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.
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.
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.
mark
any mention of repeal of DADT?
GoodBuddy
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.
Bill Perdue
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.
seitan-on-a-stick
Nice ASS…er Donkey.
jeff
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.
Democrats eat poo
Can someone please explain to me why so many people hope and pray for the Democrats to be something other than what they are, a racist, sexist, homophobic party of Corporate America?
As much as you might wish, you will never turn chicken shit into chicken casserole. Likewise, you will NEVER change the Democratic Party into something progressive or left wing because THEY ARE NOT.
Lonnie
Before anyone creams their jeans, please understand that even though this is the platform, no Democratic candidate is at all obligated to obey, endorse, or follow this platform. It’s totally for YOUR consumptions, to fool you into thinking the party actually is planning to do this shit. They’re not. The Democratic Party is a corporate party that is committed to war, attacking working people, and lying to you about it. It’s been working for them for 100 years, so why change now.
POP PSYCHOLOGY has long had a term for the political marriage between LGBT people and the Democrats–it is a dysfunctional relationship.
The Democrats court the votes and money of gays and lesbians, but offer few gains and a stunning share of abuse in exchange. For those LGBT activists wooed by the Democrats, ditching the more militant strategy that got Democrats swooning in the first place for a don’t-rock-the-boat approach is the price to play in this torturous display of unrequited love.
While we await yet another court decision on whether we have rights, it is worth taking stock of the political strategy activists have largely adhered to in recent decades. Collaboration with the Democrats, the so-called “party of the people,” has impeded progress, not helped it.
Thirty-five years have passed since gay civil rights legislation was first proposed in Congress. Yet LGBT people remain an unprotected class of citizens by the U.S. Constitution. Whereas the denial of the rights of gays to work for the federal government, for example, was carried out with the stroke of President Eisenhower’s pen in Executive Order 10450 in 1953, no such swift action has been taken to overturn decades of institutional discrimination.
Since the birth of the modern LGBT movement out of the Stonewall Riots in 1969, the Democrats before Obama controlled the White House for 12 years under Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. For a lot of that time, both houses of Congress were controlled by Democrats as well.
But during this time, as well as under Republican administrations, the Democrats have been opportunist at best, and hostile at worst.
Little compares to the treachery of the Clinton administration. A masterful public speaker capable of Academy Award-style performances of empathy, Clinton could famously “feel your pain,” but apparently could not alleviate any of it.
Clinton came into office promising an end to draconian laws against gays in the military. He caved after four days and signed into law what is perhaps the only known order by a commander-in-chief for gays and lesbians to march back into the closet. While initially perceived as a more benign form of discrimination, his policy–known as “don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue”–has allowed for a witch-hunt of tens of thousands of military personnel and the discharge of more than 12,500 LGBT people from the military.
Nearly six years into his presidency, Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 11478 providing partial relief for lesbian and gay federal employees–not including the 3 million military personnel.
But his action left intact sodomy laws (not overturned by the Supreme Court until 2003), anti-same-sex marriage legislation (which he signed) and the military’s unequal status for LGBT people (which he introduced), and it didn’t take up the rights of those who are transgender (who experience the highest rates of violence, unemployment and discrimination of any sexual minority). All this exposes the severe limitations of the electoral route for winning civil rights for LGBT people.