The White House’s meeting with DADT repeal advocates, which President Obama briefly attended, was supposed to be off the record — but the president broke that promise when he revealed the next day, in a meeting with gay and progressive bloggers, that he told the Log Cabin Republicans’ R. Clarke Cooper that if his organization could just get “two to five Republican votes in the Senate,” the Democrats could push through a repeal. He said to Cooper directly, it “can’t be that hard. Get me those votes.” Haha! Cooper would like to respond!
With the off-the-record embargo broken, Cooper countered the commander-in-chief’s version of events, “Mr. President, we had the votes in place prior to adjournment, but the majority leader absolutely refused to allow the minority to include non-repeal related amendments for debate germane to the defense bill. Senator Reid is responsible for prolonging the legislative process.”
That is, Cooper isn’t buying Obama’s placement of blame on Republican hold outs for why the vote for cloture on the Department of Defense Authorization bill failed, taking a compromised DADT repeal with it. Oh to be a fly on the wall when those two locked eyes. [Keen]
Jack E. Jett
Well, he is 150 percent right on. And they did it all without an overpriced rubber chicken dinner and Gwyneth Paltrow. The did it without the ultra lame Joe Solomese.
The deserve our thanks and support.
reason
The GOP and McCain were looking to poison the bill to get talking points for their electoral campaigns. If the log cabin republicans actually have 3-5 of their senators then they should be able to deliver as soon as the election is over.
When the two locked eyes it probably was not that exciting, if Newt and Clinton could shared cigars and beer while chatting about affairs, I doubt things would get heated when Obama meets the lcr. If the president and Tom Coburn can be good friends, I think the president can be cordial with anyone.
JumpingUp
Cooper has a good point. But in the long run it’s really both partys’ fault.
Cam
I’m sorry, Cooper’s point is a red hearing, The GOP would have found another reason to vote against it. That is the way things work up there.
Also, the fact that Cooper excuses his party voting against his civil rights because they wanted to add an amendment onto a different part of the bill shows that he is just a shill for the GOP and not anybody that cares about gay rights.
Cam
That said, Obama also would have made one or two phonecalls himself if he actually cared. That is what an actual fierce advocate would have done.
tjr101
As if the GOP establishment listens to the Log Cabin Republicans, what a laugh! Cooper just what to feel relevant for once.
B
“R. Clarke Cooper that if his organization could just get “two to five Republican votes in the Senate,” the Democrats could push through a repeal.”
Uh huh. Nearly all the Democrats voted in favor of bringing it to a vote and nearly all (if not all) the Republicans voted against it, but blame the Democrats anyway.
They filed their DADT case in 2004. It’s taken them 6 years (4 under a Republican administration and 2 under a Democratic administration) to get a ruling. If everyone voted the way the Democrats have, DADT would be gone. But they are blaming the Democrats anyway. These guys are IMHO shameless liars.
adam
Uhh, many of the amendments would have severely compromised DADT repeal, guys. This is just a rhetorical non-substantive defense.
Joe in Savannah
B, the vote on cloture failed, not just because of Republicans. The final vote was 56-43, which means that 4 Democrats voted against it as well, one of them being Harry Reid himself. But if the president REALLY wanted to get it pushed through congress, he would get on the ball and apply pressure where needed. I mean look at his health care bill. They passed it into law without even reading it! If he REALLY wanted to, Obama could push a vote through in Congress in a matter of weeks. But here we sit, and wait, for the courts to do all the work. I just hope he doesn’t try and take credit once the courts repeal it.
Derek Washington
Harry Reid voted against it the very end over some arcane Senate BS that had to be done so the DADT / Defense authorization could come back.
Log Cabin should ashamed of themselves for using this for political gains for their Masters in the Big House. I would be the first to congratulate them if they hadn’t decided to go all , “Spook By The Door”.
Joe in Savannah
Excuse me, I said 4 Democrats, I meant 3.
Ian
Hmm, 57 out of 59 Democrats voted to repeal DADT and 100% of the Republicans voted against its repeal. So his logic is we should be supporting the GOP because it’s the Democrats fault DADT wasn’t repealed? While I am disappointed in Obamas so called fierce advocacy (eye roll here)Clark Cooper and other Log Cabin-ers are morons. One argument I do subscribe to is that as the GOP pretends to be in favor of repealing Roe V. Wade, the Dem’s pretend to be in favor of Equality. It’s a way to manipulate single issue voters. It would be a disaster for the GOP to actually repeal Roe V. Wade because it’s such a useful tool. They’ve been motivating people going on 4 decades now with promises of its repeal. Similarly if Gay people achieve equality then what tool would the Dem’s have to motivate Gay voters. Yes Gay voters may be appreciative for a while, but then they may start examining other issues and actually voting in unexpected ways.
damon459
It’s a wedge issue both sides are using it to stall anything from happening. Both sides blame the other side the part of NO will continue to block Everything and the dems will continue to try comprising to appeal to swing voters and guess what nothing will get done the dems need to stop pandering to the right and the right needs to stop throwing their crayons every time they don’t get their way. This isn’t politics it’s the playground at a preschool.
CJ
Partisanship aside, Cooper is correct.
Reid forced a vote on this while denying any compromises with Republicans on even a single amendment. He knew that Republicans, even liberal ones from Maine, would stand in unison against the DEMOCRATS (not DADT) because of Reid’s political games.
Reid wanted Republicans to vote against it for political reasons. Any compromise would make Republicans look 1/2 good. Reid is the one to blame for this mess. Democrats have squandered two years of progress because they’ve refused to let Republicans come to the table. This partisan gamesmanship is what makes Washington suck. Democrats AND Republicans need to stop these games. So much for Obama changing the culture of Washington!!
Michael W.
@CJ: “Partisanship aside…”
There’s no such thing as partisanship aside. Your dream world of both sides blissfully working together is nothing more than a fantasy. The war between liberals and conservatives will last forever; the question is which side has the superior leadership, testicular fortitude and political tactics to win.
whatever
@CJ: Another moron who can’t do math. Every single Republican voted against repeal.
DR
The Democrats, through Reid, tack on the DREAM act and federal funding for abortion for soldiers and then refuse to allow any amendments by the Republicans. Way to see DADT killed by Reid’s last-minute testicle dropping over two things he knew would be controversial. BOOM… there went the votes.
Reid is an idiot, and I for one would have loved to see the look on the President’s face when Cooper reminded him of it. And while he was at it, he also should have reminded the President that the Log Cabin Republicans got DADT declared unconstitutional, while the Obama DOJ is still telling the courts how we’re bad for the military by appealing the ruling.
Ronbo
Wasn’t it Obama who chose to NOT follow the court decree – to disallow DADT to be used? Yes. Obama chose NOT to go against DADT – knowing full well that he does not and will not have the votes to overturn it.
That is what you call “being played”. Supporting a politician who will not support you, your rights or your equality – is just crazy. Then, they will say you are wrong to support the Republicans. You need to respond, The world is larger than the corporate twins, Repub and Demo, my friend. We MUST choose to change things for ourselves. Obama is a corporate trojan horse.
MickW
The Log Cabin Republicans are full of shit!
Ken Powell
Mr. President, I voted for you in 2008, but I feel you have let all of us (the GLBT voters) down. If the Republicans take over the Congress or the Senate, this will NEVER get passed in the Senate. Two more years of “JUST SAY NO.”
robert in nyc
Well, I don’t expect DADT to pass, even if the republicans take control of the house. 100% voted in lock-step not to repeal it, lets remember that. I’m not enamored of the democrats, they’ve done a dismal job by us. That said, if the 9th circuit decides to grant a stay of DADT then the Log Cabiners will have achieved nothing. If it rules that DADT is unconstitutional, credit can’t be given to the republican party for that. If its supposed to be the party of inclusion as it claims it is, why hasn’t it authored any equality-related bill favoring gay people? Why didn’t the three or four republicans who favored repealing it decide at the last minute to vote against it just because their party couldn’t get its way?
Getting back to the GOP taking control of the house. There might be a silver lining in all this if that happens. They’ll have two years in which to undo every piece of legislation passed by the current administration and their tea partyers will hold them to it. Once the damage is done, some of it permanent, the republicans and their tea party shills will face yet another backlash in 2012 as a result of restoring their failed policies that brought us to where we now are. If that’s what they want, so be it. Regression is what they’re all about. Ask yourselves, why is it that their party produces all the nutjobs and other wacko extremists, dangerous people I might add? Who in their right mind would vote for the morons like Christine O’Donnell, Sharon Angle, Michele Bachmann et al? All a bunch of psychotalkers and the GOP is a breeding ground for them as well as the racism that’s at the root of all this because a black man happens to be the president. If he were white, I doubt if there would be as much hateful vitriole being spewed by the far right scum. I’m not happy with Obama’s performance on LGBT issues, far from it but what’s the alternative? A John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and tea partyers making our lives a living hell because that’s what we’ll get when we vote out of anger against democrats who do deserve a good boot up the ass I’ll admit, but not this way. Elections have consequences as do words.
the crustybastard
ISSUE #1:
AFTER John McCain promised to filibuster, Reid postponed the vote to accommodate McCain’s primary campaign schedule. McCain filibustered as promised.
Therefore Reid was complicit in allowing McCain’s filibuster to torpedo the bill.
ISSUE #2:
The fact the military gay ban is federal law in the first place is the Democratic Party’s fault. It was the brainchild of Democrat Senator Sam Nunn, presented in the House by Democratic Representative Ron Dellums, passed while Democrats held majorities in both houses, then signed by a Democratic President Clinton.
That’s somehow the Republican’s fault?
Brian Miller
Cooper is right. Ultimate responsibility lies with Obama — had he chosen to allow the judge’s ruling to stand, DADT would have remained dead.
Instead, the nominal leader of the Democratic Party, Barack Obama, is leading a multi-million dollar campaign to save DADT after it was ruled unconstitutional and was instrumental in bringing it back from the dead earlier this month.
Bill Homans
@Cam:
I am William Perkins Homans, professionally known as Watermelon Slim. My website is http://www.watermelonslim.com. I am an international bluesman, performing and recording artist. I have been bisexual for my entire life.
I am a regular contributor to a political discussion board called http://www.hypercrites.com. One of the posters on this discussion board is a Log Cabin Republican not-far-past-twink named Trent, from Washington DC. He has told exactly the same lies, blaming the failure of DADT Repeal on Democrats.
However, the big problem is that Republican activists made sure that THIS GLBT legislation, not a comprehensively written civil unions bill, which would have guaranteed a whole raft of historic rights to ALL GLBTs and not just the right of the less than 1% who want to join, or remain in, the military service to flirt with their drill instructors, was the one that reached the Senate floor.
Republicans knew that GLBT people would have exactly one bite at the legislative pie during this administration, and that it would fail, because no matter how some stupid polls show more than 60% favor gays being openly in the military, the military doesn’t think so, and the bulk of military commanders don’t, and Senators listen harder to generals than they do to people at Gay Pride Parades.
It was a brilliant piece of political calculation, and the failure of DADT Repeal to achieve cloture has set GLBT civil rights back for at least the rest of this Obama Administration, perhaps for the next, and if a Republican were somehow again elected to the White House in 2012, we could forget about any progressive and historic GLBT legislation being passed until at least 2016. The LCRs F***ed us, no lube.
I swear, gay people (if most of the commenters above are not Republican shills anyway) are the most IGNORANT people when it comes to politics!
Bill Homans
@tjr101:
The LCRs are profoundly conflicted Republican catspaws, no matter how much or how little money they may have received for their treason against all gay people. Judases, and so are those Republican servicepeople with good military records that demonstrated at the White House. They may have honorably served their nation (and I say so as a man who came out in Vietnam, in 1970, decades before DADT was ever heard of), but they have screwed their community (if they are really GLBT at all) with a 14-inch unlubricated square dildo.
TRENT
@Bill Homans:
Give it up, old man. No one cares about your blind support for this bigoted administration.
Bill Homans
And here he is, dolks, the Log Cabin Republican agent provocateur I noted above, from http://www.hypercrites.com. This is an ageist, anti-Semitic Social Darwinist of an anti-bisexual bight who claims to be a “progressive”, but calls for an end to Social Security altogether, and who has a rainbow elepphant as his icon. This fellow helped bring that damn DADT Repeal (I came out in the Army in Vietnam and was honorably discharged 40 years ago, so this is personal for me) instead of European-style civil unions legislation to the Senate flooe, where it never even achieved cloture and a call to question, knowing that this particular bill had the most determined opponents of any possible significant LGBT legislation, and would not pass.
Now NOTHING is going to pass for at least the rest of this Administration, and if somehow a Republican should defeat Obama in 2012, not for the rest of the decade. These LCRs promised to print a list of their endorsees September 15, but never did, because the list of antigay Republican candidates they have endorsed would undoubtedly be terminally embarrassing. The one they were willing to post was now-Cong. Murray, a retired colonel, in Virginia. Anti-gay all the way. Thanks a steaming pantload, LCRs and GOProud! You bastards betrayed us all.
William P. Homans
Clarksdale, Mississippi
Bill Homans
@TRENT:
You little bleeper-bleeper, the number of gay people– and straight people of good will– who do care is growing exponentially as they become aware of the part you and your LCRs played in the grand Republican strategy of bringing the social-conservative wing of the Republican Party– and its deep pocketed Dominionists– in unison with the more intellectual, fiscally minded Republican reactionaries. You are traitors to all gay people, to their children, and to the steady process of assimilation that has been ongoing since, oh, Stonewall (I was in Vietnam when that went down).
TRAITORS!!
William P. Homans
Clarksdale, Mississippi
Trent_K
@Bill Homans: My god.
So you’ve morphed into a cyber stalker now?
Your obsession with me is downright scary. Why can’t you just leave me alone?
Bill Homans
It is a fact that no one in the gay community, least of all Trent, has in any way attempted to refute my political analysis of the defeat suffered by the LGBT civil rights movement due to the DADT-Repeal fiasco. Here is some of what I wrote back in September, when the Repeal provision, a part of another bill, failed to achieve cloture in the Senate:
OUR community– led, as any fool might have guessed, by the Log Cabin REPUBLICANS– screwed up bigtime when it went after this particular issue, of no benefit to any GLBT person except for those who want to join, or remain in, the military, as opposed to some other crucial legislation which might have shielded LGBT people from housing discrimination or discrimination in medical or pharmaceutical care, allowed LGBT people to insure their partners, and allowed LGBT people to bequeath what they have to their partners in the event of their deaths. And other nuts-and-bolts assurances of civil rights.
I’ve said it before, and I’m going to hammer you until you answer about it: it may be seen as shrewd anti-gay Republican Party strategy to allow the profoundly conflicted Log Cabin Republicans to make a big stink, all the way to a vote in Congress, about this particular issue, that had the least chance of passing, the most determined opponents, and therefore the least chance of becoming (A.) a meaningful victory and step of progress for GLBT rights; and (B.) even more importantly, a Democratic Party victory on a wedge issue immediately preceding the midterm elections. Civil Union legislation would easily have won filibuster-proof support and become a complex of laws that would benefit all LGBT people.
Gay people have been sold out by the Log Cabin Republicans. And although the only way to prove it is for a disaffected LCR to step forward and declare that this was indeed a Republican strategy calculated to block any progress for LGBT people, that is what I am accusing them of. Being REPUBLICANS FIRST, and gay people somewhere, sometime afterwards.
You did take part in that six-ex-serviceperson demonstration, didn’t you, Trent? You ARE one of those who has misled and betrayed a community that sometimes is so giddy that it does not understand how to go about securing its societal interests. I said it at the time, and I’m saying it now: you people had to have planned for this to happen. Now, certainly, no Gay civil-liberties legislation is even going to be brought to Congress for at least another two years plus, i.e. early in Pres. Obama’s second term. If it is brought even then. I accuse you, from the LGBT left, of cynically and conflictedly doing this on purpose.
I’m part of OUR community, Trent, and I say you and your ilk have betrayed it. It is of course conceivable, had the people bringing this suit for repeal been a truly representative cross-section of the LGBT community, that we could write this sound legislative defeat off to mere political incompetence, or, charitably speaking, inexperience, on the part of the folks who did the suing. But it was the Log Cabin REPUBLICANS that not only brought the suit, but set the agenda on which the LGBT political action movement would focus.
***********************
In light of the appeals court action, as well as that of the Republican landslide, not just nationally but in state races as well, my predictions seem to have been on the money. One bite at the pie, folks, and we blew it.
If any of you gay folks are awake, lissen up when I tell you that if the gay community turns around and votes Republican in 2012, it will be the greatest act of collective conflicted behavior since– well, I just can’t immediately call up a precedent. Eat your own tail much?? Don’t be fools!
Bill Homans
I also think it would be instructive to include my insight regarding agents provocateurs, written the day before my last post was. They are a type of character which I have repeatedly encountered in my decades of political movement work. I apologize for writing in caps, but I am a slow typist, and I will beg your patience in allowing me not to have to type the post over again. I am not shouting at you, dear reader (though I was at Trent, you see):
GO AHEAD, TRENT. PLAY THIS SUBTLE GAME. MUSTER GREAT NEW STRENGTH FOR DOMA BY WINNING SOME BARE MAJORITY IN THE HOUSE–AND THAT DREAM BUBBLE IS GONNA BURST IN NOVEMBER– AND SET BACK ANY HOPE WE HAVE OF LIVING TOGETHER AS PARTNERS WITH THE SAME RIGHTS AND ASSURANCES AS “STRAIGHT” PEOPLE FOR YEARS, WHETHER GAY MARRIAGES, OR EUROPEAN-STYLE CIVIL UNIONS, OR WHATEVER. YOU JUST TRADED YEARS OF SETBACK FOR A MIDTERM ELECTION, WHICH WILL GIVE SOCIAL CONSERVATIVES EVEN MORE STRENGTH TO PURSUE THEIR AGENDA! THANKS A STEAMING PANTLOAD!!
“BOB, OPEN UP DOOR NUMBER TWO AND SHOW MR. TRENT WHAT HE WOULD HAVE WON!” WE MUST KEEP OUR SENSE OF HUMOR.
AND I MUST SAY YOUR EXISTENCE GIVES ME AMPLE OPPORTUNITY TO REFLECT ON THE CHARACTER OF JUDAS ISCARIOT.
WILLIAM LEMMER WAS A GRUNT IN THE AMERICAL DIVISION WHO CAME HOME WITH KINGSIZE PTSD PROBLLEMS SEVERAL YEARS BEFORE PTSD BECAME A PSYCHOLOGICAL DIAGNOSIS, AND VA-CONPENSABLE. IN 1971 HE WAS HIRED BY THE FBI TO ACT AS AN INFILTRATOR OF THE VIETNAM VETERANS AGAINST THE WAR, IN WHICH I WAS (AND REMAIN) AN ACTIVIST, IN ORDER TO DISCREDIT THEM, BECAUSE THEY WERE A THORN IN THE SIDE OF THE NIXON ADMINISTRATION.
HE CONCOCTED A STORY FOR THE FEDS THAT RESULTED IN THE LAST GUY GOODWIN POLITICAL SHOW TRIAL OF THE VIETNAM ERA, IN WHICH THE GAINESVILLE EIGHT, 7 VVAWS AND A SUPPORTER, FACED CHARGES OF CONSPIRING TO DISRUPT THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION WITH WEAPONS. AS IT HAPPENS, HAD TOLD ALL OF THIS FALSE, CONCOCTED STORY TO A YOUNG FEMALE GRAD STUDENT, WHO TESTIFIED TO HIS CONFESSION THAT IT WAS A LIE. THE JURY TOOK 20 MINUTES TO ACQUIT AFTER A YEAR-LONG PROCESS BETWEEN THE FIRST ARRESTS AND THE TRIAL IN 1973.
LEMMER ALMOST GETS A PASS. HE WAS A FUCKED UP KID OF A COMBAT VET, EASY TO SEDUCE.
JAMES GARRISON WAS AN INTERNATIONAL AGENT PROVOCATEUR OF A VERY DIFFERENT SORT. IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE 1970S, PEOPLE WERE BECOMING ALARMED AT THE PROLIFERATION OF NUCLEAR PLANTS, AND THE VOLUME OF NUCLEAR WASTE THESE PLANTS GENERATED WAS JUST BEGINNING TO BE ON PEOPLE’S MINDS. AROUND THE WORLD, PEOPLE WERE QUESTIONING, AND RESISTING, THE APPARENTLY INEXORABLE NUCLEAR-FISSION FUTURE.
I WAS AN ACTIVIST IN THE CLAMSHELL ALLIANCE, OPPOSING THE BUILDING OF THE SEABROOK NEW HAMPSHIRE NUCLEAR FACILITY. JIM GARRISON WAS A REALLY INGRATIATING, DRIVEN FELLOW WHO WAS ALWAYS VERY INVOLVED IN BOTH SETTING THE AGENDA AT THE NUMEROUS MEETINGS– AND IT WAS LIKE SWISS DIRECT DEMOCRACY, THERE WERE NO LEADERS– AND THEN MADE SURE HE WAS PART OF THE RUMP COORDINATING COMMITTEE THAT NEGOTIATED IN EARLY 1978 WITH THEN NH GOV. MELDRIM THOMPSON THAT THE 20,000 PEOPLE THAT WE HAD ORGANIZED TO BE AT SEABROOK IN JUNE WOULD ONLY BE THERE FOR A RALLY, AND WE WOULD ALL GO HOME ONCE WE’D HAD OUR BONNIE RAITT AND JACKSON BROWNE CONCERT.
JIM GARRISON ALSO DEFUSED ANTINUCLEAR ACTIVITY IN SAVANNAH, AND IN THE ENGLISH MOVEMENT IN GREENHAM COMMON. HE WAS LATER ACTIVE IN CREATING DISRUPTION AMONG THE REMAINING ACTIVISTS AT YUCCA FLATS, AFTER THE THRUST OF THE MOVERMENT HAD BEEN PERMANENTLY BLUNTED BY HIS (AND 2 OR 3 OTHERS’) BETRAYAL AROUND THE ANTI-SEABROOK GROUP.
THEN IT WAS THE SWIFT BOATERS. THEY GOT FAR MORE THAN 30 PIECES OF SILVER, YOUBETCHA, MORE LIKE SIX MILLION OF BIG-TIME REPUBLICAN MONEY, AND BECAUSE JOHN KERRY WAS A STUFFED SHIRT THAT IGNORED THE PLEAS OF SOME OF HIS FRIENDS AND ADVISORS TO CONFRONT THEM ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL (HE IGNORED A LOT OF OTHER ADVICE– THE MAN IS MADDENINGLY INACCESSIBLE) THE JUDASES, COMBINED WITH THE SHEER FRAUD INCLUDING WATERGATE-STYLE BURGLARY IN OHIO, COST HIM THE ELECTION, AND GAVE US FOUR MORE YEARS OF BUSH.
AND NOW IT’S YOU. I WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO THINK ABOUT THE BOB DYLAN SONG “FRANKIE LEE AND JUDAS PRIEST” WITHOUT THINKING OF YOU NOW, TRENT. AND BEING THE QUITE UTTERLY GUTLESS FELLOW YOU ARE, YOU WILL NEVER ADMIT TO ANY BLAME WHATSOEVER. I DO PITY YOU, TRENT. I DO. YOU ARE AS SCREWED UP IN YOUR OWN WAY AS LEMMER WAS IN HIS. EXCEPT LEMMER JUST TURNED ON A FEW OF US. YOU TURNED ON YOUR ENTIRE COMMUNITY– MILLIONS AND MILLIONS.
(shakes head incredulously) I SWEAR, I GET THE IDEA THAT YOU REALLY DON’T UNDERSTAND THE ENORMITY OF THE DEFEAT WHICH YOU HAVE ENGINEERED. YOU ACTUALLY THINK YOU WON SOMETHING!??
William P. Homans
robert in nyc
I’d like to ask Cooper how many equality bills has the GOP authored or introduced of its own volition if the Log Cabiners claim their party is one of inclusion? Can anyone provide a list? This lawsuit that the LCR has brought has been stayed, so nobody can take any credit, definitely not the GOP even if it were to pass because it would need the majority of democrats to pass it. There would be NO majority of republicans supporting it.
Bill Homans, No. 27….In Europe, same-sex marriage outnumbers the varying versions of legal unions for same-sex couples. Only two have anything resembling marriage, the UK and the Irish Republic where civil partnerships are available, though the Irish version has slightly less than the UK model which has virtually all the rights of marriage without the name thus far. Several other EU member states have certain limited rights for gay couples. In 2011, Finland will become the 11th country worldwide to legalize same-sex marriage. The UK will probably be the next in Europe (ssuming Denmark doesn’t) since it has the support of the majority of the British public, the Liberal Democratic Party (official policy) and the new leader of the Labour Party supports it while the current coalition conservative government of David Cameron acknowledged it in its manifesto prior to the election.
Bill Homans
Thank you, Robert. I must comment that civil unions legislation would probably have passed, with all the civil rights that the two you cited, UK and Ireland, include, with very little controversy in the US.
Same sex marriage, though, would/will be much tougher because the US is so very much more church-oriented than the Euro nations. 85% of Americans claim some degree of religious preference or activity, far, far above even the most Roman Catholic of European countries. Thus, “marriage” is much more of a hot-button word here than it is across the pond, and the fundamentalist right wing will keep it that way at all costs. Everyone knows that.
It’s a moot question now, of course; the disastrous defeat GLBTs took with the failure of DADT Repeal, and the Republican landslide, has created a political reality in which no LGBT legislation will even come to the floor of the House, much less the Senate, for an indeterminate number of years now. Unless the Democrats really LOVE Log Cabin Republicans, they will not go listening to those traitors next time someone tries to get them to introduce LGBT-friendly legislation.
robert in nyc
No. 33, Bill…you’re quite welcome and I totally concur with your statements. Many of our fellow gay brothers and sisters voted out of anger at the Democrats but by giving the vote to the republicans or stayed home, they voted against themselves and the rest of us who are the majority as well as those who stayed home. Now when they see that the GOP will do NOTHING for equality and never will, they won’t be able to complain that the democrats were to blame. It wasn’t just an Obama problem but a congressional problem and now that the obstructionist party has control of the house, forget about any semblance of equality.
Now I just heard that Gates would like to see DADT passed before the change of command takes place in the military but doubts it will happen, no thanks to the tea baggers, independents and gay voters, especially the Log Cabiners. Its truly mind-boggling why any sane gay man or woman would want to vote for a party that will NEVER draft any bill regarding equality even though the democrats could have done a lot better I admit. What the electorate has done is help restore the failed Bush policies, among other things, a recipe for disaster.
During the 8 years under Bush, tax cuts didn’t create any jobs because the wealthiest, the corporations, shipped them overseas and that will continue. Can you believe they only pay a maximum of 15% in corporate taxes? No wonder the GOP wanted the Citizens United case brought to fruition. Corporations can continue paying next to no taxes (the workers get nothing of course), while donating obscene amounts of money anonymously, the bulk of which goes to the GOP to make sure that they continue to pay fewer taxes while shipping more jobs overseas, destroying any remnant of our manufacturing base which is at the heart of any recovering economy. Trickle down economics has never worked, if it did, we wouldn’t have so many factories shut down and jobs shipped overseas. Meanwhile, the corporate robber barons rake in huge profits on the backs of Chinese and Indian workers among others while American workers see their wages stagnate, or their jobs disappear altogether. Nice work, dumb electorate! Our elections are now up for sale no thanks to you!
Trent_K
@robert in nyc:
Oh goody. Mr. Homans has found himself a new partisan friend.
First of all, your fellow partisan Democrat isn’t gay. He’s a str8 man who has married a woman and fathered children. He only began claiming he was a closeted “bi” man after his homophobic attacks against me on another board began to make him look bad. He figured he can call anyone any name, including “faggot” (which is what he just called me a few days ago) so long as he pretends he’s bisexual (as it that should give him carte blanche to utter such hateful words).
Secondly, his contempt for LCR just came about when they won their court case. He’s on record as SUPPORTING DADT.
He, like you, is nothing more than a partisan Democrat. He will make excuses for ANYTHING they do (including their continued support for discrimination) so long as the person doing it has a D after his or her name. I’ve read enough of your sad Democratic cheerleading posts to conclude you’re the same way.
Just to point out to you, Mr. Obama is also a “free trader” (the most disastrous “free trade” agreements came from Clinton). The top marginal corporate tax rate is 35%, not 15%, making it within the top 10 highest corporate tax rates on earth.
So have fun with your new homophobic friend. You two deserve each other!
Trent_K
Oh, and one other thing, if you do find yourself disagreeing with something he says, you may not want to let him know as he’s repeatedly threatened me with bodily harm, including his promise to “put me in the hospital if he ever runs into me anywhere.”
robert in nyc
Trent_K, you know NOTHING about me to make such assumptions. If you’d read comments I’ve made on other posts, I’m not a democrat but a GREEN. You assume my preference for a democrat over a republican makes me a democrat, it doesn’t. My party just like the civil libertarian party don’t stand a chance of making any inroads in the political system, so I vote very selectively for democrats who support my beliefs and views in an important election. I don’t vote for every democrat on the ballot. I would have a very difficult time voting out of anger for a republican to punish democrats because I can’t find one supporting equality and I don’t recall any of them introducing a bill favoring LGBT people. At least the democrats try even though they fail dismally. So now they’ll have to try a lot harder to earn my vote. Can you point me to one key republican supporting same-sex marriage for starters? Do the majority in the GOP support the repeal of DADT? NO! Nor do they support repeal of DOMA or enactment of ENDA, among other things.
Bill Homans
Robert, and anyone else who may read this (I see Queerty has taken it off the front, “stories” page to make it more difficult to find), this Trent is an ageist (wants old people to die and stop taking up limited resources– old gay people included), antiSemitic (shoulda seen his rant about certain Jewish neighborhoods in New York back on our old discussion forum, http://www.debatebothsides.com), anti-bisexual (doesn’t believe bisexuality even exists, and has lied continually about me personally. Yes, I have had longterm hetero as well as homo relationships, and I have fathered, and continue to father, a daughter, with whom my sexuality is no issue– what’s so bad or unusual, even for gays, about that!?), gay bigot (he calls all straights “breeders”).
I first came out in Vietnam, in the Army, in 1970. One of Trent’s lies is that I am on record against DADT. Well, I never wanted to openly flirt with my drill instructors or commanding officers, and I am not convinced that if me and D….. had been able to be “out” in our relationship, that it would have gone any easier for us (my poor guy has been stuck for 30-some years in a loveless, childless, sexless marriage because of old-style family expectations– long siiiigggghhh…)
I am not convinced that the military service– not as an institution, not as the sum of the individuals in it– is so open and accepting that gays will just get along fine if they go mincing around as gays per se. There WILL be problems with discipline, as well as with problems that gays aren’t even thinking about. Will a gay troop who loses his lover in combat get lifelong survivor benefits? Civilian gays don’t get such benefits, why should military personnel be entitled to special privilege in this regard?
Here’s another discipline problem that gays aren’t thinking about, or refuse to consider: Let’s suppose that soldier A is an unreconstructed homophobe, and soldier B a member of A’s platoon) is an aggressive, in-your-face homosexual, emboldened by the Repeal of DADT. What is to stop soldier A (as happened, in racist contexts, in “my” war) from making sure, one day, shielded by “the fog of war”, that soldier B does not return from patrol? Such a murderer could easily find people in his platoon to provide alibis, which in combat would almost always be accepted.
It gets deeper. Soldier B had a favorite lover, soldier C, who remained closeted regardless of Repeal. Soldier C figured somebody had to watch his buddy’s back from a position of concealment. Once soldier B’s fate was revealed, what will prevent soldier C, whose suspicions were immediately roused because the bullet hole was not in the front, on a subsequent patrol, from taking justice into his own hands and making sure (more carefully) that soldier A did not return?
Here’s an administrative dilemma, that spills out of the military, per se, into the institution that is supposed to ensure just and proper treatment for veterans: Suppose soldier D is a combat troop, and his lover, soldier E, is a clerk– a 71B20, a “Remington Raider,” as we used to call clerical personnel in the Army. Soldier D is killed. If soldier E freaks out because of the loss, is he entitled to counseling and VA disablement benefits for PTSD? What percentage?
Trent’s lie (above) about me on this is that I am “on record as SUPPORTING DADT.” Having served, and been honorably discharged 23 years before DADT was ever enacted– Clinton was an antiwar student in France on a Fulbright– for “Class III Homosexuality”– i.e., telling authorities you are gay without revealing specific incriminating details such as partners or acts, you get a discharge under honorable conditions under Separation Authoriy 257-212– I pee on the shoes of such lies.
I have suggested to young 20-something Trent that if he is so hot on gays being able to go to foreign countries and kill and help kill foreign people for American military and commercial interests, he should go down to the recruiters’ and step forward when it’s time to take the oath. But since in addition to being an ageist, sexist, antisemitic, anti-bisexual gay bigot, he’s also a chicken hawk, like Dick Cheney, he won’t ever put his money where his mouth is in such a manner.
A. HOW FUCKING GAY IS WAR, Y’ALL?? HOW BAD DO GAYS WANT TO BE IN ONE?? Enough to go volunteer to be in one (I did, but I was a stupid, naive kid whose family had an illustrious military record in two anti-Nazi nations, US and England)?
B. ENOUGH TO SEND OTHERS OFF TO ONE THAT I DON’T VOLUNTEER FOR DUTY IN MYSELF?? Trent would do the latter cheerfully.
My position on DADT (and I am speaking from the Left of the LGBT civil-rights movement) is that gays should refuse to enlist. Period. Don’t willingly bear the guilt of our imperial policies. Don’t get the blood– both foreign blood and the blood of your own brothers and sisters– America sheds for Big Oil on your hands! Don’t be fascist tools!
Trent is a compulsive and pathological liar. He is also a traitor to what he claims is his community, a Republican agent provocateur. The LCRs are TRAITORS to gays everywhere. Do the math. About 13,000 soldiers have received “gay” discharges since the institution of DADT. that 700-odd a year. Let’s, for the sake of argument, assume that 5 times that number have served, or are serving, completely closeted. that’s 78,000 directly affected by DADT, compared with 15 million American GLBTs (assuming a 5% gay American population, and not counting children beneath the age of puberty If the percentage is 10%, the comparative number of those betrayed to those who might conceivably have been given this ONE RIGHT gets even more shocking!).
Even if you add a number of twinks who would enlist but for perceived discrimination comparable to the number of gay discharges– a few hundreds per year, 13,000 over 17 years, and I’m thinking that’s a very liberal estimate– that still comes to less than 100,000 people, out of 15 million. that is a percentage of .66, in other words, 2/3 of a percent of all American GLBTs, who are, or have been, or might be if they joined, directly affected by DADT, as opposed to the 100% whose civil rights might be ensured if comprehensive civil-unions legislation had been brought to the Senate floor instead of DADT Repeal.
LCRs have betrayed all of America’s GLBTs for the sake of the rights of .66% of us– less than one in a hundred– as well as the bigger Republican goal, Republican gains in a midterm election. When are gays going to understand that LCRs are REPUBLICANS FIRST, and– maybe– gays somewhere down the line??
It’s moot now. And any gay who listens to an agent provocateur like Trent and votes Republican is a deluded soul, or as fully a betrayer of his/her own community as this Trent.
This Trent even had the outright malicious ignorance to threaten to ” ‘out’ me to my ‘cracker friends'”! Real gays don’t EVER “out” other people. That is the first tenet of gay ethics, which this twink-wanna-still-be has apparently forgotten, if he ever had any such ethics at all. It was after he did this unforgiveable thing that I told him I WOULD “put him in the hospital if I ever ran into him.” I have called for gays to rise and police themselves, and never again allow Log Cabin Republicans (who have endorsed a whole bunch of antigay candidates in the last election, but are scared to publish the list, for obvious reasons).
Am I “bullying” this above-the-age-of-majority but nonetheless clueless homosexual male, or outright collaborator? Yes, I suppose I am, though I have called for other gays to do the bullying of him and his ilk. I’m not coming to Washington DC, where the bulk of these traitors lurk and machinate, like the Taliban up in Waziristan.
I and my male lover are beyond gaybaiting, we can’t be hurt by slurs– we’re liable to hurt back harder. And we can’t be hurt by the insitutional denail of such rights as the right to inheritance and bequeathal; we’ll leave what belongs to us to our partner in life, without the encumbrance of a will that daily allows families of American gays to challenge inheritance and take the estates for themselves. We’re all right, in spite of any laws that might presume to discriminate against us, in the absence of comprehensive civil-unions legislation.
I want to congratulate and commend you, Robert, for being exactly the second GLBT (I will not presume to categorize you in the alphabet-soup acronym Trent and his ilk break non-heterosexual-exclusivity into) person I have spoken to to fully understand what I have been saying about the LCR Republicans-in-faux-gay-clothing. My STRAIGHT political friends understand the depth of their treason much better than gays, I guess because gays can’t possibly imagine anyone in their community working so completely counter to their interest.
William P. Homans
Mississippi
Trent_K
Whatever, Robert
Trent_K
@Bill Homans: Sigh.
Why the fuck do you think anyone cares about any of this? Do you honestly believe that anyone (other than apprently “robert”) will read any of this latest screed. My god you’re delusional.
“My position on DADT (and I am speaking from the Left of the LGBT civil-rights movement)”
No, you’re speaking from the STR8 MAN who doesn’t think gays (those of us who really are, that is) should have equal rights over the law POV. As a straight man who frequently brags about his female wife (while telling the rest of us to settle for worthless civil unions) I can understand why you don’t get how this is a big deal. But you’re wrong as usual.
“I have suggested to young 20-something Trent that if he is so hot on gays being able to go to foreign countries and kill and help kill foreign people for American military and commercial interests, he should go down to the recruiters’ and step forward when it’s time to take the oath.”
I’m 23, nosy. And we’ve been over this before. You don’t have to be gung ho to join the military to be against DISCRIMINATION the same way that women and blacks didn’t all want to JOIN the military but were nonetheless disgusted with the military’s discriminatory policies.
I’m not any kind of ‘agent provcateur’ (whatever the fuck that means). I’m a PERSON with an opinion, the same as you, you HATER.
“One of Trent’s lies is that I am on record against DADT.”
No, you’re on record opposing the REPEAL of DADT. Someone, in your addled brain, continuing discrimination against REAL GAYS (not straights who sucked cock once or twice back in the 70s) means that all wars will stop. How fucking stupid!
“HOW FUCKING GAY IS WAR, Y’ALL?? HOW BAD DO GAYS WANT TO BE IN ONE??”
Deliberately missing the point he then uses ‘gay’ as a negative adjective. oh goody. Please accidentally reveal more about yourself, Mr. Homans, as your hatred of me because I’m not ‘man enough’ for your elderly homophobic world is about to collide with reality.
“LCRs have betrayed all of America’s GLBTs”
No, that would be homophobes like you who think DADT should stay intact as well as your Democratic “friends” in congress and the WH who have been USING MY COMMUNITY ever since Stonewall without EVER giving anything in return! You may think being taken wholly for granted by Democrats i just wonderful, but it truly sickens me.
“Am I “bullying” this above-the-age-of-majority but nonetheless clueless homosexual male,”
‘Homosexual’ male…I can just see the spit coming from your hateful mouth as you type that.
“Yes, I suppose I am”
So now you’re admitting you’re a cyber stalker, troll and a bully. Proud of it, aren’t you? So proud in fact that you said you sincerely hope I get gay bashed and/or killed and you said you would personally put me in the hospital and you’ve threatened to physically harm me repeatedly.
I still haven’t figured out why you’ve developed such a seething hatred for me, but I’m really a nice guy. You remind me of my grandfather. Right before he died he threatened to kill me too. Turns out he was suffering from undiagnosed dementia. My guess is you are too.
So that’s it. You’ve had your say posted, and I’ve clarified a few things. But that’s it. Your flame war is OVER. Any further flame posts will be deleted.
Bill Homans
Oh, you are such a package. Thank you for making clear that you DO have control over what is posted here:
“So that’s it. You’ve had your say posted, and I’ve clarified a few things. But that’s it. Your flame war is OVER. Any further flame posts will be deleted.”
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You are a liar. Here’s two lies in the same paragraph:
One of Trent’s lies is that I am on record against DADT.”
No, you’re on record opposing the REPEAL of DADT. Someone, in your addled brain, continuing discrimination against REAL GAYS (not straights who sucked cock once or twice back in the 70s) means that all wars will stop. How fucking stupid!
I am NOT on record as opposing DADT Repeal. I am on record as delineating (as I have done voluminously in this post that you, high and mighty editor, have caused to be allowed to be seen publicly), the disciplinsry and administrative problems that will be caused by people wrapping themselves in “outness” and rubbing their gayness in straight military faces.
I have sucked more cock, drank more sperm, had more bareback dick cumming in my butt and vice versa (I’ve used a condom once in my life. I can’t stand ’em), RIMMED more ass and vice versa, and aside from all that, or in the process, take your pick, MADE MORE LOVE with men than you will ever dream of making.
How can I say this with such supreme confidence? Because you have no love for yourself. How could you possibly love anyone else? You’ve already made it clear that you hate the elderly, straights, women in general, Jews, and (most of all) bisexual people. You don’t even believe we exist!
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“HOW FUCKING GAY IS WAR, Y’ALL?? HOW BAD DO GAYS WANT TO BE IN ONE??”Deliberately missing the point he then uses ‘gay’ as a negative adjective. oh goody. Please accidentally reveal more about yourself, Mr. Homans, as your hatred of me because I’m not ‘man enough’ for your elderly homophobic world is about to collide with reality.”
That’s not a negative adjective. I have asked, though perhaps in your flaming youth you’ve never heard the word used any other way, whether there is any interest you could name that should make GLBT human beings want to volunteer for American foreign wars. And I have stated without artifice that if you really are gungho about gays being able to go join up and fight for Big Oil, send drone missiles onto Pakistani civilians, etc. etc., bolster fading American imperialist dominance in the world, then, as prime military-age fodder, you should go and enlist.
And as always, you include your cntempt for the elderly.
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“My position on DADT (and I am speaking from the Left of the LGBT civil-rights movement)”
No, you’re speaking from the STR8 MAN who doesn’t think gays (those of us who really are, that is) should have equal rights over the law POV. As a straight man who frequently brags about his female wife (while telling the rest of us to settle for worthless civil unions) I can understand why you don’t get how this is a big deal. But you’re wrong as usual.
I have had not one wife but two. I have been married to two women and one man. I have had numerous love affairs with members of both sexes, the first in Vietnam with a fellow GI. I currently have a male and a female lover, neither of whom I am living with at this time because of circumstances in their lives that prevent their moving in. I AM BISEXUAL, Trent, whether you believe such a reality exists or not.
Civil unions are not useless. The DPRR Act would give us all the rights (I haven’t read it carefully, but I know the gist) straight couples have in marriage. It is historic legislation. If it passes, me and R… will undoubtedly apply to be under it.
And if there is something missing, then by God I’m one at least who could rewrite it so that it does. And that would have passed, and don’t make the excuse that it was not out of committee yet. That needed to happen before DADT.
I’ll bet you do not play chess. Well, in chess, one succession of three or four moves may be crucial to the game. But if you don’t make them in the right order, you will lose. And that’s what LGBT people have allowed to happen, because they let Republicans, who are Republicans before anything and everything else (damn, haven’t you learned ANYTHING in 23 years??) call the order of what would occur.
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“Am I “bullying” this above-the-age-of-majority but nonetheless clueless homosexual male,”
‘Homosexual’ male…I can just see the spit coming from your hateful mouth as you type that.
I AM a male person with a fully individuated, and vastly more experienced, homosexual side. Is it exactly half-and-half? No, I’m probably a bit more gay than straight. If I had to spend eternity with just one person, that person would be male. “Homosexual” is no insult to me, it’s just erroneous. For you, with no hetero component at all, it is just a FACT.
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“Yes, I suppose I am”
So now you’re admitting you’re a cyber stalker, troll and a bully. Proud of it, aren’t you? So proud in fact that you said you sincerely hope I get gay bashed and/or killed and you said you would personally put me in the hospital and you’ve threatened to physically harm me repeatedly.
***************************
Never said killled, that’s a lie. In fact, I insisted (I could go get this post that you are referring to) that you had to be allowed to survive and be fully conscious of the unforgiveable thing you and your LCR friends have done.
I do hope that GLBT people will police our civil rights movement better, and will stop, forcibly if necessary, those whose interest runs exactly counter to ours– Republicans– from having access to the levers of power in this nation. I have indeed written an email to you from a motel parking lot in Maryland inviting you to meet me. I have indeed declared that I hoped you’d get surrounded and bullied by a bunch of lesbians and other gays who know and understand what the LCRs, with you actively helping, cheering them on– calling the defeat of DADT Repeal a VICTORY because LCRs filed against it!– have done to the cause of LGBT civil rights.
I have invited you to get your butt beat for the most admirable of LGBT charity:
“He’s still invited to take part with me in arranging a boxing match for his favorite charity– say, Trent, let’s give the money raised for admissions and merchandising– teeshirts? Bumper stickers?– to the lady in that lawsuit for her medical problems with her legs, since she can’t avail herself of the medical care under her same-sex partner’s plan.
Trent may even appoint a second, a surrogate, to fight me for him, though that might not be nearly as interesting or money-making, from a Don King point of view (I am a boxing fan, though I have little interest in MMA– I’ve brawled like that, and it’s not nearly as satisfying an athletic event…).
But if I have to whup somebody else’s ass in the ring to be able to stand there afterwards and make my point about civil-unions legislation– and about YOU– well, so be it. And if Trent’s ringer should best me, well, I have willingly risked my life, and shed my blood, for a lot lesser reasons.”
Am I proud of this? No, just dealing with you soils me. But I will hold my nose and do it.
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I won’t even go into how you and your kind are creating virulent homophobes, just like American bombing and occupation creates middle-eastern insurgents, with your insistence on slinging around this slur “QUEER”. To unreconstructed homophobes– and PARTICULARLY TO THEIR HIGH-SCHOOL/COLLEGE-AGE SONS, WHO DO THE ACTUAL BULLYING THAT MAKES KIDS COMMIT SUICIDE– such self-identification merely means there’s an admicture of humor to their hate.
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I’ll post this at Hypercrites, of course. Even if you are so powerful in the LGBT publishing word that you can have me censored here, or even anywhere in the entire volume of LGBT publications, you will not be able to censor me back at the ol’ watering hole with the ‘critters.
Signed,
William Perkins Homans
Clarksdale, Mississippi
P.S.
“and you said you would personally put me in the hospital…”
I said that’s what I would do after you threatened to “out” me to my, as you called them, “cracker friends”.
Have you thought about how utterly ungay it is to threaten (much less to do it) to “out” anyone ? No real gay person would ever do that, only a homosexual bigot like you, Trent.
Besides, if I’m so straight, who would believe you, and what the heck would my friends care what a whiny little fellow like you said?
Trent
@Bill Homans: UR such a liar!
I feel sorry for you!