Need some pre-sleep reading? Well, you're in luck, because the Democratic Party this week hammered out the rough draft of their party platform. Entitled "Renewing America's Promise," the 56-page document outlines everything from national security to rebuilding New Orleans.
The Party's done a good job addressing - but never explicitly - the ever-evolving face of the nation. For example, their section on "empowering families for a new era," the platform committee write, "The face of America's families is also changing, and so are the challenges they confront."
While gay activists were hoping for explicitly inclusive language, this rough draft touches only briefly on issues close to queer people…
Democrats will fight to end discrimination based on race, sex, ethnicity, national origin, language, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, age and disability in every corner of our country, because that's the America we believe in.
…
We will enact a comprehensive bipartisan employment non-discrimination act. We oppose the Defense of Marriage Act and all attempts to use the issue to divide us.
Note that there's no declaration to fight state-based marriage fights. Although, to be fair, this is the national party's platform, not California or Arizona's.
Those of you who want to read the whole thing can download this PDF, but be sure to remember this is only a rough draft.
Editor
Japhy Grant Editorial Director
David Hauslaib Publisher
Jossip Initiatives
any mention of repeal of DADT?
I did a search on the words gay and lesbian. They don't seem to appear. They say
"Allow All Americans to Serve
We will also put national security above divisive politics. More than 10,000 service men and women have been discharged on the basis of sexual orientation since the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy was implemented, at a cost of over $360 million. Many of those forced out had special skills in high demand, such as translators, engineers and pilots. At a time when the military is having a tough time recruiting and retaining troops, it is wrong to deny our country the service of brave, qualified people. We support the repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” and the implementation of policies to allow qualified men and women to serve openly regardless of sexual orientation"
They do reference gender identity once.
" We have more work to do. Democrats will fight to end discrimination based on race, sex, ethnicity, national origin, language, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, age and disability in every corner of our country, because
that’s the America we believe in."
Seems pretty skimpy to me.
Before any of us supports any candidate or party we ought to insist that they support a list of reasonable steps to end the war, exert a modicum of damage control over the collapsing economy and take real steps to harshly punish bigots.
1. They should be for permanent, immediate and total withdrawal of all US military, espionage and mercenary units from the Middle East to US home bases.
2. They should be willing to cut the US purse stings that pay for the apartheid system used against Palestinians.
3. They should be for socialized medicine paid by extremely high taxes on the rich and taking away the profits and assets of insurance companies and HMOs plus the dividends paid by pharmaceutical companies.
4. They should be adamantly against tax breaks, tax cuts or taxpayer dollars for superstitious cults. They should be for punishing cult leaders whose hate speech advocates or empowers anti-GLBT violence.
5. They should be willing to go all out for an inclusive ENDA that would make it easy to win big judgments from discriminatory employers. Even if that means splitting their party and expelling sellouts like Barney Frank.
6. They should be for n inclusive housing bill that would make it easy to win big judgments from discriminatory lenders and landlords for ourselves and others.
7. They should back a bill imposing harsh federal sentences on organizations, cults and individuals convicted of hate crimes and one that defines hate crimes to include harassment, violence and hate speech directed against the GLBT communities as well as others.
8. They should be willing to propose and fight for a constitutional guarantee of a minimum wage of $25.00 an hour with full benefits, both adjusted semi-annually to fully account for inflation.
9. They should agree to propose a federal cutting the normal work week to 32 hours without loss of pay or benefits and with time and a half after 32 hours, and double time after eight hours in any day or 40 hours in any week.
10. They should be for the repeal of all FTA’s – the NorthAmericanFTA, the KoreaFTA, the PeruFTA, and the CentralAmericanF TA. The FTA are anti-union, they impoverish working people and make the rich richer and they’re environmental disasters.
11. They should be for twenty paid vacation for all workers in addition to the federal holidays and paid sick leave if prescribed by a doctor, including a year of paid maternity leave.
12. They should propose a federal law to protect workers who lose, or have lost their jobs because of outsourcing or efforts to control pollution. Those workers should be guaranteed reeducation and receive full income and benefits until they take a new job. In the case of those who lost their jobs to corporate outsourcing the costs of reeducation and living benefits should be paid for by a 100% tax on the dividends paid to corporate stockholders. In the case of jobs lost to anti-pollution effort the full cost of reeducation and full income and benefits should be paid by a 100% tax on the dividends paid to stockholders of all polluting corporations.
13. They should enact laws that protect immigrant/imported workers at the same level as native workers.
Bill Clinton, who was on wrong side on every major political question, ran his presidential campaign on the slogan “It’s the economy, stupid.” Wrong again. It’s the stupid way the economy is organized by the rich and the parties they own, the Democrats and Republicans.
Nice ASS…er Donkey.
Wow Bill Perdue will fix the world. Nice going but the world in which we live has many different people ideas, beliefs etc. I will agree with some of your thoughts Bill but this reminds me more of a socialized system not a democracy for what you desire tends to be more in European nations. And to be honest I do not think most Americans desire to be in a 40-60 percent tax bracket.