Because They All Played Their Part In It, That’s Why…
Via Talking Points Memo… We’re on the brink of the worse recession in decades, if not since the great depression, and none of the presidential candidates are talking about how we got here. Not the republicans, for obvious reason, but also not the democrats. And even more disgustingly, not the news media. They seem strikingly…uncurious…about what caused the financial crisis the United States has blithly plunged the rest of the world into. Oh…the candidates are busy making the usual promises to help mortgage holders (read:voters) weather the storm. But what they’re not talking about, for pretty damn obvious reasons, is what they’ll do to correct the problem that made it possible in the first place. And that’s because, as this commenter on TPM points out, they’re all part of that problem…
I am appalled, though not surprised, at the complete silence by the candidates on the last few days’ events on Wall Street and the world’s stock, bond and currency markets. This has far more effect on all of our futures than racist comments by the oxygen deprived brains of some old political or spiritual leaders. I know why Clinton and McCain are not talking about it: too many of their biggest supporters had too much to do with what happened, and benefited from the deregulation of the past twenty years for which both (and their allies) had a great deal of responsibility. (Remember that Hillary stood by while her colleague Chick Schumer killed the bill to tax hedge fund managers, who ear scores of millions every year, at income, rather than capital gains, rates.) What about Obama? Is he not up to the task of educating people about what the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act did to the markets many Americans poured their retirement and college savings into? Does he know that the Federal Reserve is about to bail out bankers, investors, and outright thieves who helped drive down the dollar, and brought the credit markets to a near standstill? Does he understand the problem? I wouldn’t know.
Seventy years ago Franklin Roosevelt was able to explain this country’s and the world’s financial crises to a far less educated, and less accessible, American public. That today’s candidates are unwiling, or unable to do so, is alarming. Maybe if the media first tried to understand the problems, then asked the proper questions until answers were forthcoming or it was clear the candidates are afraid to ask them, political coverage would be more than the extreme sports coverage it has turned into.
From our Department Of Unsurprising Things… The judge who issued a restraining order preventing Oregon’s Civil Unions law from taking effect, was a Bush appointee whose nomination had stirred up some controversy due to his views on the status of gay people. Emphasis below are mine…
WASHINGTON—What once seemed like a slam-dunk nomination for the federal judiciary in Oregon could turn into a test of political wills for Oregon’s two senators, Republican Gordon Smith and Democrat Ron Wyden.
Michael Mosman, the U.S. attorney in Portland, is Smith’s choice for a vacant district judgeship and is still regarded as a favorite of the Bush White House. But recent revelations of Mosman’s views on gay rights, first expressed in 1986, have delayed his selection and what otherwise would likely be easy Senate confirmation.
…
Mosman, 46, emerged as the top candidate in January after Ray Baum, a lawyer for Smith’s family business, withdrew. But controversy erupted in March, when Basic Rights disclosed Mosman’s role in a pivotal 1986 case, Bowers V. Hardwick.
The group uncovered and presented to Smith two “bench memos” that Mosman had written as a clerk to Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. Mosman urged Powell to uphold Georgia’s anti-sodomy law against a claim that police invaded a man’s privacy by arresting him in his home.
Memos to court’s tie-breaker
Mosman prepared the memos in March and June 1986, as it became clear Powell would be the court’s tie-breaking vote. He wrote that striking down the Georgia law would lead to an unwarranted expansion of privacy rights under due process.
Such a ruling would leave “no limiting principle” against prosecution of other sex crimes such as prostitution, Mosman wrote. It also would jeopardize rights that society previously had reserved to heterosexuals.
“Without belaboring the point, I am convinced that the right of privacy as it relates to this case has been limited thus far to marriage and other family relationships,” Mosman wrote to Powell. “So limited, the right of privacy does not extend to protect ‘sexual freedom’ in the absence of fundamental values of family and procreation.”
Mosman has declined requests by The Oregonian to discuss the memos. But in a recent book about gay rights and the Supreme Court, Mosman is quoted as saying that his feelings about homosexuality were secondary to his concerns about the law.
“The battle was really about . . . what direction the court was taking on due process,” Mosman said in “Courting Justice: Gay Men and Lesbians v. the Supreme Court.
Mosman added: “The (sodomy) issue could have come to the court as an equal protection case and would have had a better hearing. I would have been more receptive to it.”
…which is not to say he’d have been in favor of overturning the sodomy laws anyway. After all…having sex is a right that society had reserved to heterosexuals.
For Smith, the nomination could become a test of his credibility as an advocate for gay rights within the Republican Party. Smith won an important endorsement from Human Rights Campaign after supporting hate-crimes legislation, helping his re-election last year.
In a recent interview, Smith downplayed the significance of the Powell memos and suggested that given the opportunity, Mosman could explain himself to the satisfaction of critics.
“This is a decision that was rendered in 1986,” Smith said. “Isn’t it possible that Mike Mosman could also have an evolving view on these issues? I think Mosman is an outstanding legal scholar and an extraordinary U.S. attorney for Oregon.”
But let’s not lay this debacle entirely at the feet of the ersatz "gay friendly" republican. I think we all know by now that there is no such animal. But wait…there was a democrat involved in this too…
The stakes could be higher for Wyden. Although his party controls neither the White House nor the Senate, Democrats are regarded as the chief defenders of gay rights. If Wyden endorses Mosman, his decision could be second-guessed by colleagues, including a handful of Democratic senators running for president in 2004.
Democrats have threatened to filibuster high-profile nominees, and they might be emboldened to take on others if they succeed, said Moore, the analyst. In that case, Mosman’s nomination also could be held hostage to political concerns.
“It depends on what happens with the other filibusters going on,” he said.
Wyden hopes to avoid a national controversy over the nomination, said Josh Kardon, his chief of staff. But first, the senator plans to meet with Mosman to discuss the concerns raised by Basic Rights and decide whether to support him.
“Mike Mosman is someone Senator Wyden has supported in the past and someone he would like to support for the federal bench,” Kardon said. “But legitimate questions have been raised that require thorough consideration.”
"President Bush made an excellent choice when he nominated Mike, and the Senate confirmed that decision with its unanimous vote," Smith said. "He has long served Oregon and the nation with distinction, and I have the utmost confidence that he will continue to do so on the District Court."
"I am honored to have this chance to serve," Mosman said. "I have been impressed throughout this whole process with the fair-mindedness of everyone involved. I am grateful to the president for nominating me, and to Senators Smith and Wyden for their confidence and support."
"Mike has worked hard to show his commitment to equal rights for all Americans," Wyden said. "I believe his sense of fairness and his long and outstanding experience as a prosecutor in our state will serve the District Court and Oregon well."
Bush and Cheney have broken the law consistently throughout their reign, often openly, and to the great detriment of our own country and others; when they obey it, they do so more as a matter of convenience than from any fealty to it or any fear of retribution. They’re pleased to use the legislature to achieve their ends when they can – as when Congress obligingly immunized administration personnel from prosecution under the War Crimes Act – and to ignore it when they can’t. Former Justice Department official Jack Goldsmith explains the dynamic as described to him by Dick Cheney’s current number two, torture maven David Addington: "We’re going to push and push and push until some larger force makes us stop." They have, and that larger force has not materialized – and the administration have been at pains to ensure that the force, if it ever arrives, won’t do so in the person of the courts – and the result is a constitutional republic with its framework intact and its guts eviscerated. There is only one remedy, and that’s impeachment.
(Emphasis mine)
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
-George Washington
Washington was probably thinking about the democrats when he said that…
I could spend all day unpacking this Obama statement, but I’ll try to stick to my usual terse self.
Part of the reason that we have had a faith outreach in our campaigns is precisely because I don’t think the LGBT community or the Democratic Party is served by being hermetically sealed from the faith community and not in dialogue with a substantial portion of the electorate, even though we may disagree with them.
Aside from the adoption of right wing frames, this kind of statement is incredibly insulting to both the LGBT community who are apparently "hermetically sealed from the faith community" and to the "faith community" which is apparently defined as nothing more than a bunch of anti-gay bigots. Not to mention the Democratic Party, which apparently includes no actual religious people.
Obama gets smaller and smaller every day doesn’t he? Of course, this statement wasn’t directed at the gay community, but at the so-called ‘faith’ based voters. You know…the ones who keep insisting that the United States is a Christian Nation. No. It’s a nation where everyone, Christians included, have freedom of worship. And that’s precisely because the government isn’t supposed to take sides in matters of faith. Which is just what the religious right wants it to. So the only freedom of worship Americans will have, is the freedom to be a right wing Christian.
I guess Obama thinks he can woo enough of these away from the republican ranks that it won’t matter how many gay voters he slaps. He did it there again, speaking to the religious right, in the terms it understands. If we’re talking about people of faith, as opposed to the people who wear the label "People Of FAITH" on their sleeves along with "I’M A GODLY PERSON BOW DOWN BEFORE ME YOU HELLBOUND HEATHEN YOU", then of course a good many, if not most gay people are also people of faith. Never mind how often and how loudly the religious right bellyaches that homosexuals are anti-Christian. When I was working the Weekly Community Events board at the Gay and Lesbian Information Bureau BBS (GLIB), about half of all the notices, and there were tons of notices, were for gay accepting, gay friendly, religious worship services. Every, and I want to emphasize that, Every denomination was represented. There were Catholics. There were Baptists. There were Quakers. There were various Mennonite sects. There were Mormons. There were Unitarians. There were notices from various gay friendly Synagogues. In addition to a host of non-Judeo-Christian faith services listed. Don’t tell me that gay people are not a living part of that all embracing rainbow colored body that compasses people of faith.
And don’t tell me that Obama doesn’t know this. When he adopts a right wing frame for the issue of religious faith in America, he knows exactly what he’s doing. And I don’t believe for a second that his taking on an ex-gay gospel singer was an accident either. My hunch is Obama thought he could dog whistle to black homophobic conservatives. It didn’t work and now he has to take a stand and he’s Still dog whistling to them.
[Update…] from the New York Times report on the concert…
COLUMBIA, S.C. — At Barack Obama’s gospel concert here last night, more than 2,000 black evangelicals were singing, waving their hands and cramming the aisles _ most enthusiastically when Donnie McClurkin, the superstar black gospel singer, decried the criticism he has generated because of his views that homosexuality is a choice.
…
He approached the subject gingerly at first. Then, just when the concert had seemed to reach its pitch and about to end, Mr. McClurkin returned to it with a full-blown plea: “Don’t call me a bigot or anti-gay when I have suffered the same feelings,” he cried.
“God delivered me from homosexuality,” he added. He then told the audience to believe the Bible over the blogs: “God is the only way.” The crowd sang and clapped along in full support.
And the gay white minister Obama invited to the concert after the controversy errupted…? Ah…yes…
The Obama campaign had appeared to be caught off guard by the reaction to inviting Mr. McClurkin in the first place, and it may have been surprised tonight by the degree to which the singer focused on himself. The other speakers and singers had avoided referencing the controversy. Even an openly gay minister whom Mr. Obama had invited after the fact to try to appease his gay and lesbian critics spoke so early that few people heard him.
CNN said the white gay preacher, Rev. Andy Sidden, gave a short prayer at the beginning of the concert when the auditorium was less then half full, and then he left. I wonder if his prayers were answered.
Now, this is the issue: Does a political party say to its most militant, committed, ideologically driven believers in purity that they have a veto over what the party does? And I say that procedurally because substantively I agree with them. I have spoken on this floor and in committee for including people of transgender. I have argued that with my colleagues in private. I have argued that with the Democratic Caucus. But I also believe that I have a broader set of responsibilities than to any one group and my job is to advance the moral values that I came here to advance as far and as fast as I can and not voluntarily to withhold an advance because it doesn’t meet somebody’s view of perfection. And the question is, how do we relate to those people? And it has become an increasing problem for both parties.
Frankly, until recently I have felt that one of the advantages we Democrats have had over our Republican colleagues is that we were more willing to be responsible, less susceptible to the most committed minority of our party having a veto. I think from the days of Terri Schiavo and before and since, the Republican Party has suffered from that. I don’t want the Democratic Party to suffer from it. Not because I want to protect the Democratic Party as an end in itself, but because the Democratic Party is the means by which these values I care about are most likely to be advanced.
And let me talk about this ideological faction that we have. There are some characteristics that they have that I think led them to this profoundly mistaken view that the greatest single advance we can make in civil rights in many, many years would somehow be a bad thing because it would only include millions of people and leave some hundreds of thousands out. And I want to include those hundreds of thousands. I have done more to try to include them than many of the people who say we should kill the whole thing, but I don’t understand how killing the whole thing advances that.
But here are some of the characteristics: first of all, they tend to talk excessively to each other. One of the things when you are in this body is you talk to people all over the country. You talk to Members of Congress from every State. And I have this with people who can’t understand why I am not introducing legislation to impeach the President and the Vice President, and I find that this is a characteristic that these are people who do not know what the majority thinks, who do not understand the depths of disagreement with their positions on some issues. And that doesn’t mean a majority that says George Bush is wonderful. That isn’t there anymore, but a majority who would be skeptical of impeachment.
But let me get back to this. There are people who talk excessively to each other. They don’t know people of other views.
There is another characteristic of these people who are so dedicated. They do not have allies. You can take an elected official who has been with one of these groups day after day for years, but let that individual once disagree, and it’s a betrayal. It’s a failure of moral will. And lest anyone think I am here being defensive about myself, let me be very clear: I will be running for reelection again. The likelihood that I will be defeated by someone who claims that I am insufficiently dedicated to protecting people from discrimination based on sexual orientation seems to me quite slender. I am not worried about my own situation, and let me also say that I have said that my colleagues suffer sometimes from the unwillingness to tell people bad news. It has been suggested that I may suffer from the opposite direction. It’s not that I like telling people bad news, but I do think that you should when you have to.
I am not worried about myself, but here is what I’m worried about: I am worried about people from more vulnerable districts because not only do people talk only to themselves and not understand the differences that exist and not accept anybody’s bona fides ever, that they will turn on anybody the first time there is an honest disagreement, but there is also the single-issue nature. That is, there are people who say, okay, you know what, I don’t care about your survival to fight for any other issue.
I’ll say this…you have to admire the chutzpah of a man who argues that he has "a broader set of responsibilities than to any one group" while defending a bill that protects only the group he belongs to, and not the broader set of sexual minority groups that it used to. You have to admire the chutzpah of a man who cites his minority rights credentials, while arguing that the people he’s culling out of a civil rights bill don’t matter as much, because they’re a smaller minority. But you Really have to admire the chutzpah of a man who is willing to state flatly that the job security of his fellow democratic congressmen is more important to him then then the job security of the people he’s culling out of his anti-discrimination bill.
This business about people with "no allies" who "talk excessively to each other" and bitch about being betrayed over an "honest disagreement" stinks like a cesspool. This is the language the gentleman bigots use to paint gay people as a militant pressure group for wanting equal rights, equal opportunity and access to marriage. They call us a threat to children and families, they call us disrupters of military cohesiveness, they call us disease spreading sexual deviants, they say we’re offensive to god almighty, and when we call them on their cheapshit bigotry they reply that they’re being viciously attacked for disagreeing with us. That’s called begging the question. What is the nature of the disagreement Barney?
You are betraying them Barney. And in doing that, you are betraying all of us. You’re selling them out, and in the process, cheapening our many many years of hard, bitter struggle. This wasn’t for fairness. It wasn’t for equality. It wasn’t for justice. It was just for Getting Ours. That’s what you’ve turned our struggle into. Jackass.
Yes you drooling moron, you have a broader responsibility. You have a responsibility to All Americans. Not just Some Americans. Not just Your Kind Of Americans. You have a responsibility to America. To what America stands for. Or…used to anyway. The American Dream? Liberty and Justice For All? That stuff? Remember it?
Members of the House of Representatives recently threatened to hold a vote on a bill that would cut from the Employment Non-Discrimination Act the people who most need its protections. There is no better example of the reason we need a transgender-inclusive ENDA than Diane Schroer, a highly-decorated veteran who transitioned from male to female after 25 years of distinguished service in the Army. Diane interviewed for a job as a terrorism research analyst at the Library of Congress, and accepted the position, but the job offer was rescinded when she told her future supervisor that she was in the process of gender transition.
The ACLU does not support an employment discrimination law that covers sexual orientation but not gender identity, for two reasons. First, the sexual orientation only bill may well not even do what its sponsors want. Because it currently defines sexual orientation as “homosexuality, heterosexuality and bisexuality,” there is still a serious risk that employers may get away with claiming they fired women because they are too masculine and men because they are too feminine. There is a serious risk courts will say the definition only covers who you have a relationship with, and not stereotypes that only apply to some gay people. If that sounds far fetched, we’ve been watching courts do just this in disability and marital status discrimination cases. And courts have already said that harassing someone over perceived masculinity or femininity is not sex discrimination if the prejudice stems from sexual orientation. We have been warning members of Congress about this problem for over four years.
But the more important reason to oppose excluding gender identity and expression is this: We truly do believe that discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity and expression are not mutually exclusive. They are all based on beliefs about what is or is not appropriate for men and women; what jobs are appropriate, what relationships are appropriate, what kind of personal and public identity is appropriate. It makes no sense to split them apart.
No one is more aware than the ACLU that compromise is a critical part of the legislative process, and that change in a large republic is almost always incremental. But a compromise that cuts out some of the community, as a group, as opposed to one that cuts out some employers or some situations, is wrong. It would create the belief that this is a less worthy group of LGBT people, something that doesn’t happen when you leave people who work for small employers uncovered (something most civil rights laws do). There has been plenty of compromise in ENDA. It allows employers to keep same-sex partners out of health plans. It doesn’t apply to the military. But some bargains are just not worth it. Cutting out people who have been on the front lines of the LGBT movement is not a concession we should make.
Matt Coles
Director, ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender & AIDS Project
Why I’m a card-carrying member. You think the ACLU is an extremist pressure group Barney? Well walk across the isle and shake John Boehner’s hand Barney, because without a doubt he believes that too.
Barney Frank wants to pass an EDNA and he doesn’t care if it leaves some members of our community (Yes John Aravosis, Our community…) in the dust. He doesn’t even really care if it really protects the people he claims it will. How does this make any sense? Because it’s got his name on it, that’s how. Frank wants his name in on the first ever federal law banning discrimination against gay people, and never mind whether or not it actually does that. It’s not for the community…it’s for posterity.
Jeeze…it’s only been since last March that I did one…
This is about our wonderful governor here in Maryland, who privately told his gay supporters, while he was mayor of Baltimore, and campaigning for governor against the anti-gay Robert Ehrlich, that he would support same-sex marriage. When the Maryland Court of appeals a couple weeks ago ruled against it, O’Malley came out publicly against it too, citing his Catholic faith.
While he was the mayor of Baltimore, O’Malley was the architect of the BELIEVE campaign, which placed the banners with "BELIEVE" in bright bold letters over a black background all over the city…on the buses, on the trashcans, everywhere, in an attempt to rise city pride.
Before there was an Internet, there were computer BBSs. It was on a gay BBS, the Gay and Lesbian Information Bureau (GLIB), that I finally found my little subset of the gay community, and began settling in. It was during one of our GLIB happy hour gatherings that I had my eyes opened about transgendered folk. This was sometime in the late 1980s as I recall. A group of us were sitting at the bar and this really cute guy, not a GLIB member but a friend of one, joined us. He seemed almost a stereotypical D.C. K Street type. He had on his Power Office Worker suit and tie, and his expensive walking sneakers because it was rush hour and you leave your good shoes at the office and put on your Nikes for walking to your Metro stop. And he had his Franklin-Covey Day Planner with him, and as he chatted with his friends there, I kid you not, he would glance in his appointment pages to see where his free time was.
At the time I was working as a contract software developer, and as this was a time before PDAs were mated to cell phones, I also had a paper day planner, mostly so I could keep track of my billable hours. Mine was the Daytimer product, largely because it had twenty-four hour day pages, and my workdays were anything but nine to five. And being a techno-geek, and more interested in the technology of managing time then actually managing my own, I asked this guy what he liked about the Franklin-Covey product. After a while he and I were enjoying a nice chat. I about the technology of time management, and he about how busy his life was.
Eventually he went off to make a phone call. As I sat at the bar a GLIB member who knew him came over to me and asked me what I thought of him. He’s real cute, I said. But a bit too much K street for me. Does he have any friends, I asked jokingly, or are they all business contacts? The GLIB member asked if I knew ‘he’ was really ‘she’.
I was stunned. I hadn’t a clue. Not clue one. He was, I was told, female, but living as a guy because that’s what he felt he was. He’d had no surgery, not even merely cosmetic, and apparently had no interest in it. He was just living as a man, because that’s what he felt he was really, regardless of the physical sex he was born as. And when he came back and sat down next to me, and we resumed our conversation, even knowing that he was physically female, I could not help but believe, somewhere deep in my gut, that I was talking to another guy and it wasn’t an act. He just gave off guy vibes.
That was, I think, when I saw for myself that there really could be a difference between the sex of your body, and the sex of your mind, and that it was something distinct from one’s sexual orientation. But that’s not to say that the struggle of transgendered folk is separate from our own.
Homosexual. Bisexual. Transgendered. What do these people have in common? One thing: we don’t fit the gender stereotypes of the majority, and that has had profoundly negative consequences for our lives. This is why we need EDNA, and why it’s at root, our struggle for equality. All of us. Not some of us. Our life struggles are different in the particulars, the obstacles we face are not always the same ones, but the hate has, I am convinced, a common root. People who hate gays and who would deny us jobs, housing, a decent life, the freedom to be, hate transgendered folk just as much, just as deeply, just as passionately, and really don’t see a distinction between us. We’re all sexual deviants, and they wish us all gone from this world.
As a point of clarity for the community: The recent version is not simply the old version with the transgender protections stripped out — but rather has modified the old version in several additional and troubling ways.
In addition to the missing vital protections for transgender people on the job, this new bill also leaves out a key element to protect any employee, including lesbians and gay men who may not conform to their employer’s idea of how a man or woman should look and act. This is a huge loophole through which employers sued for sexual orientation discrimination can claim that their conduct was actually based on gender expression, a type of discrimination that the new bill does not prohibit.
Do you see the problem with leaving out protections for transgendered folk now? If your employer can fire you for not acting like a normal All-American heterosexual, as opposed to simply for being gay, or bi, then the bill does exactly nothing.
Let me reiterate…the problem isn’t that we’re homosexual, the problem is that we don’t conform to the gender norms of the majority. You can’t craft a law that protects homosexuals, and not the transgendered, and end up with a law that actually protects homosexuals. It has to outlaw discrimination based on gender expression, real or perceived, or it won’t be worth the paper it’s printed on.
I have to say I’ve lost a lot of respect for Barney Frank in this. His reputation is as a shrewd politician, and in fact he tried to justify doing this to ENDA on the grounds that it made better political sense. It was something he averred, that he could get more agreement on…maybe enough republican agreement that Bush would either sign it, or his veto could be overridden. Damn Barney… God Damn… Haven’t you fucking learned yet, that when you shake hands with these people, you need to count your fingers afterward…?
This version of ENDA states without qualification that refusal by employers to extend health insurance benefits to the domestic partners of their employees that are provided only to married couples cannot be considered sexual orientation discrimination. The old version at least provided that states and local governments could require that employees be provided domestic partner health insurance when such benefits are provided to spouses.
In the previous version of ENDA the religious exemptions had some limitations. The new version has a blanket exemption under which, for example, hospitals or universities run by faith-based groups can fire or refuse to hire people they think might be gay or lesbian.
The problem with negotiating in good faith with people who have no conscience, should be obvious. Even to people on Capital Hill. Or so you’d think anyway.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 — The Senate approved a resolution on Thursday denouncing the liberal antiwar group MoveOn.org over an advertisement that questioned the credibility of Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq.
MoveOn.org, with 3.2 million members, has become a powerful force in Democratic politics and the advertisement it paid for, which appeared in The New York Times, has come under sharp attack from Congressional Republicans and others as unpatriotic and impugning the integrity of General Petraeus.
Damn those dastardly democrats! Impugning the integrity of a war veteran! Is there no low they won’t sink too!!!
Like…oh…this for instance…?
At a White House news conference, President Bush called the advertisement disgusting and said it was an attack not only on General Petraeus but also on the entire American military.
I got your disgusting right here Junior…
You want a civil debate on the issues? Fuck Off! pls? kthxbye…
WASHINGTON, March 14 — Asked if she believed homosexuality was immoral, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, initially said Wednesday that it was for "others to conclude," but later issued a statement saying she did not think being gay was immoral.
Her remarks came a day after Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he should not have publicly expressed his personal view that homosexual acts were immoral and akin to adultery, a position that he said was a factor in his opposition to gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military. His views had appeared in The Chicago Tribune on Monday.
A rival of Mrs. Clinton for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois was asked the same question three times on Wednesday and sidestepped the issue, according to an article in Newsday.
But a spokesman for Mr. Obama said last night that the senator disagreed with General Pace’s remarks and believed that homosexuality was not immoral.
In case you missed it, Clinton’s backtracking statement "saying she did not think being gay was immoral" was also issued by a "spokesman". Compare and contrast…
Since 1993, I have had the rich satisfaction of knowing and working with many openly gay and lesbian Americans, and I have come to realize that "gay" is an artificial category when it comes to measuring a man or woman’s on-the-job performance or commitment to shared goals. It says little about the person. Our differences and prejudices pale next to our historic challenge. Gen. Pace is entitled, like anyone, to his personal opinion, even if it is completely out of the mainstream of American thinking. But he should know better than to assert this opinion as the basis for policy of a military that represents and serves an entire nation. Let us end "don’t ask, don’t tell." This policy has become a serious detriment to the readiness of America’s forces as they attempt to accomplish what is arguably the most challenging mission in our long and cherished history.
So, dig it. After Pace babbles his mind about how homosexuality is immoral, two republicans, one a Virgina senator no less, and still in office, and the other a former senator and still a force in his party, decisively and very publicly rebuke the sentiment. Yet the current front runners for the democratic presidential nomination reflexively equivocate. And when they finally do say the right thing, they have to say it though a spokesdroid.
Teaching became a source of great satisfaction, and she earned a reputation as one of the best. It was in this capacity that the invitation came to conduct research with homosexuals. A very bright student in one of Hooker’s classes (1945) sought to extend the relationship outside of class, and in so doing met Hooker’s husband (she had married Donn Caldwell, a freelance writer, in 1941). As a couple, they were invited to social occasions with her student and his friends.
After several years, the former student began urging Hooker to conduct research with them. She finally did some exploratory research with them. However, her life had changed, including a divorce in 1947, so the project was put on ice. She was married again in 1951 in London, England to Edward Niles Hooker, a distinguished professor of English at UCLA.
In 1953, Hooker applied to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) for a six-month grant to study the adjustment of nonclinical homosexual men and a comparable group of heterosexual men. If the study section thought it worthwhile, she would pursue it. The reply was not long in coming. John Eberhart, chief of the Grants Division, flew out to spend a day with her. The application, she was told, was quite extraordinary, especially because it was then the height of the McCarthy era. The legal penalties for homosexual behavior were severe. The psychiatric diagnosis was severe and pervasive emotional disorder. There were simply no scientific data about nonimprisoned, nonpatient homosexuals. Eberhart said, "We are prepared to give you the grant, but you may not receive it, and you won’t know why and we won’t know why." Not only did she receive it, but NIMH continued the renewal until 1961, when she received the Research Career Award.
Hooker’s research (1957) demonstrating that expert clinical judges could not distinguish the projective test protocols of nonclinical homosexual men from a comparable group of heterosexual men, nor were there differences in adjustment ratings, was validated soon thereafter by other investigators. Not until 1973, however, did the American Psychiatric Association delete homosexuality from its diagnostic handbook. Meanwhile, the gay and lesbian liberation movement in the 1960s took cognizance of these research findings. It was a source of great satisfaction for Hooker to have contributed in some measure to this new freedom and to a partial lifting of the stigma. Her life was immeasurably enriched by the research and by friendships with men and women across the entire spectrum of occupations and life styles.
Fifty years since Hooker next year. Fifty-three years since Kinsey. Over thirty since the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality as a category of mental illness. The science has been staring people in the face now for half a century. But the story of homosexual people, throughout the human experience, has been there for millennia for all our brothers and sisters to see clearly, plainly, unmistakeably. From the poets and story tellers of ancient Greece to the stories of countless gay men and women alive today, our essential humanity is there for anyone to see. But to see it, you have to want to.
And there’s the moral issue. Does the truth matter? If General Pace fails because he cannot see the people for the homosexuals, and whatever dogma or prejudice it is that’s telling him they are behaving in an immoral fashion regardless of what he can either see with his own two goddamned eyes, or learn any time he’s willing to take a stroll outside the door of his cheap conceits, then what of Clinton and Obama, and all the other cowardly democrats who would rather duck the issue then address it straight on? If the context is a question about the morality of homosexuality, and you believe that it is possible for a gay person to live decent, honorable, moral lives according to their nature, that they can have completely healthy and moral intimate relationships according to their nature, then how moral is it not to plainly say so?
Does the truth matter? You want to know why the republican machine keeps winning the "values" argument it isn’t because anyone with a spine is addressing their beliefs head-on. It’s because by equivocating they’re telling the voters they don’t think the truth matters. It’s one thing to say that we are not Gods, that we are not perfect, that we do not have the perfect God’s eye view of reality, of right and wrong. It’s another to act like you don’t care, or that it doesn’t matter.
Democrats need to stop being afraid to address moral questions. When did a political party that, at least since Roosevelt, championed the common working citizen, children, the needy, the environment, and the ideal of liberty and justice for all, suddenly loose its moral confidence? And in the face of what? A party dedicated to the ideal that greed is good? Rape the environment now because Jesus is coming later? The party of corpses floating in New Orleans? The party of lying the nation into war? The party of sexual purity for everyone but itself? Is this what they’re letting bully them into silence on the issue of the rights of gay people …?
Here’s a summary of Gingrich’s family life: 1) Gingrich marries his high school teacher, Jackie, who was seven years his senior; 2) Jackie puts Gingrich through college and she works hard to get him elected to the House in 1978 (Gingrich won partly because his campaign claimed that his Democratic opponent would neglect her family if elected — at that time it was common knowledge that Gingrich was straying); 3) Shortly after being elected, Gingrich separated from his wife — announcing the separation in the hospital room where Jackie was recovering from cancer surgery (the divorce was final in 1981); Jackie Gingrich and her children had to depend on alms from her church because Gingrich didn’t pay any child support; 3) Six months after the divorce, Gingrich, then 38, married Marianne Ginther, 30; 4) "In May 1999, however, Gingrich [55] called Marianne [48] at her mother’s home. After wishing the 84-year-old matriarch happy birthday, he told Marianne that he wanted a divorce." This was eight months after Marianne was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis; 5) In 2000, Gingrich, 57, married ex-congressional aide Callista Bisek, 34, with whom he was having a relationship while married to Marianne.
Its grotesque, watching the democrats fritter away the moral high ground to a pack of thugs who would have been gangsters had they not chosen to go into politics instead. The war and President Junior’s botching of it gives them a chance to forge a new governing majority, but they’ll loose it all again if they keep equivocating on questions of values and morality, and allow the republicans to once again define themselves as the champions of virtue and godliness. The answer to that question, "Do you believe homosexuality is immoral", should have been: "No. Adultery is immoral. Leaving your children destitute is immoral. Divorcing your wife after you found out she has multiple sclerosis is immoral. Morality isn’t a matter of what sex your partner is. It’s a matter of how you treat them. And if you can’t treat your spouse decently, if you can’t treat your own children decently, then who would you? This country can entrust itself to a government comprised entirely of homosexuals, all in faithful, loving same sex relationships, more then it dare one cheating wife abusing child neglecting heterosexual."
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