New running mates John McCain and Sarah Palin are trying to present themselves as reformers.
Together, they say, their administration will clean up dirty politics and set America in a new direction. Looking at the Republican party’s platform, however, it becomes increasingly clear the Grand Old Party’s gay politics are the same stagnant, archaic politics.
While gay Democrats scoffed at the lack of LGBT in their party’s platform, we’re sure – or, we hope! – that the Republican party’s lavender set will have something to say about two very anti-gay stipulations in their peers’ platform. First and foremost, there’s a little thing called “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the discriminatory measure preventing out and proud homos from serving in the military. Based firmly in a tradition of bellicosity, the Republicans declare their support for the troops and pledge to make the armed forces stronger. But, in a brazen display of illogic, the party promises also to keep the gays far from the battlefield. It is, in their words, for service men and women’s own protection:
We oppose reinstituting the draft, whether directly or through compulsory national service. We support the advancement of women in the military and their exemption from ground combat units. Military priorities and mission must determine personnel policies. Esprit and cohesion are necessary for military effectiveness and success on the battlefield. To protect our servicemen and women and ensure that America’s Armed Forces remain the best in the world, we affirm the timelessness of those values, the benefits of traditional military culture, and the incompatibility of homosexuality with military service.
Why, we wonder, are we incompatible? Because we’re all limp-wristed pansies with overactive libidos, or something? Politics like that are not only exclusionary, they’re short-sighted and based in stereotypes. In a word, such a stance is unpatriotic.
The anti-gay action doesn’t end there. Once again, the Republicans have pledged to protect America’s “families” from same-sex marriage, which they must view as a worst threat than terrorism. The party also goes further by coming out against gay adoption and smearing the Democrats for trying to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. From the platform:
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.
Because our children’s future is best preserved within the traditional understanding of marriage, we call for a constitutional amendment that fully protects marriage as a union of a man and a woman, so that judges cannot make other arrangements equivalent to it. In the absence of a national amendment, we support the right of the people of the various states to affirm traditional marriage through state initiatives.
Republicans recognize the importance of having in the home a father and a mother who are married. The two-parent family still provides the best environment of stability, discipline, responsibility, and character. Children in homes without fathers are more likely to commit a crime, drop out of school, become violent, become teen parents, use illegal drugs, become mired in poverty, or have emotional or behavioral problems. We support the courageous efforts of single-parent families to provide a stable home for their children. Children are our nation’s most precious resource. We also salute and support the efforts of foster and adoptive families.
Republicans have been at the forefront of protecting traditional marriage laws, both in the states and in Congress. A Republican Congress enacted the Defense of Marriage Act, affirming the right of states not to recognize same-sex “marriages” licensed in other states. Unbelievably, the Democratic Party has now pledged to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, which would subject every state to the redefinition of marriage by a judge without ever allowing the people to vote on the matter. We also urge Congress to use its Article III, Section 2 power to prevent activist federal judges from imposing upon the rest of the nation the judicial activism in Massachusetts and California. We also encourage states to review their marriage and divorce laws in order to strengthen marriage.
The party also pledges that faith-based organizations who are “forced to abandon” their principles for political correctness face “religious discrimination.” Anyone who reads this drivel and considers McCain and Palin to be reformers – well, they’re just gullible.
With regard to the “Republicans recognize the importance of having in the home a father and a mother who are married” line. Now, we understand Governor Palin’s 17-year old daughter shouldn’t be derided for being pregnant out of wedlock – she lives in Alaska, what else is she going to do? – but the chasm between the party’s pledge and the American reality couldn’t be more clear.
Here’s a PDF of the platform platform in its entirety. Read it and weep.
L
If they really believed this bullshit, why not a constitutional amendment to take children away from single, widowed, and divorced parents? These two are appalling. And we now learn that Sarah Palin belonged to a political party aiming for the secession of Alaska from the U.S.
Robguy
“so that judges cannot make other arrangements equivalent to it.”
They say so often that they think people should be able to make whatever legal arrangements they want, they just want to save marriage – but their amendments specifically say we can’t make legal arrangements that are even similar to what they get with marriage.
emb
Discrimination, narrow-minded self-righteousness, the injection of intolerant religious dogma into public policy, and more jaw-dropping hypocrisy than you can shake a stick at–that pretty much defines mccain, palin (to the extent there’s anything there to define), and the republicans.
And the LCRs willingly stay with these people? And the Obama-hating pumas threaten to vote for them? It’s a weird, sad world.
emb
Oh, and Robguy, your blog is dead-on! I’ve almost been tempted to abandon my happy atheism, confronted with a god who responds to the evangelicals’ prayers for rain on Obama with a hurricane right up the republican’s convention. And not one, but three!
marco channing
Marriage is a sacred institution–except for pregnant teenagers.
Hypocrites. Supporting abstinence only education and being against condom distribution only to end up with a pregnant kid.
Palin also believes in teaching creationism in school. This ticket is more wacko right-wing than Bush/Cheney were.
John K.
EMB: HAHAHAHA, I was thinking the same thing!
Gee
The Republicans JUST DON’T GET IT.
A small percentage of people are born with an homosexual sexual orientation.
The entire premise for their thoughts on homosexuals is wrong. The GOP thinks it is a lifestyle choice.
It is depressing to realize that 1 of only 2 political parties in my great country does not understand that gay people are born gay.
How can that be???
Chuck
Wow. I truly like(ed) Palin but are they kidding??? Knowing this I could never vote Republican. These people need to get with reality or hurry up and die.
Jaroslaw
Re:Don’t ask, don’t tell: Why doesn’t ONE media person have the balls to ask one of these neanderthal unaware-of-history morons about the Spartans? Greek culture in general (who gave us democracy by the way)??? The Spartans had same sex lovers (fellow soldier partners) and were the fiercest fighting force in the ancient world. Please explain that – rethuglicans….
esteban
Keep in mind that Sarah Palin is absolutely unqualified. Why would McCain choose her? Because she is a wonderful distraction from real issues. She is jamming everyone’s blog lately, discussing her pregnant daughter, her hair, her resemblance to Karen Walker. And quite frankly none of this matters. It simply helps the party stay in the media. I am convinced slamming Palin does the Republican party a favor. So, I am choosing to ask one basic thing: When Palin comes up, change the conversation to real issues. If John McCain dies while in office, what will her role as president be like? If McCain lives, what are the fundamental differences between his policy and Obama’s. Which is better for the future of our nation?
marco channing
McCain should change his new campaign slogan from “Country First” to “Evangelicals First.”
I can’t believe that the media are not even discussing the fact that Palin, a possible President of the United States, believes in teaching creationism in public schools, especially in light of her failed abstinence-only belief.
WTF?
Flex
They’re pandering to their target audience, right-wing, religious lunatics. These religious idiots are obsessed with the intimate lives of gay people. It’s the core of their disgusting cult. Without their anti-gay rage, they remain impotent, constipated, and lose sleep over the fact that gay marriage is legal in California, and Mass, they wouldn’t have one binding element to keep their single brain waves, within a 1000 mile radius, together. Also, their radical ignorance is astounding. Inbreeding supporter, Sarah Palin, McSame’s VP, teenage daughter is pregnant. Clearly, her mother was an absolute failure when it comes to educating your children when it comes to sex education. These pathetic, religious scabs, don’t deserve to hold the key to the magic kingdom, anymore! Rise up against them at every opportunity, and rub their noses in their own shit!!!
Bill Perdue
The Republicans are about as bad as you can get, and voting for them is truly insane.
But there’s another party that really is as bad as you can get. It’s the Democrats. They voted overwhelmingly for DOMA and DADT and refuse to repeal them. Bill Clinton, like his clone, Barak Obama has made a career of getting in the gutter to pander to bigots. After DOMA passed Clinton used your donations (if you were dumb enough to send the Democrats money) to pay of radio ads boasting about his signature on DOMA, and to add insult to injury those ads appeared on rancid redneck religious stations in the South.
It’s the same party whose DNC Chief of Staff is being sued for antigay discrimination by none other than the DNC’s former GLBT affairs director. You’re donations will go a long way towards paying for Dean and Daughtry’s hefty legal bills and the large settlement they’ll have to pay.
And keep in mind that this is the same party ruled by the Chamber of Commerce that shredded ENDA to please them. Then, after it’d pass both Houses of Congress they simply tossed the Mathew Shepard Hate Crimes bill in the garbage. They opposed same sex marriage and have the same solution to our agenda – States Rights – that and earlier Democrat, George Wallace proposed to deal with civil rights legislation. And they learned their lesson from Rove. Now it’s the Democrats who’ve mastered the art of pandering to bigots. They’re very good at it.
Voting for Democrats makes us politically impotent and we’re paying a heavy price for our helplessness: Katrina, poverty, the blight of bigotry, a crash and burn economy and unending wars. It’s not just unprincipled; it’s reckless to waste our time, money or votes on either Democrats or Republicans. We should be building mass movements to end their rule and get us out of the last closet, the political closet inhabited by Stonewall Democrats and Log Cabin Republicans.
On November 4th vote for the union led and financed US Labor Party (if it makes it past the Democrat’s (sic) roadblocks). If not vote for socialist or communist candidates as a protest or join the scores of millions who sit it out because they’re smart enough to refuse to vote for the lesser bigot, the lesser warmonger or the lesser evil.
ChristopherM
Yes Bill, let’s do that. Let’s do that and watch Peepaw win and appoint two more Antonin Scalias to the Supreme Court, locking up the Court with extremists who don’t believe in freedom for anyone but corporations and the executive branch. There is a time and a place for a protest vote. This is not it. There are thousands of our people in Iraq right now who probably don’t care to get blown up so you can make a point.
Madonna's Boy
Bill Perdue…like Barack said last week…”ENOUGH”!!! Poof…be gone!
Harriet Miers
Palin, a possible President of the United States, believes in teaching creationism in public schools
So does Bush, a current President of the United States.
Jenna's Bush
Miss Purdue is an idiot.
CHURCHILL-Y
“Read it and weep”
Already did that while reading the DNC platform.
There’s truth in commie Perdue’s comment, what’s the difference between these two parties? And let’s not even go into the 17 year old daughter thing because bidens son is doing far more worst things but nothing is said about it.
Bill Perdue
ChristopherM “There are thousands of our people in Iraq right now who probably don’t care to get blown up so you can make a point.”
The way to ensure a longer war is to vote for Nixon redux, Obama, who’s already promised one. People like you who shill for Obama and McCain are responsible for a longer, wider war. Are you proud? ChristopherM.
The only way to end the war is to build the civilian and GI antiwar movements and to cement our ties with the Iraq Federation of Oil Unions.
“locking up the Court with extremists who don’t believe in freedom for anyone but corporations and the executive branch.”
Judges, Democrats or Republicans, only respond when pushed hard. They are virtually all conservatives appointed to protect property rights. The courts that knocked down sodomy laws and granted marriage rights all had Republican majorities but felt the pressure of changing sentiment, foreign scorn at US backwardness, and decades of demonstrations. Brown vs. Board of Education was won the same way.
Jenna’s Bush – Now we know why so many people call you a chucklehead.
Madonna’s Boy – if you can’t stand the heat… go somewhere else and wave your silly wand.
Kari b
OMG they are soooo 2004
the economy is soooo now
ChristopherM
I’m damn proud, Bill, because I am a realist. There is a lot to be said for building a viable third party in this country, but I know that a handful of fringe voters casting a third party vote in November isn’t going to do anything but put a decrepit warmongerer and his vacuous pretty version of Cheney into the White House. Obama isn’t everything I want him to be, but I think he’s pretty good and miles better than the alternative.
ChristopherM
Churchilly, the only thing that would make you weep about the DNC platform is the fact that it doesn’t call for separate water fountains for black people.
CHURCHILL-Y
Obamaton meltdown:
“John you are bugging the f— you. I don’t even understand what planet you’re on now. This is the job to be the leader of the free world. No disrespect, I love ya, I want you to live to 110, but what if, God forbid, you got a running mate, you become President. Alaska? ALASKA? ALASKA? ALASKA? Come on, man. I don’t even know if there are any black people in Alaska. John, come on. Sarah [Palin]? What in the hell? ALASKA? You’re bugging the f— out. Sarah Palin, you ain’t ready to be vice president. ALASKA MOTHERF—-ER? What is the reality in Alaska? There aren’t even any crackheads in Alaska. There aren’t no black people in Alaska.†– sean p diddy combs
Sounds like an idyllic place to live where it not for the pesky neighbor they border, Russia.
Bill Perdue
ChristopherM, your version of realism will lead to a longer war, a wider war and more slaughter. That’s what Obama promises. Being proud of that is a disgrace.
In 1964 a lot of idiots like you who say that “Obama isn’t everything I want him to be†sported buttons that said “Part of the Way with LBJ”. (The Democrats slogan was “All the way with LBJ”. Their crackpot realism helped get LBJ elected and then the slaughter commenced. Well over a million Vietnamese were murdered and over 55,000 GIs were killed because of people who went ‘Part of the way” with LBJ.
Obama admits that he’ll prolong the war. He wants to up the pace of murder in Afghanistan. He wants to attack Pakistan and expose us to nuclear retaliation. And you like that? You’d actually vote for that? You’re a real Democrat, ChristopherM, a credit to your party. The problem is a lot of people whose faces you’ll never see, Iraqis, Afghans, GI’s, and Pakistanis. are going to pay the price for your ‘realism’.
ChristopherM
I never supported the invasion of Iraq, and I want us out of there as soon as possible. Just like Obama. As for Afghanistan, if you don’t see the extreme threat there, then you are a blind zealot. I believe in peace. What I don’t believe in is being a victim.
Jason
Enough enough enough
Obama/ Biden ’08
Mr C
But wait Bill since when you agree with Churchill-Y? I remember a post where you called the idiot a racist as we all know the idiot is.
What’s up with this Mr Perdue???
He’s only agreeing with your viewpoint against Obama.
But of course Cocksucker-Y quotes Diddy and I assume he feels that Diddy is the voice of Black America?
Such a fucking idiot that Chittyshitty-Y is!
Madonna's Boy
Bill Perdue…YAWN!!! Such “manly” words and stances coming from behind the safety if a keyboard. Can’t you tell from the comments that most people on this board not only DISAGREE with you but don’t like you. You probably sit at your PC all day and eagerly wait to type some ridiculous tirade to get people to notice you. I bet if you and I were face-to-face we would see a different “persona” than what you type. And I would definitely use my wand on you, however, not to sprinkle any dust.
Tootle’s!
Bill Perdue
Mr C – ChurchillY doesn’t agree with me at all. He’s a racist scum who’s always supported Republicans because they’re like him. Like the Clintons, most Republicans are adept at tapping into the huge reservoir of racism in this country. Just as Obama is now beating KKKarl Rove in tapping into homophobia. That’s how Obama made deep inroads into traditional Republican bases as church going catholic cultists and evangelical bigots.
ChurchillY can do as he pleases: I rarely respond to him unless I see that he might confuse people. No one should. Responding to them is a trap, and those who fall for it just end up validating people like him and his ultraright friends like Tallskin. They’re racist louts who aren’t fit to be treated like humans.
My difference with you is that I’ll never ask people to vote for homophobic bigots like Obama or McCain. You do. I won’t because the Republicans are as bad as the Democrats when it comes to opposing our agenda for equality. McCain’s party makes no bones about hating us and Obama’s campaign has been one long revival meeting with bigoted christian pigs.
People who support Obama have to be OK with the fact that Obama won’t even mention us in his platform and that, like George Wallace, Hillary Clinton and John McCain, Obama wants our equality agenda subject to the tender mercies of ‘States Rights’ bigots.
They must think that it’s just swell that Obama’s party gave us DOMA and DADT, shredded ENDA and tossed the Sheppard Hate Crimes Bill in the garbage. And that they don’t have a problem with Obama’s bigoted veto of same sex marriage or with the fact the Democrats DADT means that GLBT soldiers are beaten, harassed, even murdered and discharged by the tens of thousands, losing their pensions and rights because of who they love.
Just like it means that Obama fans saw nothing wrong when the Democrats shredded ENDA to please the Chamber of Commerce. Obama supporters must have no problem with the hate crimes bill being tossed overboard or with the 12 or so fatal beatings, stabbings and shootings of mostly very young GLBT folks because there’s no hate crimes bill in place to deter thugs.
Voting for Obama is bad enough but we’re being asked us to vote for the party that includes traitors like Barney Frank, bigots like Pelosi and the rest of those right wing hustlers who are owned body and soul by the Chamber of Commerce. They, including Obama and Biden, are just as corrupt as McCain and his crew. They’re all members of the world’s second oldest profession.
Madonna’s Boy – thanks for the compliment. Knowing that a clueless twit like you dislikes me makes my day. Now plug that sillky wand back in and go back to sleep.
CHURCHILL-Y
Bravo commie Perdue! Fidel Castro and Putin would be so proud of you. Oh wait they would also make sure that your Gay ass remained eternally in the closet. They’re also much worst in the racial department which you frequently love to bring up. But hey don’t ever let minuscule details like that stop you from expressing your garbage.
Mr C
Hey Chittyshitty-Y that sounds like the ones your supporting McInsane/Stalin.
FUCKING IDIOT!
Sydney
Okay so basically thay’re telling people that children are messed up if they don’t have a father? I have never even met my father in my 16 years of living and I am personally fine. My mother had never gotten remarried and never plans to. So what if it’s two homosexual MEN who want to adopt a child? Then they have TWO father figures in the house. They are just annoying me because we should have the same rights along with the ‘average americans’!
N!KK!
Mccain thinks that he’s clever with his television ads. Did anyone ever see the one where he says, “Obama didn’t even visit the troops. He decided to take a break and play ball.” If you look closely at the clip of Obama playing basketball, he’s playing WITH THE TROOPS!!! lol. People that seriously want to vote for Mccain are just stupid. There’s no other explaination. Refusing to allow gay marriage but ok-ing civil unions is the same damned thing we went through 50-60 years ago with our African Americans. “Black children can go to school, but they can’t go with the white children. It’s ok as long as their schools are equal.” Doesn’t that sound like what’s happening today? “Gays can have Civil Unions with the same benefits as marriage, but they can’t legally call themselves married.” Something needs to be done ladies and gentlemen.
Gavin Gill
You guys are fuckin each other
Jordan
@Gee:
no. people are NOT born gay. do you realize that people who assume that they are born gay never give themselves the benefit of the doubt? my cousin died of AIDS, and he was homosexual. he told my family right before he passed away that being gay is a CHOICE. sure, i believe that some people have always had a gay nature, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have a choice.