And if that wasn’t enough, there are several issues where Bush comes up anti-gay and Kerry comes on the side of gay rights. I don’t think I need to repeat the list. I don’t know how any more crystal clear it could be that Kerry is much better on gay rights than Bush is. If your disagreement is based on that you believe if a person is anti-gay on one position, then they are just as bad as someone who is anti-gay on all positions, and believe that Kerry is just as anti-gay as Bush, Dobson, LaBarbera, or Phelps, then I’ll have to accept your belief, and we’ll just leave it at that. And persons that don’t hold that position as you do as irrational, then we’ll have to disagree on that.

Getting back to the issue where Kerry and Bush had the “same position,” and gay leftists calling Kerry “pro-gay” and “gay supportive.” I don’t think these were based on just one issue, but rather on the myriad of gay issues in which there is a clear distinction between Kerry’s and Bush’s views and record. If you are troubled with the terms because of your seemingly all or nothing approach, then fine. In fact, even though I usually don’t give a damn about semantics, I would have used phrases like “more supportive” or “less anti-gay” because I disagreed with Kerry’s view on same-sex marriage. However, I learned from this blog and elsewhere that many gay persons themselves do not support same-sex marriage. So to those people, “pro-gay” sounds like a rational and correct term to describe Kerry. You yourself don’t support same-sex marriage. You have a rational alternative, and I respect it, even though I still believe that gay persons should have the right to marriage.

As I mentioned above, the conservative voter debate parallels this discussion somewhat. On the one hand, some say it’s better to not bother voting for the Republican candidate because they have veered too far away from conservative ideals, and others say it’s better to hold your nose and vote for the Republican candidate. I wouldn’t characterize either position as irrational, since both want they think is best in the long run. And even those on the not voting side would feel comfortable voting for a candidate who at least shared almost all of the conservative ideals. But by your logic, if this candidate had the “same position” as a liberal candidate that wasn’t a conservative position, then saying that the conservative candidate over the liberal candidate is irrational, let alone if they referred to the candidate as “pro-conservative.”

As for irrational hatred of Bush, there isn’t exactly a lovefest for Kerry, Pelosi and other liberals on this board from conservative posters. I suppose most think it’s justified, while the so called Bush haters think they are justified in their opinion of Bush.

Now if Kerry supported the FMA, DADT, DOMA, hate crime laws without protection for gay persons, anti-sodomly laws, and didn’t support ENDA, and didn’t know whether homosexuality was a choice, etc., and gay leftists still called Kerry “pro-gay” and “gay supportive,” then I would agree with you that that would be irrational.

“Irrational hatred”, Pat, by definition, is based on things other than the actions of the people involved.

This can be seen by the fact that gay leftists consider Bush the devil incarnate, while they considered John Kerry, who himself proudly boasted that he had the “same position” as Bush, to be “pro-gay” and “gay-supportive”.

Now, what would make you think these people would lose their hatred, when they aren’t even rational enough to view two people with the same position in the same manner?

33/NDT, your comment shows that you currently have everything you and your partner need to protect yourselves. Please be advised that every gay and lesbian couples situation is different, we all live in different states that treat us very differently, and there may be many other things that marriage would provide that contractual agreements cannot. Conservatives do well in fighting on behalf of LGBT persons individually and in different parts of the country, not in all of them. Kudos to Republicans pushing the Pension Protection Act of 2006; now, if the ones from my state (along with quite a few Democrats) would only stop working to strip gays’ and lesbians’ rights to adopt…

I think we should all realize that not all Republicans are gay-hating, and not all Democrats are gay-loving. Just handle each person who has a certain political affiliation on an individual basis.

Regards,
Peter H.

NDT, I also agree with the similarities of the religious right and gay left. Both have plenty of individuals who have irrational hatred of gay conservatives. The difference, IMO, is if both parties decided tomorrow to be fully supportive of gay equality, most of the irrational hatred from the gay left will go away. The religious right will continue to do one or more of the following. Hate gay persons; continue the “hate the sin love the sinner” garbage; insist on reparative therapy for gay persons; spread the lie that reparative therapy actually works; hope that gay persons do not flaunt their equality the same way that they and other heterosexuals do.

And I agree that both the religious right and gay left clearly see that the Republican Party is more anti-gay than the Democratic Party. As you suggested, that is why they voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004, and didn’t want someone far worse, in their view. Same reason that the gay left voted for Democrats.

I have a job with an employer who has a strict nondiscrimination policy and who provides domestic partner benefits — which I don’t use, because it makes more sense financially for my partner to buy separate coverage.

We have a house in a nice neighborhood with a wide gamut of neighbors, politically, professionally, and religiously, and get along well with all of them.

We have healthcare and financial powers of attorney that allow us to make decisions for each other.

Thanks to the Republican-pushed Pension Protection Act of 2006 — which, I might add, numerous Democrats opposed — we are now able to will each other our retirement assets without taking an enormous tax hit.

Social Security survivor’s benefits are meaningless to us because you must choose between taking them OR your own benefits — not both — and both of our individual benefits are larger than the potential survivor benefit paid for the other.

Getting married would be the largest, bar none, tax mistake we could make.

What I do want is for someone to strengthen our military, secure our borders, fight terrorism abroad BEFORE terrorists hit us, support the businesses that drive the United States’s economy, make it clear to those who choose not to work or get an education that the resulting problems are their own, maintain a tax system that works on sound economic principles versus class warfare, and stop wasting government money on frivolous and stupid projects.

That’s because I’m a responsible, concerned citizen — who happens to be gay.

The Democrats have nothing to offer me except pandering to my minority status.

Oh, there’s a ringing endorsement of the Republican Party. They are evil compared to the Democrats who are EVIL.

What, exactly, has the Republican Party done for gays and gay rights, other than ignore gay issues?

What has Mary Cheney actually done to advance gay rights within the Republican party other than merely existing?

It’s not like people are flocking to the Republican party because they believe in equal marriage and equal rights for gays.

If the Republican party doesn’t acknowlege there is real inequity and discrimination against gays face in life, law and health, nothing will get done.

I really cannot comprehend why there isn’t any call for the Republican Party to actually DO something. You all bitch about Democrats when it’s the Republican Party that won’t do squat for you.

And yet, despite having been bombarded with publicity about how Mary Cheney was a lesbian, and her father loved her, and the President supported her being there, and how they actually cared about what she thought….this “base” still voted overwhelmingly for Bush and Cheney.

Realize, Pat, that gay conservatives and Republicans are well-acquainted with being hated by irrational people; after all, both other gays AND extreme homophobes would love to see us dead and at the minimum wish we didn’t exist. As a consequence, we’ve figured out one of the most uniquely-empowering things; people are going to hate you regardless of what you do, so you might as well do what makes sense to you and let them figure out how to deal with it.

Thus, Mary just went forward and did her job. She didn’t bother trying to appease the gay left, since she knew it was pointless, and she made it clear that, for the homophobic right, they could either suck it up and vote for Bush and Cheney, or they could let someone far worse be elected.

Yes, I think the Democrats were hoping that the religious right would abandon the Republican Party in droves, but I don’t think they thought it was realistic. Besides, the Republicans played it politically smart, and “swept it under the rug.”

NDT, we are clearly looking at this differently. I do understand your argument, and as I said, you made good points. And I do understand that as you see it, the issue wasn’t “swept under the rug.” But that’s the way I see it. And yes, the Democrats suck too with this issue.

Regarding your initial scenario, yes, I agree that there would be hissy fits galore. I would be interested to see how the candidate would answer it. I hope it would be something like, “Yes, my (relative) is gay and the motivation of this is distasteful. It shouldn’t make a difference of a person’s sexual orientation is, but there are groups and individuals like FoF, Peter LaBarbera, Robert Byrd and many others who have no problem with expressing their homophobia, publicly saying that homosexuality is a sin, that gay couples shouldn’t have children, and basically shouldn’t have the dreams and desires afforded to other American citizens. Hopefully, the day will come will neither party will resort to these tactics, because they won’t help that party politically. Unfortunately, as long as there are individuals and groups like the ones I mentioned, these things will happen.” Lynne Cheney scolded Kerry and Edwards, Dick Cheney mumbled something about “Equality means equality for everybody” or something, but no mention about the people who are against equality for Mary Cheney and others.

So?

Really, Pat, what do you think “gay rights” groups would do if a Republican candidate constantly tried to bring up the sexual orientation of a Democrat candidate’s family members or one of their campaign workers as an issue?

I can tell you — they throw a full-bore screaming hissy fit about how that’s irrelevant to the campaign, it’s just dirty tactics, it’s smear and hateful, yada yada yada.

Yes, Mary Cheney went on these campaign stops, and I’m sure her partner went with her on many of these as well. The religious right may not have even had a problem with them on the campaign trail, as long as she didn’t mention that she was a lesbian, or more importantly, talk about gay rights in the Republican Party.

You know, Pat, I have a question; if a black person, working for a Republican campaign, didn’t mention their race at every stop, would you accuse them of “sweeping it under the rug”?

And before you try to argue that there’s a difference between something obvious like skin color versus sexual orientation, realize that the Democrats, through their paid lackeys like John Aravosis, spent hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, reminding the world that Mary Cheney was a lesbian. They announced it at every opportunity, they set up websites and publicity campaigns (DearMary.com, to name one), they regularly fired off press releases announcing the fact, and they sent email to Republicans telling them that - horrors! - the Vice President’s daughter and one of his campaign staffers was a lesbian.

What I don’t think gays understand about the Republican Party, Pat, is that it doesn’t give bonus points just because you’re a minority member; indeed, if you demonstrate that all you have going for you is that you’re a minority member, you don’t stay around very long. In order to stay around Republicans, you have to demonstrate your expertise in something other than your skin color, your national origin, or your sexual orientation.

Thus, Mary Cheney wasn’t added to the campaign because they needed a lesbian to speak on lesbian issues — as would be the case with Democrat campaigns. She was added because she’s a talented and devoted individual who was very capable of doing the job.

What the Democrats like Kerry and Edwards tried to do was, based on their fantasy understanding of what the Republican “base” was like, to uncloset her. They believed that Republicans were so antigay that they would desert the Bush-Cheney campaign in droves if they knew that a lesbian was working for them; therefore, their strategy was to blanket the airwaves and media with reminders.

I have made the claim that the Democrats are generally better than the Republicans on gay rights. To get the obvious stuff out of the way, yes, there are certainly exceptions for individual persons. And Republicans, even the more conservative ones do support some gay rights. That’s not my point here.

Take, say ten issues that involve gay rights. To this day, most Democrats would not be pro-gay on all those issues. But Democrats have been consistent in favor, in general, of more of these issues than Republicans. And on any given issue, almost every time there is a vote, there is a higher percentage of Democrats that support the pro-gay position than the Republicans. And many times the difference is extreme. As an example, you need go no further than the FMA votes.

I have also said that, up until the past two years, Democrats generally have advanced gay rights. Yes, one can point to Clinton and say that he signed DADT and DOMA. And yes, I was disappointed with both. But Clinton openly campaigned that gays should be able to serve openly in the military. Of course, he was rebuffed by Congress (although, once again, a higher percentage of Republicans held the anti-gay position), so he gave in. But the result allowed gay persons to serve in the military, whereas before, you couldn’t legally serve in the military if you were gay. Up until DOMA, it was simply understood that gays could not marry. Although I was extremely disappointed that Clinton signed it, it didn’t change the fact the gays still couldn’t get married, and the law can be repealed with a simple majority vote. On the other hand, Clinton was not shy about appointing openly gay persons to government positions (a tradition thankfully continued by Bush), and has supported ENDA. True, as GP pointed out, it wasn’t passed by Congress, but once again, I’m willing to bet that a higher percentage of Democrats were for it.

Despite John Kerry’s character flaws, he has been more supportive of gay rights than Clinton. He voted against DADT and DOMA. He openly supported civil unions during the campaign. As for Bush, he still supports DADT and has gone beyond DOMA and twice pushed for FMA. While governor, Bush couldn’t even support repealing the anti-sodomy laws and opposed adding sexual orientation to hate crime laws. And even during the last campaign, during the debates when discussing gay rights, his statements in my view, were ignorant or condescending. So Kerry’s views were more supportive of gay rights than Clinton, while Bush’s views are clearly more anti-gay than Clinton.

I have seen the trend reverse for Democrats these past two years. I think the Democrats saw that a very weak (in my view) incumbent was able to get reelected, and decided that they needed to move to the right a little bit, including gay rights. Unfortunately, Republicans themselves seem to be doing this, as John McCain and Mitt Romney have become more anti-gay. The verdict is still out on Rudy Giuliani to see what shifts, if any, he’ll make.

For these reasons, we have seen about 3/4 of gay persons supportive of Democrats over Republicans. And even though many have blinders on when it comes to the party they support, I don’t think this attitude and behavior is limited to the gay left.

But for now, we are still in a situation where if the President and ALL of Congress were Democrats, gay rights would be advanced, and if the President and Congress were all Republicans, gay rights would be set back at least a few decades.

In terms of supporting and giving money, I take a middle of the road view here than most. Some say that money and support should be given to Democrats without question. Some say that if they have one anti-gay position, even if it is better than prior candidates and the current opponent, you shouldn’t give one cent of money. I think both approaches are impractical.

In my view, gay organizations should have supported Kerry over Bush, based on gay rights issues, which they did. However, when they forked over the money, they should have made it clear that the support is conditional, and based on their opinion that Kerry had a much stronger stand on gay rights, but also that they disagreed with his stance on gay marriage. Now that the Democrats are regressing on gay issues, many on the gay left are taking the blinders off.

So what may be happening now is the type of debate that Michigan-Matt, V the K, and others had regarding their views that Bush and many other Republicans had moved away from the core Reagan conservative values. Should conservative voters dismayed with the direction just not support Republicans and/or vote for them in protest, in hope that in the future, Republicans will move back, or hold your nose and vote for the current crop because they are still much better on these issues than the Democrats.

Michigan-Matt, your question regarding Phelps, Dobson, et al is not unfair. But Dobson is part of the Republican base. Phelps is not part of the Democratic base.

But what has happened after it was pointed out by Kerry and Edwards that Mary Cheney was a lesbian, was first indignation by the Cheneys and Republicans over mentioning it. And then the issue of the Republicans and gay rights on the campaign, and these campaign stops, to my knowledge has been kept quiet. Yes, Mary Cheney went on these campaign stops, and I’m sure her partner went with her on many of these as well. The religious right may not have even had a problem with them on the campaign trail, as long as she didn’t mention that she was a lesbian, or more importantly, talk about gay rights in the Republican Party. If I am mistaken, and Mary Cheney or other Republicans said things like, “We are the party of family values of ALL families and we support the rights of same sex couples to adopt children, to have their relationships legally recognized, to have anti-discrimation employment laws,” etc. As far as I know, this hasn’t happened. If that’s the case, then it qualifies as being “swept under the rug” in my book. One could easily make the argument that the Democrats are guilty of it as well. And I wouldn’t mind if Republicans try to put the Democrats feet to the fire on gay rights, and make them feel uncomfortable about it.

What really scares the Democrats here and on other blogs is that GOPers aren’t the evil monsters the GayLeftBorg has portrayed them to be to their base… and if THAT isn’t true, do we really need a GayLeftBorg spinning in space and holding the buckets for the Democrats? And why is it unfair to claim that all Democrats are like Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist folk if they can claim all GOPers are like/listen to/beholden to/worship at the altar of Dobson?

No wonder guys like keogh, GodOfBiscuits, sean, JustAQuestion and others nearly implode when asked if the Democrats are any better.

It’s no wonder. The very existence of the Borg is in jeopardy.

Of course, keogh — blame the imaginary “base” for why you and your fellow puppet Democrats support homophobes.

And given who’s pandering to them, whose base are they, anyway?

And now for Pat:

And also, I am not saying that she had to talk about gay rights either. But as long as she could campaign, and people in the base could forget that she was gay, and not have the issue come up during the campaign, I would say that this qualifies as the issue being swept under the rug.

Yes, because god forbid that Mary Cheney be seen as anything other than a lesbian, or talk about anything other than gay rights.

You know, Pat, I think my boss and I today didn’t talk about the fact that I’m gay. Maybe I’d better send her an email or call her at home and remind her of it, lest I be accused of “sweeping my sexual orientation under the rug”.

How many times does Mary Cheney have to mention she’s a lesbian per appearance? To how many people does she have to say it? Really, we want to understand; how often do people have to be reminded that you’re a lesbian, because obviously, it would be so awful if that weren’t the only thing on which they were concentrating.

Given that the Kerry campaign deliberately set out to highlight Mary’s sexual orientation, not once, but twice, not to mention the attacks by their paid leftist cadres like John Aravosis, I find it hard to believe that people didn’t know Mary was a lesbian. And that was their whole point — to play to their fantasy of the “Republican base”, as keogh so effectively screeched above, and thus roll to victory.

But what scares the hell out of Democrats, and you, is that Republicans supported her and Dick Cheney anyway.

That is completely contrary to leftist and Democrat ideology. It is completely contrary to the rhetoric that our so-called “gay leadership” has been feeding us for years, in which giving money to Democrats, regardless of how homophobic they are, is the only way to keep Republicans from marching us off at gunpoint to the gas chambers. It shows that we don’t have to be slaves to the Democrat Party, that Republicans can look past our sexual orientation and judge us for who we are.

And that is why leftists and Democrats loathe her.

Foley scandal, anybody? (Pelosi spreading the gay=pedophile meme; throwing gays under the bus)

Mary Cheney, anybody? (Kerry quite clumsily trying to use her as a wedge)

Clinton, in the 2004 campaign, advised Kerry to go much farther. He advised Kerry to endorse the anti-gay-marriage State amendments. Eleven of which passed by such LARGE margins that clearly, a LOT of Democrats voted for them.

The anti-gay ploys don’t always work out for the Democrats. The Mary Cheney ploy didn’t save Kerry. The Foley ploy did save their 2006. I can see why the Democrats would keep trying it.

So Mary Cheney went to 78 campaign stops. I wonder how many times she spoke for gay rights during those times. Especially in areas where the Christian right are prominent. If she and most of the other Republicans spoke about gay rights, then I take it back. NDT and others, please note that I am also not arguing that Democrats openly spoke about gay rights during the campaign either. And also, I am not saying that she had to talk about gay rights either. But as long as she could campaign, and people in the base could forget that she was gay, and not have the issue come up during the campaign, I would say that this qualifies as the issue being swept under the rug. We may disagree, and you may still think I’m on a different planet. Whatever.

NDT, sorry, I just wanted to quickly respond to Matt’s post, and I have to scoot again. I’ll try to address your point later.

Which is why it is encouraging news that the Republican party might endorse Rudy a pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-open borders, pro-gay candidate.
It looks like the repubs are hoping to reform their party into something more palpable to mainstream America.