Gayness is no longer a scandal?
“Gayness is no longer a scandal,” he says. “Scandal now belongs to the Lindsay Lohans and the Britney Spearses and the Paris Hiltons of this world. … Being gay is not being scandalous these days unless you’re doing something scandalous, and in that case, that belongs exclusively to the Republicans.”
How do you talk to your son about gays?
“He’s very interested in what being gay is because so many of our friends are gay. When talking around your child you have to think very carefully and you have to be prudent about your choice of words. You talk about people looking for happiness and fulfillment in their lives, and how all families are different and look different. You’re forced to really consider your answers. You’re forced to think a lot about what you’re saying and how you’re saying it — even the tone.”
—Actress Sarah Jessica Parker on talking to her 4-year-old son, James, who has been asking questions about what “gay” means (azcentral.com, May 24)
Read the New Hampshire’s Union Leader’s Anti-endorsement of Mitt Romney for being a flip flopper. They say that the more he speaks, the more unbelievable he becomes.
Like a lot of people in New Hampshire, we wanted to believe Romney. We gave him the benefit of the doubt. We listened very carefully to his expertly rehearsed sales pitch. But in the end he didn’t close the deal for us. Now, two weeks before the primary, the same is happening with voters.
Republicans and right-leaning independents in New Hampshire gave Romney a chance. His events have not been sparsely attended. Nor have they been scarce. He’s made more campaign stops here this year than any other Republican, even John McCain.
And after a year of comparing Romney to McCain, of sizing up the two in person and in the media, Granite Staters are turning back to McCain. The former Navy pilot, once written off by the national media establishment, is now in a statistical dead heat with Romney here.
How could that be? Romney has all the advantages: money, organization, geographic proximity, statesman-like hair, etc.
But he lacks something John McCain has in spades: conviction.
Granite Staters want a candidate who will look them in the eye and tell them the truth. John McCain has done that day in and day out, never wavering, never faltering, never pandering.
Mitt Romney has not. He has spoken his lines well, but the people can sense that the words are memorized, not heartfelt.
Last week Romney was reduced to debating what the meaning of “saw” is. It was only the latest in a string of demonstrably false claims — he’d been a hunter “pretty much” all his life, he’d had the NRA’s endorsement, he marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. — that call into question the veracity of his justifications for switching sides on immigration, abortion, taxes and his affection for Ronald Reagan.
In this primary, the more Mitt Romney speaks, the less believable he becomes. That is why Granite Staters who have listened attentively are now returning to John McCain. They might not agree with McCain on everything, as we don’t, but like us, they judge him to be a man of integrity and conviction, a man who won’t sell them out, who won’t break his promises, and who won’t lie to get elected.
Voters can see that John McCain is trustworthy. Mitt Romney has spent a year trying to convince Granite Staters that he is as well. It looks like they aren’t buying it. And for good reason.
President Bush signed H.R. 2764 into law on Wednesday, December 26, 2007. One hundred ninety-four Republicans and 78 Democrats voted in favor of H.R. 2764. In its final version, 76 Senators supported it. In part it bars commercial development on the sprawling West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs campus in Brentwood and Westwood.The measure had been inserted into a larger appropriations bill by U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) who did not cast a vote on the bill.
Although the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Bush administration had favored opening the 388-acre complex to commercial business as a means of generating revenue the president did not veto the measure.
VA officials have been attempting to open portions of the property to commercial development for several years, and White House officials estimate that such a move could generate as much as $4 billion in revenue.Those who oppose commercial development, however, said it went against the intent of donors who gave the property to the VA in the 1800s for veterans’ services.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky and Feinstein were among the strongest critics of commercial development.
“This is not a revenue source any more than Yosemite or the Gettysburg Cemetery,” Yaroslavsky said at a news conference on December 19, 2007 outside the VA offices. The event included veterans and neighborhood groups who urged the president not to veto the measure.
Feinstein’s provision bars the VA from signing long-term commercial agreements, or enhanced-use leases, to sell the land piecemeal. Several businesses already use the VA property to store rental cars and buses and to operate a laundry service, and their businesses won’t be affected by the legislation, Feinstein’s staff said.
Yaroslavsky was correct when he said that he was confident the provision would become law.
True, there are no major financial appropriations at either the federal or state level but there are many Veteran Based 501 ( c ) (3) charities that are willing to enter into long term leases at the property to build rehabilitation centers and new housing for veterans.
Now, with the property saved, it is time to call on the various committees and commissions that oversee Veteran’s affairs such as The Governor’s Committee on Labor for People With Disabilities (Note-one of their mandates is to set policies to help disabled Veterans get back to work), to work with the government to make the lives better for our deserving Veterans.
The November Ballot in Florida will have the following initiative on it. It is a Constitutional Amendment. It reads:
A new section for Article I is hereby created to add the following: Inasmuch as marraiage is the legal union of only one man and one woman as husband and wife, no other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial euivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized.”
Well, as a matter of law, partner medical insurance would be void and I guess, partners would be uninsured in Florida.. Just think of the implications for residents of Canada, California, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and the European Union (even if you exclude those places with state run insurance plans). God forbid if one dies, but who would they release the body too? Why would a morgue care if a partner can take the body back to the home state or country or now. This is SICK.
Florida depends on the tourist dollar and the GLBT comunity pours lots of dollars into that state.
Now is the time for that state’s leader to tell people that it is wrong and that it will hurt the state. Whether you view it from an economic standpoint or a moral standpoint, the initiative is wrong.
Article published Dec 22, 2007
If you were building a Republican presidential candidate from a kit, imagine what pieces you might use: an athletic build, ramrod posture, Reaganesque hair, a charismatic speaking style and a crisp dark suit. You’d add a beautiful wife and family, a wildly successful business career and just enough executive government experience. You’d pour in some old GOP bromides - spending cuts and lower taxes - plus some new positions for 2008: anti-immigrant rhetoric and a focus on faith.
Add it all up and you get Mitt Romney, a disquieting figure who sure looks like the next president and most surely must be stopped.
Romney’s main business experience is as a management consultant, a field in which smart, fast-moving specialists often advise corporations on how to reinvent themselves. His memoir is called Turnaround - the story of his successful rescue of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City - but the most stunning turnaround he has engineered is his own political career.
If you followed only his tenure as governor of Massachusetts, you might imagine Romney as a pragmatic moderate with liberal positions on numerous social issues and an ability to work well with Democrats. If you followed only his campaign for president, you’d swear he was a red-meat conservative, pandering to the religious right, whatever the cost. Pay attention to both, and you’re left to wonder if there’s anything at all at his core.
As a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 1994, he boasted that he would be a stronger advocate of gay rights than his opponent, Ted Kennedy. These days, he makes a point of his opposition to gay marriage and adoption.
There was a time that he said he wanted to make contraception more available - and a time that he vetoed a bill to sell it over-the-counter.
The old Romney assured voters he was pro-choice on abortion. “You will not see me wavering on that,” he said in 1994, and he cited the tragedy of a relative’s botched illegal abortion as the reason to keep abortions safe and legal. These days, he describes himself as pro-life.
There was a time that he supported stem-cell research and cited his own wife’s multiple sclerosis in explaining his thinking; such research, he reasoned, could help families like his. These days, he largely opposes it. As a candidate for governor, Romney dismissed an anti-tax pledge as a gimmick. In this race, he was the first to sign.
People can change, and intransigence is not necessarily a virtue. But Romney has yet to explain this particular set of turnarounds in a way that convinces voters they are based on anything other than his own ambition.
In the 2008 campaign for president, there are numerous issues on which Romney has no record, and so voters must take him at his word. On these issues, those words are often chilling. While other candidates of both parties speak of restoring America’s moral leadership in the world, Romney has said he’d like to “double” the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, where inmates have been held for years without formal charge or access to the courts. He dodges the issue of torture - unable to say, simply, that waterboarding is torture and America won’t do it.
When New Hampshire partisans are asked to defend the state’s first-in-the-nation primary, we talk about our ability to see the candidates up close, ask tough questions and see through the baloney. If a candidate is a phony, we assure ourselves and the rest of the world, we’ll know it.
Mitt Romney is such a candidate. New Hampshire Republicans and independents must vote no.
Posted on Dec 23, 2007
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| AP photo / Steve Mitchell |
By Chris Hedges
The rise of Mike Huckabee as a presidential candidate represents a seismic shift in the tactics, ideology and direction of the radical Christian right. Huckabee may stumble and falter in later primaries, but his right-wing Christian populism is here to stay. Huckabee represents a new and potent force in American politics, and the neocons and corporate elite, who once viewed the yahoos of the Christian right as the useful idiots, are now confronted with the fact that they themselves are the ones who have been taken for a ride. Members of the Christian right, recruited into the Republican Party and manipulated to vote against their own interests around the issues of abortion and family values, are in rebellion. They are taking the party into new, uncharted territory. And they presage, especially with looming economic turmoil, the rise of a mass movement that could demolish what is left of American democracy and set the stage for a Christian fascism.
The corporate establishment, whose plundering of the country created fertile ground for a radical, right-wing backlash, is sounding the alarm bells. It is scrambling to bolster Mitt Romney, who, like Rudy Giuliani or Hillary Clinton, will continue to slash and burn on behalf of corporate profits. Columnist George Will called Huckabee’s populism “a comprehensive apostasy against core Republican beliefs.” He wrote that Huckabee’s candidacy “broadly repudiates core Republican policies such as free trade, low taxes, the essential legitimacy of America’s corporate entities and the market system allocating wealth and opportunity.” National Review’s Rich Lowry wrote that “like [Howard] Dean, his nomination would represent an act of suicide by his party.”
Huckabee spoke of this revolt on the “Today” show. “There’s a sense in which all these years the evangelicals have been treated very kindly by the Republican Party,” he said. “They wanted us to be a part of it. And then one day one of us actually runs and they say, ‘Oh, my gosh, now they’re serious.’ They [evangelicals] don’t want to just show up and vote, they actually would want to be a part of the discussion.”
George Bush is a happy stooge of his corporate handlers. He blithely enriches the oligarchy, defends a war that is the worst foreign policy blunder in American history and callously denies medical benefits to children. Huckabee is different. He has tapped into the rage and fury of the working class, dispossessed and abandoned by the mainstream Democrats and Republicans. And he refuses to make the ideology of the Christian right, with its dark contempt for democratic traditions and intolerance of nonbelievers, a handmaiden of the corporate establishment. This makes him a much more lethal and radical political force.
The Christian right is the most potent and dangerous mass movement in American history. It has been controlled and led, until now, by those who submit to the demands of the corporate state. But the grass roots are tired of being taken for rubes. They are tired of candidates, like Bush or Bill Clinton, who roll out the same clichés about working men and women every four years and then spend their terms enriching their corporate backers. The majority of American citizens have spent the last two decades watching their government services and benefits vanish. They have seen their jobs go overseas and are watching as their communities crumble and their houses are foreclosed. It is their kids who are in Iraq and Afghanistan. The old guard in the Christian right, the Pat Robertsons, who used their pulpits to deliver the votes of naive followers to the corporatists, is a spent force. Huckabee’s Christian populism represents the maturation of the movement. It signals the rise of a truly radical, even revolutionary force in American politics, of which Huckabee may be one of the tamer and less frightening examples.
Hints of Huckabee’s bizarre worldview seep out now and then. Bob Vander Plaats, Huckabee’s Iowa campaign manager, for example, when asked about his candidate’s lack of foreign policy experience, told MSNBC: “Well, I think Gov. Huckabee has a lot of resources that he goes to on national security matters. Here’s a guy, a former pastor, who understands a theological nature of this war as we’re fighting a radical religion in Islam.”
Robert Novak noted that Huckabee held a fundraiser last week at the Houston home of Dr. Steven Hotze. As Novak wrote, Hotze is “a leader in the highly conservative Christian Reconstruction movement.”
Huckabee has close ties with the Christian Reconstructionist or Dominionist branch of the Christian right. The Dominionist movement, which seeks to cloak itself in the mantle of the Christian faith and American patriotism, is small in numbers but influential. It departs from traditional evangelicalism. It seeks to redefine traditional democratic and Christian terms and concepts to fit an ideology that calls on the radical church to take political power. It shares many prominent features with classical fascist movements, at least as such movements are defined by the scholar Robert O. Paxton, who sees fascism as “a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cultures of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.”
Dominionism, born out of Christian Reconstructionism, seeks to politicize faith. It has, like all fascist movements, a belief in magic along with leadership adoration and a strident call for moral and physical supremacy of a master race, in this case American Christians. It also has, like fascist movements, an ill-defined and shifting set of beliefs, some of which contradict each other. Paxton argues that the best way to understand authentic fascist movements, which he says exist in all societies, including democracies, is to focus not on what they say but on how they act, for, as he writes, some of the ideas that underlie fascist movements “remain unstated and implicit in fascist public language” and “many of them belong more to the realm of visceral feelings than to the realm of reasoned propositions.”
Dominionism teaches that American Christians have been mandated by God to make America a Christian state. A decades-long refusal by most American fundamentalists to engage in politics at all following the Scopes trial has been replaced by a call for Christian “dominion” over the nation and, eventually, over the Earth itself. Dominionism preaches that Jesus has called on Christians to actively build the kingdom of God on Earth. America becomes, in this militant Biblicism, an agent of God, and all political and intellectual opponents of America’s Christian leaders are viewed, quite simply, as agents of Satan. Under Christian dominion, America will no longer be a sinful and fallen nation but one in which the Ten Commandments form the basis of our legal system, in which creationism and “Christian values” form the basis of our educational system, and the media and the government proclaim the Good News to one and all. Labor unions, civil rights laws and public schools will be abolished. Women will be removed from the work force to stay at home, and all those deemed insufficiently Christian will be denied citizenship.
Baptist minister Rick Scarborough, founder of Vision America and a self-described “Christocrat,” who attended the Texas fundraiser, has endorsed Huckabee. Scarborough, along with holding other bizarre stances, opposes the HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccine on grounds that it interferes with God’s punishment of sexual license. And Huckabee, who once advocated isolating AIDS patients from the general public and opposed increased federal funding in the search for a cure, comes out of this frightening mold. He justified his call to quarantine those with AIDS because they could “pose a dangerous public health risk.”
“If the federal government is truly serious about doing something with the AIDS virus, we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague,” Huckabee wrote. “It is difficult to understand the public policy towards AIDS. It is the first time in the history of civilization in which the carriers of a genuine plague have not been isolated from the general population, and in which this deadly disease for which there is no cure is being treated as a civil rights issue instead of the true health crisis it represents.”
Huckabee has publicly backed off from this extreme position, but he remains deeply hostile to gays. He has used wit and humor to deflect reporters from his radical views about marriage, abortion, damnation, biblical law, creationism and the holy war he believes we are fighting with Islam. But his stances represent a huge step, should they ever become policy, toward a theocratic state and the death of our open society. In the end, however, I do not blame Huckabee or the tens of millions of hapless Christians—40 percent of the Republican electorate—who hear his words and rejoice. I blame the corporate state, those who thought they could disempower and abuse the working class, rape the country, build a rapacious oligarchy and never pay a political price.
Chris Hedges, who graduated from seminary at Harvard Divinity School, is the author of “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.”
Largely unknown Christian leaders prove powerful in Iowa
SAN ANTONIO – Mike Huckabee’s political rise has been fueled by a vast network of local Christian leaders largely unknown to the general public but powerfully influential in evangelical circles.
That strategy – methodically rolling up the support of these grass-roots networks – has paid big dividends, helping catapult Mr. Huckabee ahead in Iowa and boosting his prospects in the Republican field.
“All these leaders that most of the national media don’t recognize, they’re all coming to Huckabee,” said supporter Kelly Shackelford of Plano-based Liberty Legal Institute.
On Sunday, the former Arkansas governor was in the pulpit of a San Antonio megachurch, where he made no apologies for the religious tone of recent holiday campaign commercials and delivered a sermon on the birth and resurrection of Jesus.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is leading in the polls in Iowa, where the Jan. 3 caucuses mark the start of the presidential nominating season.
Although Mr. Huckabee lost some big-name endorsements, including 700 Club founder Pat Robertson, his campaign has successfully tapped the organizing apparatus of numerous religious figures whose local endorsements carry considerable weight.
“You’ve got the home-school network. You’ve got the right-to-life network. You’ve got networks of megachurches,” said John Green of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
“The Huckabee campaign apparently understands something about the evangelical community that people outside don’t – that it’s highly decentralized,” he said.
“And if they hear something good about a candidate from someone they trust through a religious network they’re a part of, it can be quite effective.”
Critics complain that Mr. Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister, is running for president on the fact that he’s a Christian.
Supporters defend his grass-roots appeal to evangelicals, a key voting bloc in the Republican primary.
On Sunday, Mr. Huckabee was the guest of televangelist John Hagee, pastor of the 19,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio and leader of an influential Christian-Zionist organization.
Mr. Hagee did not endorse Mr. Huckabee, but the platform of his Sunday-morning service offered considerable prestige.
“I got into a little trouble this past week because I actually had the audacity to say ‘Merry Christmas,’ ” Mr. Huckabee told a packed sanctuary, which burst into applause.
The reference was to a political commercial in which he offered a holiday greeting as he sat before Christmas tree and a bookcase in the shape of a white cross.
Economic conservatives within the GOP have criticized Mr. Huckabee’s record as governor on taxes and spending. But for evangelicals dissatisfied with the Republican presidential field, the former Arkansas governor is a political godsend.
Mr. Huckabee and Mr. Hagee entered the stage Sunday to the “Hallelujah Chorus” sung by the church’s 100-member choir.
“I’m not here to make a political statement or deliver a political message,” said Mr. Huckabee, embarking on a 30-minute sermon that made brief references to his presidential campaign.
Peter Montgomery of the People for the American Way, a Washington-based group that monitors church-state issues, was critical of Mr. Huckabee’s appeal to voters on religious grounds.
“I don’t think Americans want a political race about who’s the best Christian and, therefore, who’s going to make the best president,” he said.
At the same time, Mr. Montgomery acknowledged the effectiveness of the campaign’s appeal to “a lot of people who might not be household names to the general public but are important constituencies on the religious right.”
Mr. Huckabee is leading in the polls in Iowa, where the Jan. 3 caucuses mark the start of the presidential nominating season. He has compensated for a skimpy, underfunded organization by enlisting Iowa pastors to his aid.
In a closed-door meeting this month in Des Moines, Mr. Huckabee showcased several high-profile supporters, including California pastor Tim LeHaye, author of the apocalyptic “Left Behind” book series, and Mr. LaHaye’s wife, Beverly, founder of the conservative Christian group Concerned Women of America.
John Shaull, director of Missions for the Baptist Convention of Iowa, said he is sending out e-mails and distributing voter guides from the Iowa Christian Alliance at his church.
He describes the effort as a “pyramid mentality – somebody here shares 10 references with somebody here, who then shares 10 references.”
Mr. Huckabee has recruited several influential members of the Southern Baptist Convention, which represents more than 16 million members.
In Texas, he has the support of Jack Graham, pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, and James Draper of Colleyville, former president of Lifeway Christian Resources. Both are former presidents of the Southern Baptist Convention.
In addition, Mr. Huckabee has the backing of East Texas evangelist Rick Scarborough, who has campaigned in Iowa and other states on his behalf.
Others the Huckabee campaign has attracted to its Faith and Family Values Coalition include evangelical speaker Janet Folger; former welfare recipient Star Parker; Michael Farris of the Home School Legal Defense Association and chancellor of Patrick Henry College; William J. Murray, son of the late atheist leader Madalyn Murray O’Hair; Don Wildmon of the American Family Association; and Mathew Staver, dean of law at the late Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University.
“There are many channels of communication within the evangelical community,” said Pew’s John Green. “And the campaign seems to understand that.”
Entertainer Pamela Anderson filed for divorce last week, just two months after getting hitched in a quickie Las Vegas wedding. But remember, it’s GAYS who are destroying marriage in this country.
from Chuch Muth
All traits are like that. They are neither 100% genetically (or chemically) determined, or 100% environmentally determined (or learned). Think of a trait as if it were violin playing. It would be hopelessly pedantic to argue about whether the sound is produced by the violinist or the instrument. It’s just as impossible to tease out the exact source of a trait like homosexuality: genetic or environmental. So the straight-to-gay-and-back-again chemical dose for humans (or fruit flies) outside the lab? Highly improbable.
Here’s what Featherstone’s research could produce. He speculates that it might be used not to produce a sexual-orientation drug but much more narrowly to change the way insects respond to odors: For instance, making insects that usually don’t respond to flower odors become pollinators.
I don’t know about you, but I find the thought of a cockroach flitting from flower to flower a lot more unsettling than straight/gay flies.
If I did not read this in the Los Angeles Times I would not believe it. The billion dollar business knows as Major Leabue Baseball (”MLB”) is concerned that their players are doing hGh or Human Growth Hormone and according to scientists, there may never be a test to detect it since it occurs natrually in the body.
Well regardless of baseball’s plight, Rep. Henry Waxman is contemplating introducing a bill to fund research on a blood or urine test for hGh even though it might fail.
I really do not care what they shoot in themselves. It is not an illegal drug and is prescribed for certain disorders. What I do not understand is why it is a federal issue? Why is the US government thinking about developing a test to see if players should be banned from a sport? This sounds STUPID to me. I mean if they were doing a test to use for criminal investigations, that is one thing, but to help out a billion dollar industry like MLB is a waste of taxpayer money.
Gee, millions of dollars spent on a test to see who could play baseball or not and we should pay for it. That is NUTS.
If MLB is so concerned about hGh abuse, then MLB should have the teams chip in to see if a test can be developed. The government has no business in developing a blood or urine test for something that they would not enforce with jail sentences if the tests are positive. It is irresponsible.
Congratulations to Mary Bono!
Sun Dec 16, 4:04 AM ET
ASHEVILLE, N.C. - Mary Bono, who was married to late singer-turned-politician Sonny Bono and replaced him in Congress after his death, has married U.S. Rep. Connie Mack.Bono’s sister, Katherine Whitaker, told The Associated Press the couple were married Saturday in a private ceremony attended by 35 family members.
“It was fantastic,” Whitaker said. “It was a very quiet ceremony.”
A spokeswoman for Mack had said in November that Asheville was selected because it is Whitaker’s home.
Mack, a Republican representative from Florida, and Bono, R-Calif., had been dating for two years. Bono’s chief of staff, Frank Cullen Jr., said Mack proposed in late August while the couple were on a camping trip in Arches National Park in Utah.
The 45-year-old Bono replaced Sonny Bono in Congress in a special election in 1998. The 40-year-old Mack, who is divorced, is the son of the Florida senator of the same name and great-grandson of Hall of Fame baseball manager Connie Mack.
Bono’s sister, Katherine Whitaker, told The Associated Press the couple were married Saturday in a private ceremony attended by 35 family members.
“It was fantastic,” Whitaker said. “It was a very quiet ceremony.”
A spokeswoman for Mack had said in November that Asheville was selected because it is Whitaker’s home.
Mack, a Republican representative from Florida, and Bono, R-Calif., had been dating for two years. Bono’s chief of staff, Frank Cullen Jr., said Mack proposed in late August while the couple were on a camping trip in Arches National Park in Utah.
The 45-year-old Bono replaced Sonny Bono in Congress in a special election in 1998. The 40-year-old Mack, who is divorced, is the son of the Florida senator of the same name and great-grandson of Hall of Fame baseball manager Connie Mack.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071216/ap_en_ot/people_bono_mack
The Clock is Ticking . . .
Tune in to 60 Minutes Tomorrow!
Dear SLDN Supporter,
I hope you will tune in this Sunday, at 7/6c, for a groundbreaking report from 60 Minutes about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Correspondent Lesley Stahl will look at the campaign to repeal this un-fair law, and speak, for the first time, with an active duty, openly gay soldier who tells his story, on-camera, of serving openly with the support of his colleagues and command.
Army Sergeant Darren Manzella, an SLDN client currently serving in Kuwait, discusses his experience as a gay service member on the frontlines of the war on terror. And Stahl speaks with SLDN board member Cholene Espinoza, a lesbian graduate of the Air Force Academy who is working with SLDN to repeal the ban on lesbian, gay and bisexual troops.
SLDN’s communications team worked closely with 60 Minutes producers on this important story, which highlights the arbitrary enforcement of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and the growing support for repeal.
You can log on to SLDN’s website today – at www.sldn.org – for a bio of Sergeant Manzella and a special message from Cholene. Then, be sure to tune in to CBS on Sunday for this historic story.
Join Us.
Log Cabin Republicans supports lifting the ban.
The gay and lesbian organization Log Cabin Republicans has decided to sit out the Republican primary by not endorsing a candidate. Why aren’t they backing Rudy Giuliani, the most pro-gay Republican White House contender in history?By James KirchickThe mission of Log Cabin Republicans, according to the group’s website, is “to make the Republican Party more inclusive, particularly on gay and lesbian issues.” The group recognizes — correctly – that “equality will be impossible to achieve without Republican votes.” Democrats are largely on board with gay rights issues; it’s conservatives who need convincing. It is for this reason that Log Cabin, with its handful of staffers and a mere 20,000 members, is one of the most important gay political organizations in the country.Yet Log Cabin is sitting out what is perhaps the most important presidential primary for gay voters in political history. Running for the 2008 Republican nomination is former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, the ideal Log Cabin Republican candidate. Indeed, Log Cabin endorsed him in his previous runs for mayor and U.S. Senate, and he spoke at the organization’s national convention in 1999. While it’s true that since becoming a major presidential contender Giuliani has backtracked on his previous support for civil unions (his campaign claims that the New Hampshire legislature’s passage of a civil unions law was overreaching because it recognizes same-sex unions from other states), Giuliani still says he supports domestic partnerships that ensure the same legal rights for gay couples. Add his regular participation in New York City’s gay pride parades, his appointments of openly gay people to city offices, and his having lived with a gay couple after his wife kicked him out of the house — plus a dearth of gay-supportive Republican rivals — and you have a no-brainer of a Log Cabin endorsement.
Read more: http://www.advocate.com/print_article_ektid50709.asp
The obvious question: Who benefits from a Log Cabin endorsement at this point?
My name is Courtney Muse. I am a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at Vanderbilt University. For my dissertation work, I have decided to focus on the Log Cabin Republicans - a unique group of individuals working for change within the Republican party.
I hope that you will consider participating in this research. I have spoken with LCR members in 10 states and would like to include the perspectives of members from the California chapters as well.
Phone interviews with other LCR members have taken roughly 45 minutes. Your answers to the interview questions and any other information that you provide will remain confidential. There will be no personal information given that would allow you to be identified.
If you are willing to participate or would like to know more, please email me at courtney.muse@vanderbilt.edu or call me at 615-333-6337.
Sincerely, Courtney S. Muse
Ph.D. Candidate Department of Sociology
Vanderbilt University
A proposed constitutional amendment measure to prohibit same sex marriage and eliminate domestic partnership benefits failed to gather enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. The measure was proposed by Larry Bowler and Randy Thomasson needed nearly 700,000 signatures. Despite failing, they filed a new measure the day after the other failed to try again with the same text. They have until April 28th, 2008 to qualify. Six other measures are in circulation. Three identical constitutional amendments have until December 12th, 2007, January 28th and April 21st in 2008 to qualify. It is expected that these will fail also since they filed the latest attempt. (This makes for a total of five measures that seek to restrict marriage and eliminate domestic partnerships).
Two other measures with deadlines (next/this) week seek to amend the constitution to limit marriage to one man and one woman. Both were submitted by Dennis Hollingsworth and Pete Knight’s widow, (and mother of a gay son) Gail Knight among others. While one simply banned marriage; the other stated that it specifically “would not affect the rights, benefits and obligations conferred by California law on other domestic relationships.” All of these measures in circulation require 694,354 signatures to qualify. To date, there is no word of any paid signature gathering occurring, nor word of any major donors funding these attempts. Also in circulation is a measure to repeal SB 777, an Equality California backed bill that restated existing anti-discrimination law in schools. Proponents of the bill admit the bill did nothing new except make it explicit that the law they passed in 2000 really does apply to schools. Opponents suddenly decided that this existing law could be used to eliminate the words “Mom” and “Dad” from textbooks (not remotely true). The fight is purely symbolic since keeping the law or repealing it will have no practical effect on what schools have complied with since 2001. But symbolic fights are important to many people. The proponents of the repeal have until January 10th to collect 433,971 signatures to qualify. No word on any professional signature gatherers, but lots of fundraising appeals from both camps. Look for more breathless hyperbole from both sides about how the world will end “if our opponents win”. We will monitor all of these and keep you updated. James Vaughn Log Cabin California and Western Region Director
In 2001, Colin Powell was the Secretary of State and George W. Bush was settling into his administration. Those of us looking for signs of progress were encouraged when the President selected Michael Guest, an openly gay career State Department diplomat as ambassador to Romania, a post-communist country seeking to enter NATO. We were even happier to see the Secretary of State acknowledge Guest’s partner, Alex Nevarez, at his swearing in ceremony.
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The Secretary and the administration share the shame of their behavior towards those who, like Michael Guest, make personal sacrifice to serve their nation. And not only gay people but our Nation as a whole is victim to these policies that are hostile to our best and brightest.
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