting power that we posses, and many gays do not realize our political power at the ballot.
I have been unable to confirm this, but as I understand it, if the No on 8 had focused on GOTV of gay voters (such as voter registrations, get out the vote, etc) this would have made up the difference between we lost the state. I know for a fact from reading people like Nate Silver that such GOTV efforts can make up , if I am remember, 2 or 3 points in the polls on election day. We only lost by 5 percent in CA. Again, great deal of electoral power. What if gay groups had said to Obama- you want out help? Give us yours first.
The Gay Numbers
Chitown
Absolutely agree about the gay rights orgs. They simply do not know how to play hard ball. This capitulation started with Clinton and has continued until now. They also lack the ability, by the way, to build a strong narrative or understand things like the importance of basic grass roots efforts to get ou tyour people to vote or building coalitions with organizations like labor. They are only now getting better at it, but I remember back in 2004, pushing the one group that I botheed to be a part of to support the efforts to condemn disenfranchisement of AAs in Ohio. They said it was not their issue. Sad, that they did not get how solidarity can provide returns on investment that are no immediately apparent strictlyf rom short term thinking.
The Gay Numbers
Lee:
I am not interested in debating you. I judge Clinton by the same standard I judge Obama. Whether the goals for my community were accomplished or not. That’s it. The rest is his problem until he delivers us what we are entitled as citizens of the country.
Chitown Kev
@The Gay Numbers:
Again, it shows you what little these people really know about the black civil rights movement beyond Coretta Scott King quotes.
I’m reading David Garrow’s history of MLK and the SCLC now. The thing about King and the other members in the MIA was they knew who the liberal and friendly whites were in the power structure of Montgomery and even statewide in Alabama. They cultivated those relationships. And those whites were, indeed, there at critical times during the Montgomerybus boycott in 1955 (the governor of Alabama, not Wallace, of course).
The gay orgs only have a very small part of the equation: the access. Now when we get the grassroots orgs and the coalitions going, things will move FAST (very fast!) and Obama, like Kennedy and Johnson, will be forced on the right side of history.
If this goes right, that is.
Chitown Kev
@The Gay Numbers:
Obama would still be president, Prop 8 would have been defeated, and we’d be feeling the Obama looooooove.
Chitown Kev
@The Gay Numbers:
The gay vote is larger than the Jewish vote in FLORIDA?
The Gay Numbers
I am not sure about the gay vote being bigger than the Jewish vote in Florida. I meant on a national scale. As for it’s distribution locally, – state by state- I have been looking for a good source, but do not have one.
The Gay Numbers
Re Johnson and Kennedy. You are right. They are lessons in the “make them do it” theory of politics. The reason LBJ did so much was that there were social forces pushing him to do so much. The problem with many Obama supporters is that they are not looking for someone to lead real change. They want someone is like Oprah or a self help guru. Someone who will make them feel good, but someone for whom they need not put any work into holding the politician accountable. If we held Obama accountable, he would achieve a lot more.
Lee
@Chitown Kev:
I agree ultimately with you about HRC, certainly, and NGLTF today. But your “Yeah, hence” reflects neither a significant correlation between the events I describe in 97 and 06 and attitudes toward them now, nor the reality of the time.
By November 97, four years into his presidency, they had a long history of access, starting with the first meeting in the White House between a sitting president and gay activists in 1993. There was no reason to believe that he would suddenly withdraw it by that point, though his advisor Rahm Emmanuel, acting solely on his psychotic own, barred David Mixner for a while because he dared demonstrate against DADT [per accounts of a phone conversation they had, and subsequent events in Mixner’s “Stranger Among Friends”].
At one’s most cynical, one must concede that however self-serving Birch’s words were that night and the invitation for him to speak by HRC’s board, 99% of those applauding him that night would never set foot in the White House.
And in 2006, as an EX president, what was there for anyone in the NGLTF Miami crowd to grasp for acccess to?
HOWEVER, as we’re still in Obama’s first semester, I think there is an excellent case to be made that the “A” Solmonese and NGLTF’s Carey have given him, their “I touched the hand of God” wet panties accounts after, gasp, he spoke to them at a White House cocktail party are motivated ENTIRELY by the desire to keep their own names on the invitation lists. And/or are fools cut from the same Shroud of Little Rock that declared Clinton the Messiah in 1992.
Carey displayed the hysterical blindness generated by childish messianism when she said, “I’ve been in Washington for 20 years, … I would say that this administration, in the time that I have been in Washington, has been not only more receptive to the issues facing our community, but also more proactive about issues facing our community.”
Uh, Princess, that erases not just all the indisputably good things Clinton did starting 17 years ago, but the fact that, SO FAR, Obama AS PRESIDENT has DONE NOTHING “proactive about issues facing our community.” Ms. Carey, Lt. Choi, holding Line 1; Lt. Tsao holding Line 2.
I have been saying at least since 2004 that gays should not give HRC another dime because of the GIGANTIC disproportion between their budget and their results, and believe realizing that disconnect is the reason so many others have come to complain about them and not because they hosted Bill Clinton in 1997.
Since their inception in 1981, gays have given them hundreds of MILLIONS of dollars. They have operated on a $30 MILLION a year budget for some time. Solmonese himself, even after a pay cut, still makes over $300,000 a year. According to 2004 IRS reports, salaries, operating expenses, etc., cost them $6 MILLION A YEAR just to open their doors every day. And WHAT THE FUCK do we have to show for it? We could have seen far more progress simply by using all that money to BRIBE public officials.
Stop donating to HRC and NGLTF and anything with Obama or the DNC’s name on it and we will FINALLY see some real progress!
The Gay Numbers
Lee
His point is that access does not mean shit without results. The results regarding what gays have happened despite the national organizations. Not because of them. Even marriag equality is a product of gay couples fi nding themselves under the assault of the right wing in the form of policies that Clinton helped create . Those couples were told to wait, and it’s not the right time. Marriage equality was not on the radar screen until these couples said not to the right wing efforts to delegitimize gay relatiionships
Chitown Kev
@The Gay Numbers:
Now Lambda Legal on the other hand, I will happily donate to them when I get the spare change to do so. They work hard, they work smart, because of the nature of what they do, they work oppositionally.
Plus, they do reach out to the community. There was a representative from Lambda Legal at a black LGBT here the Sat. after the Iowa decision was reached and he did a good job explaining what the Iowa decision meant for us in Illinois, and a lot of other stuff.
Chitown Kev
@Lee:
Thanks for this history Lee. I do need to read and learn more of this as I continue to get increasingly active.
The Gay Numbers
About the only group I am interested in donating to is Soul Force because they get it. They go where the gay haters are rather than staying in safe gay enclaves. I am still waiting to see how Equality California is about its grassroots efforts. I like that they say they are going to train people to do grassroots organizing and focus on building local organizations for a bottom up approach. I have said since Dean came up with the Democratic Party that there should be a 50-state strategy regarding gay rights utlizing locals to really build up the movemnt into a national movement just like Dean help turn the Democrats into a national party.
Lee
Lambda Legal is [with some exceptions like all human groups] FANTASTIC. With roughly a third the annual budget of HRC they have played a major role in our biggest advances.
As for Prop 8 and the situation in Florida, I have some personal insight. I live in San Francisco and have a close friend heavily involved in Miami gay politics, and have spent some time there myself.
RE 8: GOTV was less a problem per se because voting records generally were broken because of the enthusiasm for Obama. It wasn’t the numbers that turned out but what they didn’t do. The problem was in the No leaders failing to convince enough people who were already voting that they should vote AGAINST 8 and convincing enough people who were going to vote against 8 to help in convincing people THEY knew to vote against it.
That’s where too much self-confidence/apathy came in. Up to three weeks before the election you could walk down Castro between 17th and 19th Streets and count on little more than two hands the number of anti 8 signs in bar/shop/residence windows.
How damned we are by the assumption that just because family members and friends don’t condemn us or even “accept us,” that they can automatically be counted on to vote for us without exception. I’ve learned that from some of my own relatives and will never forget for, among other reasons, an incident the night of the Anita Bryant vote in Miami in 1977 [yes, I’m ancient, shoot me] that first made me realize it.
I was a volunteer coordinator in the anti-Anita campaign office for the last month of that campaign when her motto “Save the Children” reached its peak in ruthless lies and distortions. I’ve forgotten his job or name, let’s call him Tom, but an employee of the founder of the group, Jack Campbell, was memorable for two reasons. He was hot butch as all get out and tough as nails. We verbally jousted in good humor a lot and I was always impressed how imperturbable he was.
Election night, the “victory celebration” at the Fontainbleau quickly turned into a wake after realizing their modest gay rights ordinance had been repealed by a 2-1 majority. At one point, I noticed Tom, who I would have expected to say, “Tough shit! We’ll beat the bastards next time!” sitting as frozen as the proverbial statue. Asking someone what had caused this stunning change in him, the reply was, “His sister is a school teacher and he just found out she voted for repeal.”
There are many reasons for which the No On 8 people are culpable for the defeat last year, but none more than their not having anticipated that the haters would exploit the fear of “teaching homosexuality,” and I remain convinced that that issue was what ultimately defeated us, including some votes by those who are otherwise ok with us, even tho the attempt to ban gay teachers specifically had been defeated years before [primarily because of the opposition of the otherwise monstrous Ronald Reagan].
While nongay Miami today is much more liberal, the majority of gays exhibit the worst characteristics of gays anywhere. They’ll only show up for a gay rights event if a big enough celebrity, cocktails, and half-naked beefcake are involved, rarely provide “feet on the ground” work, creating an additional burden for those few gay activists who do continue to work their asses off in a state I would have abandoned long ago.
For the time being, I have stopped giving money to EQCA because their director was one of the Keystone Kops that let marriage equality be defeated. They have SOME good ideas, but others that are ludicrous when you look past their cosmetic appeal.
For example, sending people door-to-door in conservative areas to pitch marriage equality is absurd. Even if they were trained, professional lobbyists, and I guarantee you they are not, the idea that you can cool such an emotionally hot button in such a format is nonsense.
Voter education IS the key to our progress, and was abandoned by national and state organizations years ago because it was hard work, one had to deal with all the counterproductive volunteers [like a gay guy who showed up at a speaking engagement I was doing in a college dorm who bragged to the audience about how many residents’ cocks he’d sucked], and in the fantasy that they could “skip that step” and win gay equality simply by courting gay friendly politicians….but not in that format at least in any period less than decades.
Take DADT for instance. We could be igniting straight grassroots support for at least a stop discharge until repeal executive order by Obama with full page ads in USA Today and local large city newspapers featuring a photo of Lt. Dan Choi, his credentials, and the story of the September 10, 2001, “Tommorow is zero hour” message in Arabic translated the day after 3000+ Americans were murdered.
Many nongays will never love us; as Bayard Rustin explained long ago, that shouldn’t be our goal anyway. But they already love their own and their families’ personal safety and it would be easy to connect threats to it with DADT.
Raise your hand if you can explain to me why our “leaders” aren’t even trying in ways that might actually succeed.
TANK
@The Gay Numbers:
Then you should look up the trevor project. Soul force is misguided if they think that they can convert and convince people from the “inside” as it were.
TANK
@Bill Perdue:
Go stuff yourself with a broken bottle, you pederast antisemitic fanatic.
The Gay Numbers
Tank
I disagree. Part of the shifting of the Overton Window in our favor is going to places people do not want you or expect you to go. Having had the experience of talking to a few evangelicals, I realized there is value in it. We do not need to win them all over. Just enough to shift the overall numbers gradually in our favor. If we had convinced a few more people in CA, we would not even have to be waiting for the Ca S.Ct. decision. If you stay in a bubble, then you are not going to reach anyone who does not live in that bubble with you. This is not fantasy or idealism. This is the hard work of changing people’s attitudes person by person to win where people do not think we can win. Part of that reason we have lost in the past is entrenched interests. The way we will win in the future is thinking outside of that bubble.
The Gay Numbers
By the way, my comments do not just apply to religious people, but with strategies for reaching out to people of color and low income communities as well. The reality is that its just easier to demonize what you don’t have personal contact with. Can we change everyone? No. But that’s not the point. The point is to make inroads. Why? because the next time there isa debate when we are not around , but some person who happened to have met me or some other gay person is- then that reshapes that conversation. Again, personal real world experience has taught me this. The problem with gays is too many of us bring baggage outside of the hard work of winning. I know you have issues with people of faith. Personally, I don’t care about that. I care about building influence. The Trevor Project is a good program, but (pardon the pun) it’s speaking to the choir. That’s a big mistake. We should not cede any territory to anyone- even the religious groups.
TANK
I disagree. Part of the shifting of the Overton Window in our favor is going to places people do not want you or expect you to go.
Yes, part of that strategy is not merely reducible to preaching to the converted. However, this generalization (which you admit to in the following comment) applies to religious fundamentalists how? Once again, religious fundamentalists in this country view moderates as failed fundamentalists. Pushing the agenda by showing up at these conservative religious universities isn’t going to win any hearts and minds and represents an exercise is christian martyrdom, if anything at all. Moderates do not convert fundamentalists. They embolden them and assist them by appealing to the very same foundations of faith that the fundamentalist appeals to in justifying bigotry.
Having had the experience of talking to a few evangelicals, I realized there is value in it.
Well, an anecdote does not the reality make. I’m sure many others have had negative experiences talking to fundamentalist christians (including soul force itself who at many places are just escorted off the property to cheering as soon as they show up).
We do not need to win them all over. Just enough to shift the overall numbers gradually in our favor.
I contend that this isn’t going to happen by appealing to their faith. In fact, having a moderate or so called gay christian lecture a evangelical on their own faith and dispute them may just entrench them even more in their position.
If we had convinced a few more people in CA, we would not even have to be waiting for the Ca S.Ct. decision. If you stay in a bubble, then you are not going to reach anyone who does not live in that bubble with you. This is not fantasy or idealism. This is the hard work of changing people’s attitudes person by person to win where people do not think we can win.
And you are simply not going to convert religious fundamentalists using their religion to do it. You don’t understand the attitude nor the actual research on the matter. We didn’t lose prop 8 to just religious fundamentalists…as those weren’t the majority of voters.
Part of that reason we have lost in the past is entrenched interests. The way we will win in the future is thinking outside of that bubble.
Wave of the future. OUtside the paradigm…and we can do that without using the bible to [un]reason with the unreasonable.
TANK
No, a big mistake is using a generalization like reaching out to communities not previously reached out to, and apply it to religious fundamentalists in the u.s. Tell me, did black civil rights leaders reach out to the KKK or other white supremacists? Of course not. They understood, like anyone with a lick of sense would…that that’s a waste of resources and time and is a spectacle. I understand soul force is comprised of christian identified queers and allies…they’re operating on their own agenda of gaining wider acceptance within their own faith…that’s their prerogative, but don’t for a moment mistake it for a sincere and promising attempt at shifting attitudes on gay people amongst christian evangelical fundamentalists.
troy
When Bush beat Gore part of the blame was laid upon those who voted for Nader. I don’t recall percentage but could it be possible, if we had the guts, stuck to our guns and laid it out on the table to the Obama and the Demo-crites that if we don’t get what we want that our vote are going elsewhere, even if that means the Republicans get the country back, send all the straight, lower middle andmiddle class young people off to war for oil, abortions become illegal, (lets face it, how many of we gay folk are gonna be hurt by not being able to get a fucking abortion anyway), etc. etc.
We will take our cash that we have been giving to lame ass organizations like the democratic party, HRC, etc and start our own funds and charities to help our own kind directly. Yeah, we won’t be able to marry, be out in the military, but so what? We can’t do any of that shit anyway. We are not taken seriously because they believe we have no alternative, well there is an alternative, if you cannot beat them, then make it work for you the best you can. I am tired of sacrificing myself for “the greater good”. Fuck the greater good, do you really think most straight democrats would break a finger nail to fight for our rights? Hell no and I am sick of fighting for theirs.
The Gay Numbers
Tank
I am not going to argue with your long winded b.s. Sorry, but at the end of the day your issues are with religion, not the strategy, which is a good strategy. The rest is just you justifying your dislike of religion. I do not care how I win o ur rights. You have a point to make about religion so you do.
Todd
NO TIME, NO DIME, NO VOTES
Until the democratic party comes to the realization that now is the time to address this issue, I am recommending to my friends and all who will listen on the web:
DO not give any democratic congressional, state, local, and certainly not to the president==no money, no time, no vote.
It is time that the gay and Lesbian community stood up to the Democrats, and DEMAND action.
I understand incremental, but the Dan Choi controversy made me realize that beneath the rhetoric I see NOTHING the president has done other than a symbollic for my community.
We’ve have enough sytmbols, research into Gays in the military. The time to end DADT was yesterday. Dan Choi and the other service members the president has unjustly fired can’t wait til tomorrow.
I know Bleu Copas, another Arabic linguist who was discharged about 3 or so years ago. What a waste!
I thought of joining the service in 1992. I scored a 99th percentile on the ASVAB, and a foreign language score that was extremely high, but I backed out when the policy wasn’t going to be overturned. Difference was I was 24, and refused to be in the closet. Alot of people go in at a much earlier age, when they struggle with their identity, particular gay and lesbian young people.
Is this the Change you voted for? Is equality something too onerous for our elected representatives to bother with.
2010????? and then the excuse will be—–
Shame on you Geor—-ooops, Barack Obama!
TANK
gay people will never be dependable voting block for such a suggestion to work. It’s too small for the amount of dissent and lack of uniformity in political ideology already expressed to be a threat in consensus which will not occur. The fact is that no matter what obama does from here until 2010 and 2012, the majority of gays will vote democrat.
The Gay Numbers
Actually- what we said is that if the Dems will nto support us , then we will throw our support at the GOP if they do support us. In other words, our support goes to the highest bidder. It’s funny how Troy manages to miss that for strawmen about Nader and getting nothing. By the way, Nader didn’t lose 2000, Gore lost 2000 for Gore. Not only did the polling at the time show that, but also subsequent questions about voter choices showed that the split would have been about even. If you want to get even deeper, Gore did not actually lose. What happened was a fluke with Florida and the S.Ct. The point is that you are full of talking points. Not what actually happened at the time.
TANK
@The Gay Numbers:
No, I’ve actually provided arguments against your inanities and all you’re doing here is repeating yourself…your religious faith, basically. As you have done elsewhere when you simply commit the fallacy of bare assertion in the absence of argument when the ontic status of a deity was being discussed.
Do you know what begging the question means?
The Gay Numbers
TANK
You are showing your age. Actually the if you follow the link that I provided you will see that implicitly as people become more accepting of their sexuality they do indeed start voting at least in part according to that sexuality. That influence is increasing.
The Gay Numbers
Yes tank, anyone who disagrees with you is innane, simple minded, and blah, blah blah. yet, you never seem to back up your comments with facts. I can back up my clais with facts and links. This is one of the reasons I do not argue with you. You are all theory, no substance. I am sure you are brilliant, but I can see why you did not go to law school. It would have requied you to apply facts to theory. Or as my first law professor used to say- theory is great, but its only in fact that the rubber hits the road.
The Gay Numbers
Even we do not get DADT, at the very least they need to pass ENDA this year – which arguably has a bigger impact on gay rights.
TANK
Soulforce isn’t going to win us our rights, numbers. Do have any idea what a failure it actually is? They’re lucky to even get on property let alone start proselytizing. It is an unfortunate joke based upon the sadness that gay christians must face when confronted with an almost uniform lack of legitimacy within their faith.
TANK
You are showing your age. Actually the if you follow the link that I provided you will see that implicitly as people become more accepting of their sexuality they do indeed start voting at least in part according to that sexuality. That influence is increasing.
How am I disagreeing with this?
TANK
Yes tank, anyone who disagrees with you is innane, simple minded, and blah, blah blah.
But you haven’t disagreed with me beyond saying that you do…what’s your argument? Where are your facts? This is just another expression of your faith.
yet, you never seem to back up your comments with facts.
Actually, I do quite often. Including in this thread if you’d bother to go back and look. IN fact, I provide more statistical evidence to support my claims than you ever bother to do, or have in the case of your graceless “soul force” endorsement.
I can back up my clais with facts and links.
Can you? That soul force works? That religious moderates are convincing religious fundamentalists to become moderates? Where are your facts? I suggest you actually read some books on the matter before making this a priori claims.
This is one of the reasons I do not argue with you. You are all theory, no substance.
This is a simple ad hominem. In this thread I provided many statistics ahead of you, even, to counter, for example, strumpet’s claim that canada is not a comparatively homogeneous culture, and that the united states is vastly different in population, belief, government system, etc. Once again, where’s your evidence to back this up? I don’t think you understand what a theory is, either. A theory explains facts. In fact, theories are fact makers, for without a context or interpretation, a fact ceases to be anything but gibberish. Further, you don’t understand what a sound argument is, apparently, or what validity amounts to to make this absurd and false accusation.
I am sure you are brilliant, but I can see why you did not go to law school. It would have requied you to apply facts to theory. Or as my first law professor used to say- theory is great, but its only in fact that the rubber hits the road.
I didn’t attend law school because I didn’t want a boring useless job as a functionary. Don’t get me wrong, I have family members who are lawyers…but this country needs another lawyer about as much as I require a third arm. Lawyers are not typically very bright…it’s been my experience, anyway.
Todd
I think you are underestimating what can be accomplished. If something like this caught on where big money gay contributers, and enough pressure on particularly Pelosi–She has said this isn’t the top of her agenda. I wonder what would happen if you get gays and lesbians in HER voting district, I bet then you might see some action on congress. But I think the quickest way is to bombard Obama whith calls, emails, as well as the mainstream media to keep the spotlight on this.
Remember what they want is to keep us quiet.
strumpetwindsock
@TANK:
canada is not a comparatively homogeneous culture, and that the united states is vastly different in population, belief, government system.
In the first place I never said the U.S. wasn’t different; I am quite aware that it is not the same as our country.
But as for our Canada being homogeneous,if you have ever been here then you have obviously never travelled any distance, because frankly you have no idea what you are talking about.
@The Gay Numbers:
Well said. I agree we need to reach out to constituencies which may see the error of their ways and support us.
And while I am not too familiar with the work of your HRC (though I have read some of the coverage) I was surprised to see the size of their headquarters. There aren’t too many advocacy groups or NGOs up here that can afford swanky digs like that.
Just going by the websites of the two organizations, Lambda Legal certainly seems to have a lot less flash and a lot more meat (just at first glance).
Chitown Kev
@The Gay Numbers:
To follow up
Even today, it’s easy to characterize some events of the civil rights movement with the simple white vs. black binary. Such a characterization would be inaccurate. There were plenty of white people in positions of power that were willing to help King and the black community of in Montgomery.
By doing the work of groups like Soul Force, we can identify where that type of “soft support” is located in the communities that we demonized. As you state, in California, you convert, say, a small percentage of the black community, a small percentage of Orange County, a small percentage of Fresno, and a small percentage of the Latino community and win in 2010.
Chitown Kev
@troy:
I 100% agree with this.
@TANK: You may want to read some of the links above, TANK. Our community is a bigger voting bloc than you think.
For example. It appears that the Dems may try to chase after Texas in 2012. Given the huge gay populations in Dallas and Houston, the right mix of gay civil rights, immigration reform, some sort of income (tax breaks, etc.) bone for the conservaqueers there, and Obama might make Texas competitive or even win the state.
TANK
But as for our Canada being homogeneous,if you have ever been here then you have obviously never travelled any distance, because frankly you have no idea what you are talking about.
Comparatively, it is. Look, you have more chinese “visible” minority members than black. It’s more of a homogeneous culture than the united states by a long shot. You’re not iceland…you’ve got that going for you, I suppose.
TANK
You may want to read some of the links above, TANK. Our community is a bigger voting bloc than you think.
I don’t deny the significance of the size of our voting block given the trend in every narrower elections nationwide. I do, however, doubt that for a third party leverage strategy to work, we can adapt fast enough for 2010 and 12.
For example. It appears that the Dems may try to chase after Texas in 2012. Given the huge gay populations in Dallas and Houston, the right mix of gay civil rights, immigration reform, some sort of income (tax breaks, etc.) bone for the conservaqueers there, and Obama might make Texas competitive or even win the state.
Case in point. How many gay people in, say, san francisco didn’t vote against prop 8? Quite a few from what I’ve read. I’m actually more interested in strategy to get them to voting stations as it is than the third party leveraging (though as I’ve been saying for years, that’s needed to motivate substantive action).
strumpetwindsock
@TANK:
Do you really want a Canadian civics lesson? You seem to be asking for one.
I am telling you our country has a much more concentrated ethnic and cultural diversity in our different regions than the U.S., and it is true. One pie chart based on ethnic background does not tell you what is actually happening on the ground.
Bill Perdue
@TANK: What tankie is trying to say, in his own signature Tourette’s syndrome style, is that he’s just not bright enough to win arguments.
So inventing shabby lies is all he’s left with.
Pitiable.
The Gay Numbers
@strumpetwindsock: One of the reason I was on the case of this blog is that they conflated amount of money donated to an organization with its effective. The problem with that equation is that it assumes that the big organization spends it money in the most effective manner. I agree money is critical, but so is spending money properly. In many ways, the gay rights movement organizations are at least a decade behind the political innovations that progressives have been using. As I said above, there should be a 50 state strategy that’s bottom up that empowers locals to really go out and build the alliances and resources that we need. The reality is that if those things are in place it will still be hard to win, but it will give us a real shot at winning.
strumpetwindsock
@The Gay Numbers:
It seems like it would make sense there for two reasons –
first, because some of the crucial battlegrounds in your country seem to be at your state level.
Second, any organization that gets too top-heavy and hierarchical winds up losing touch, getting co-opted, or as you say, using more and more of its funds to re-upholster the furniture.
As I said, a look at the websites of the two organizations illustrates a thing or two about their priorities.
TANK
@strumpetwindsock:
I’m just going by actual demographics. Prove it.
strumpetwindsock
@TANK:
*sigh*
Well this thread is pretty played out anyway, so excuse me everyone else for the indulgence. TANK wants to know about Canadians all of a sudden.
For starters let’s look at the French/English divide.
Canada is officially bilingual (F/E).
Quebec, with one quarter of our population is unilingual French. It is virtually its own nation – completely different culture, history, religious background, and legal system. And more importantly – a completely foreign music, TV and popular culture from the rest of Canada. Montreal is an English enclave, including Anglo, Jewish (used to be #2 to New York) and other non-francophone communities, but go outside of Montreal’s city limits et tout la monde parle en francais.
There is nothing in the U.S., not even your deep south, that has a cultural divide like Quebec and the rest of Canada. It is a linguistic/cultural divide like Belgium or the former Czechoslovakia.
Newfoundland, which joined confederation in 1949, was its own nation before that time – primarily Anglo-Irish, and again with its own history and culture separate from the rest of Canada.
The rest of the maritimes are primarily Anglo-Scottish, along with French Acadian culture (many of them were deported south to Louisiana. Many of the escaped slaves who came to Canada settled in Nova Scotia. New Brunswick, is 1/3 francophone.
Ontario, our largest province, is primarily anglo-protestant (that might be skewing your demographic numbers a bit).
Get over the great lakes though, and much of the population is Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish, much like northern Minnesota, which is just over the border.
Out in the west the population is primarily Eastern European. Our province has more Germans than English, actually, and I lived for several years in an area were almost everyone spoke English, but it was a second language to Ukrainian.
The prairies also have a high and increasing native and Metis population – it’s around 20 percent in my province now, and expected to be over 50 percent within 40 years or so. That would put white people in the minority here.
There are areas of Vancouver where recent immigrants already outnumber whites (parts of the City of Richmond, B.C. are a good example). Most are Chinese, Vietnamese, Sikh, and Hindu.
Now get yourself a map and look at where the Canadian shield starts. Once you get north of that line into the bush there are fewer and fewer white people, especially once you get out of government towns and into fly-in communities.You also have more Dene, Cree and Ojibway spoken. Whites are a small minority in one of our northern territories – Nunavut, which is bilingual English/Inuktitut.
Even in the rest of our northern territories, whites are not in the majority, with many people being of mixed ancestry (in Yukon the pure British population is only 8 percent, while pure native is 14 percent.
Likewise, once you get onto the Islands off the west coast, there are fewer and fewer non-natives.
So in much of the north whites are in the minority, and nowhere there are they a large majority. Do you have any large area stretching across your entire country where this is the case?
That’s race and culture. I won’t bore you with many more details, except to say the socio-political climate also varies widely from place to place here. As I said, Quebec is unique. Another small example – Saskatchewan was the birthplace of Canada’s social democratic movement, universal healthcare, publicly owned utilities, and farmer-run wheat pool.
Go to Alberta, just over the border and you have a province that has voted in free market conservative governments for over 40 years. It is as close to Texas culture as we have here (though it is far from it).
I doubt you will recognize it, but I believe I have made my point.
Attmay
It was well-known to me that HomophObama was a fraud and a huckster from day one. The idea that he would be some kind of hero or show any kind of backbone was laughable. A hero doesn’t make racist remarks about his grandmother. A hero doesn’t associate with racist, anti-semitic preachers and homophobic gospel “singers”. A hero doesn’t associate with an unrepentant former Weatherman who is a free man today ONLY because of a technicality. A hero doesn’t oppose gay marriage because “God is in the mix”. And a hero would not have flip-flopped on gay marriage (notice that he supported it in 1996, which is ancient history in current politics).
Welcome to reality. You Obamunists hyped up a total mediocrity as The Gay Messiah™ to your own peril. Now you’ve met the new boss and he’s the same as the old one. In fact he’s worse, because Bush was at least honest about where he stood, albeit every bit as wrong.
The only good thing he’s doing is realizing that Bush was right about renditions, torture, and the well-deserved treatment of Islamist terrorist scum and acting accordingly. The Senate voted 90-6 not to close Guantanamo.
And if any of you who still think President George Jefferson is The Gay Messiah™ want to call me a racist, it reflects on you. I have not judged him by the color of his skin. I have judged him by the content of his character, and I have judged his character to be wanting. People like you changed the definition of racism to “whatever Al Sharpton doesn’t like”. It would just be nice if America’s first non-white president had something else to offer that was different.