The perception of the GOP being bigoted and narrow-minded — at least in Rhode Island — is hopefully coming to a close. We’re a very different breed in Rhode Island in many ways. We have one of the most forward-thinking Republican parties in the country.
—Raymond Beltran, the 26-year-old Community College of Rhode Island student and the new chairman of the Log Cabin Republican’s Rhode Island GOP caucus, evidently unaware of Rhode Island’s Republican leadership [via]
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
They couldn’t find a milk crate for Junior to stand on?? :-p
Kieran
Uggghhhhh! A gay Republican? Yuck Pughey!! The last thing we need is Republicans and Democrats competing for gay votes. We need to let the Democratic party know that gays don’t have anywhere else to go so that they can continue to take our votes and money for granted in return for lip service.
dellisonly
Forward thinking!?!?!?! We are talking about the same party that started tea parties, vicious rumors, and encouraged bigotry racism and homophobia. All because they lost an election to a more qualified black man. I believe in smaller government but I also know where my bread is buttered.
delurker again
Didn’t RI’s Rethug governor veto a bill that would have allowed domestic partners to arrange a funeral for each other?
Yup, he did.
http://newsblog.projo.com/2009/11/ri-gov-carcieri-vetoes-domesti.html
How’s that not being bigoted, narrow-minded thing working out for, ya, Ray-Ray?
And doesn’t anyone here find it odd that when there is a story about Democrats, queerty has to get in a bitchy dig about Obama, but in a story like this about this noxious midget troll, they omitted any mention of the cruel and heartless veto by the governor?
Cam
If that is true, that the Republicans in Rhode Island are a different breed then why is Rhode Island one of only two states in New England that doesn’t have legalized same sex marriage? The party there fought down the bill.
Look, I would love it if what this guy was saying were true, and if he had the integrity of the old national head of Log Cabin (Patrick, Guarino, Guarinno? sp) who would not endorse Bush due to his anti-gay iusses, then I’d say fine. Because at least THAT guy said “I believe in these things, but the GOP isn’t there right now, and they are not gay friendly”. I can handle somebody like that, but don’t try to tell me things are rosey when they aren’t. I get it, he wants lower taxes, smaller govt. etc…. however, the GOP in the last 8 years took us from a surplus, to a massive deficiet, went from being non interventionist and non nation building to having us managing the govts. of two other countries, and as for small govt. they gave us the massive TARP bailout/giveaway to the banks. So i’m not exactly sure where this guy is coming from.
Paschal
@dellisonly: I think that many Republicans are afraid of the Tea Party movement.
JD
@Paschal: As they should be, because the radical-ness of the Tea Party movement is damaging to anyone who is associated with it. If I were a Moderate Repub (if there is such a thing nowadays..??), I’d rather be well associated with the Gays then the Tea Party. Those Cr@zY bastards!
Paschal
@Cam: The Democratic has a super-majority in both houses of the Rhode Island General Assembly. There are 69 Democrats and 6 Republicans in the House while there are 33 Democrats, 4 Republicans and 1 independent in the Senate. Don’t blame Republicans in Rhode Island. Remember that the former U.S. Senator who is running in the gubernatorial election as an independent, Linconl Chafee, was a Republican. With an openly gay House speaker and hopefully a pro-gay governor in the new year, marriage equality will come to Rhode Island. The Republican parties in New England are much more progressive on gay equal rights than Republicans elsewhere. There were Republicans in Vermont who helped pass that state’s marriage equality law, for example. Maine’s RepublicanU.S. Senators, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, both voted against overturning Washington, D.C.’s marriage equaltiy law.
delurker again
@Paschal: newsflash: teabaggers=Republicans.
tjr101
I’d have respect for this fool and the other gay Republicans if they’d just be upfront and say their in the party to get their tax cuts and F the middle class and poor. Honesty goes a long way.
Somehow I doubt this log cabiner has any contact with the GOP leadership in Rhode Island.
GayGOP
@delurker again:
Not necssarily true. Some of us Republicans find teabaggers and their ilk to be disturbing and dangerous. A threat to national security and stability even. Further, most conservative Dems I’ve met are teabaggers.
@tjr101:
Some of us disagree with the premise that you have to give everything to everybody in need, and they should not have to put forth effort, like the rest of us, to survive. I stay GOP because I believe fundamentally, that forcing people to do much of their own work in getting up onto their feet makes it more likely they will stay there.
Baxter
@delurker again: According to a recent poll, only 54% of tea partiers were members of the Republican party. 5% were Democrats and 36% were Independents. Which makes sense. Why would Democrats be protesting against the people who they want to be in power?
Paschal
@GayGOP: Well I disagree with the Republican Party. I believe people should be given the tools to be the best they can be. The country the Republican Party wants is a country where rich people have rich children who don’t do a decent day’s work while poor people have to work their asses off in the hope of doing a bit better than their parents. I’m not left-wing, at least from my European perspective. I disagree with some of the actions of trade unions in my country of Ireland, I believe that taxes shouldn’t be high although they shouldn’t be low either and I’m sick of the political left (which is small as Irish politics is dominated by two centrist and conservative parties, not very conservative though) in Ireland being unpragmatic.
I, however, respect the right of workers to organise, including unionise, as they wish, I believe equal education should be provided to all, I believe that everyone should have equal health care and I believe that the State should protect those who cannot protect themselves just as the judiciary should intervene to protect the rights of vunrelable groups. The Republican would be alright if it were a centre-right party which didn’t pick on vunrelable groups and wasn’t controlled so much by paleoconservatives (basically the Christian right).
Paschal
@Paschal: It turns out that you can’t really call the Christian right which has so much more in the Republican Party paleoconservative as it manages to combine paleoconservatism with imperialism which does not belong to paleoconservatism.
tjr101
@GayGOP:
Now how easy was that for you to say coming from a position of comfort. No one in anyway is suggesting you give “everything” to anyone.
The notion that those who are less fortunate than you are isn’t putting forth any effort to better themselves is very naive. There are millions of Americans who work more than one job and still can’t afford quality healthcare. I believe there should be a safety net for people so they don’t have to worry about financial ruin should they lose their job or fall ill. The trickle down effect doesn’t work and only exaserbates
the gap between the haves and have nots in America. The GOP is no more fiscally responsible than the Democrats. Every Republican president since Reagan has left office with a deficit.
Republican fiscal policies are actually self defeating because the more they cut taxes for the 1 percent of the population while still spending recklessly on war the more they lose the middle class and working poor.
Baxter
@tjr101: Now how many of those “milliions of Americans who work more than one job and still can’t afford quality healthcare” would be able to afford it if they didn’t spend their money on a new TV or expensive sneakers?
delurker again
@Baxter: Don’t play dumb. The Repubs say teabaggers are a mass movement fed up with everything washington and its crazy spending. They are not; they are Republicans and right wing indie conservatives who are mad they lost and election. Where were these fools when spending was out of control spending during the Bush years? (Medicare prescription drug plan anyone?) On 1/20/10, they suddenly decided that spending was out of control but not a time when there was upper class tax cuts, an unnecessary war and unfunded entitlement programs?
Face it. Teabaggers are loyal Bush voters, because they sure has hell didn’t complain when he was wrecking things.
tjr101
@Baxter:
That’s one of the most insensitive and dumbest replies yet. No wonder you’re Republican.
AndrewW
@delurker again: We have our very own “Tea-baggers” the GetEqual misfits.
Baxter
@tjr101: You’re right, I’m clearly a terrible person. Now please provide your statistics on the “millions of Americans who work more than one job and can’t afford health insurance”. I’d love to see where you got your numbers.
As to my political affiliation, I’m not registered as a member of either party. In fact, I voted for both Obama and Kerry. Is your mind blown?
Baxter
@delurker again: Wait, you mean people who didn’t vote for Obama are more likely to oppose his policies? Get out of town! Next you’re going to tell me that those “Bush Lied, People Died” people are more likely to be Democrats.
dellisonly
@Paschal: If that were true then why do they encourage it by speaking at their rallies?
Robert, NYC
Gay and Republican = oxymoron. Why on earth would any sane person want to continuously vote for a party that persistently votes against their equality at any chance it gets? Its tantamount to Jews voting for Hitler! Sick, either way.
Baxter
@Robert, NYC: By that logic, we shouldn’t vote for anybody because DOMA and DADT had bipartisan support and were signed by a Democratic president.
Hilarious
@dellisonly: It’s not just Republicans at this point. It’s actually becoming trendy to complain about Obama now. We won’t even know the effect of his plans until long after he’s out of the White House and they’re still feeling the effects of Clinton with a little Bush in the mix, but it’s all being blamed on Obama who hasn’t been in the house long enough to have effected or changed a thing.
Paschal
@Baxter: I have a bit of sympathy for President Clinton there because it was going to pass with or without his signature.
Robert, NYC
No. 24, Baxter…..those are YOUR words not mine. Don’t assume anything about someone you don’t know.
I only vote for candidates who support my FULL equality, President Obama does NOT and has made that quite clear on several occasions, during and after his campaign. I voted for him in 2008 merely as a way to get rid of the garbage in the past administration, nothing more. The least of the two evils. As an African American and a scholar of the constitution, he among others should know better that separate (legal segregation under the guise of civil unions for example) is NEVER equal. Its nothing than government sanctioned discrimination including DOMA and DADT.
I’m not an apologist for Clinton (I never voted for him) who only signed off on DADT so that gays could serve without being asked about their sexual orientation, NOTHING more, and as Paschal correctly stated, it would have passed with or without his signature, a piece of legislation that gave legal sanction for gay men and women to lie about who they if they were to be asked in spite of DADT. So much for telling the truth and a mockery of everything the justice systems stands for.
Paschal
@Robert, NYC: When President Obama was running for the U.S. Senate he supported marriage eqaulity. Usually we hear of politicians changing their minds to be in favour of marriage equality, not the other way around. I doubt that it’s that just me who thinks that his stated opinion is as it is so that he could actually get elected. Thankfully he is in favour of repeal of both DOMA and DADT and suports civil unions but Congress needs to work too. Congress and President Obama need to pressured to act. The civil rights of millions of Americans should be a high priority if any U.S. President.
WalkderDC
@ No. 8 · Paschal
“Rhode Island Governor Donald Carcieri has upset some gay and lesbian activist by proclaiming his opinion that gay marriage “is not a civil right”.”
Robert, NYC
No. 28, Paschal….I am aware of Obama’s former stand on marriage equality back in 1996 when he supported it. I find it truly amazing that other western countries, eight so far and probably nine in 2011 with Finland getting on board, that their political leaders can support full equality yet ours can’t in order to get elected. It goes to show just how backward this society is. Lets not forget, most western European countries have state religion, yet their governments can get done what we can never do. There is absolutely NO excuse why we can’t.
I just heard that the UK, our most important ally may now get civil marriage recognition of their current civil partnership unions if Conservative leader David Cameron is elected. Who would have thought a conservative goverment would even consider it while our own GOP would NEVER support it and we have NO state religion wither. Its mind-boggling. No longer are we the trail blazers as other more progressive societies pass us by. Eons of years ahead of us.
Queer Supremacist
@Robert, NYC: Remember that England kicked out the Puritans. Pity they couldn’t burn them at the stake instead.