It really leaves you speechless…..

During a House Judiciary Committee meeting, Congressman Steve King (R-IA) offered up an amendment to the hate crimes bill to exclude pedophiles from being a protected category under the hate crimes legislation.

Every single Democrat voted it down.

In the same meeting, Congressman Tom Rooney (R-FL) offered an amendment to include veterans as a class protected under the hate crimes bill. Not only did the Democrats vote it down, but Cogresswoman Debbie Waasserman Schultz attacked the Republicans for even thinking veterans might need protection under hate crimes legislation. After all, who but Democrats in Congress hate veterans?

And, after all, the Dept. of Homeland Security has all but declared veterans as “right wing extremists” intent on violence. So I guess Congressional Democrats are just trying to be consistent with Gestapo Janet.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Last night, I joined our reader Leah to hear Andrew Breitbart address the Republican Jewish Coalition in Santa Monica. On the drive home, as I pondered points that each made, the title of this post came to mind.

Breitbart contended that the left’s bullying of people like Carrie Prejean is a strategy to intimidate and discredit such adversaries. Leah pointed out that even after the Democrats swept to power last fall and have taken office this past January, their supporters on the blogs (and in the comments sections to conservative blogs) and sometimes even in the corridors of Congress and halls of the White House have become even more mean-spirited, more antagonistic, more vindictive than they were when they were out of power.

They do seem to have this “need” to hate, to attack conservatives. In victory, they have shown no magnanimity. 

So, I’m wondering, is this hatred a strategy to discredit us and more easily maintain their power or a neurosis, a psychological “need” to attack others so they feel better about themselves?

As we switch to our new server, I thought I’d briefly address some Housekeeping issues.

I’m not sure if our spam filter will be capricious, but if your comment does not appear right away, e-mail me and let me know.  To find your comment, all I’ll need is the screenname under which you comment, so just provide that and make sure to spell it correctly.

As we have switched to our new server, some weird characters have been appearing in our old posts, notably an “A.”  I spent a few hours removing such characters from our old posts and this string of characters, “‘” for apostrophes and ““” for quotation marks. If you do chance on an old post where such characters make reading the posts difficult, alert me to the particular post and I’ll edit it accordingly.

Finally, since I’m doing a housekeeping post, please keep your comments civil.  This applies to our supporters as well as our critics.  You make yourself more credible when you eliminate the ad hominem and don’t insult your adversaries.  And it promotes a better exchange of our ideas.

Over the past few years when citizens across the country organized to put initiatives on their respective state’s ballot enacting a law or amending the state’s constitution to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman, I, while opposing their initiatives, appreciated their motivation.  They did not want their state Supreme Court to mandate that their state recognize same-sex marriages.

I would rather they put forward a different measure, removing marriage from the court’s jurisdiction so that their action would not bar the elected legislature from taking action.

But, with the legislatures in Maine and Vermont having acted on their own, without being mandated by the state Supreme Court, I have less appreciation for citizens who seek recourse through the initiative process.  In previous cases, citizens were taking a stand against an unelected court imposing its will on the state.  But, the issue changes when an elected legislature changes the law.  Because that’s what its job is, to make laws.  

The court’s job is to interpret and apply them.

To be sure, the Maine Constitution allows for a “citizen’s veto.  And I expect they’ll succeed in gathering the 55,000 signatures they need to get such a bill on the state ballot.  How it will fare is anyone’s guess.

This time, however, opponents of the measure can’t claim they’re fighting to preserve the will of the people. For, in Maine, the people, through their elected representatives, have spoken.

I apologize not having been able to blog on this news earlier, but the blog was down for the better part of the working day, plus I had a number of errands to run, including a dentist appointment (not as painful as past such appointments as I had remembered to floss more regularly in the past six months).

I am pleased that the appropriate branch of government in Maine handled this issue.  And once again, we see the advantage of going through the legislature; this bill specified “that religious institutions don’t have to recognize same-sex marriages.”

Dale Carpenter warns us to “get ready for the ballot fight. Opponents will move to collect the 55,000 signatures necessary to suspend the legislation until a referendum can be held.”

In this case, a referendum is a kind of silly idea.  The citizens of the Maine already have referenda on the ballot on this issue.  Indeed, such referenda have been scheduled for at least 189 years, since Maine was admitted to the union.  They’re called elections. People in the various legislative jurisdictions across the Pine Tree State can vote their representatives out of office if they don’t like the way they voted on this.

That’s the thing about going through the elected legislature.  The people can hold their elected representatives accountable.  So, my advice to those moving to collect those signatures, spare yourself the effort.  And target those who voted for gay marriage instead.  That’s how things work in a republican system of government.

Until Further notice, probably later tonight/early tomorrow, comments are disabled as we are migrating the site to a more robust system.  Any new posts or comments after this will not be transferred over.
Thanks for your patience.

Iowahawk has the exclusive.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Writing about the bullying practices of Obama Democrats, Amity Shlaes observes:

In the past, politicians and policy thinkers tended to be magnanimous in victory. They and their friends focused, post- victory, on policy and strategy — not on trashing individuals.

It ought to be especially true this time, given what wonders are befalling the Democrats. Between Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania and Al Franken in Minnesota, it looks like the Democrats are in the process of making their Senate majority filibuster-proof. Then there’s the president’s new opportunity to mold the Supreme Court, with the resignation of David Souter.

Still, somehow, the magnanimity isn’t there. Indeed, the closer the Democrats get to total power, the nastier the commentators friendly to them have become.

She isn’t the first to wonder why the Democrats have been more bitter than magnanimous in the wake of their victories last fall.  We’ve addressed this before.  Byron York asked, “In time of victory, why is the left so angry?”

Shlaes suggests Democrats are acting out of weakness:  ”The party isn’t comfortable yet at the summit of political power.”  She concludes by echoing a point familiar to readers of this blog:

Voters tend to tire the ad hominem approach. By smearing others, rather than putting forward ideas, the scribblers smear themselves instead.

As Glenn, who linked this post, might say, read the whole thing!

Over at his blog Legal Insurrection, Cornell Law Professor William A. Jacobson speculates that gay marriage will come up when President Obama’s nominee to replace Justice Souter faces his (or her) Senate confirmation hearings.  In Supreme Court confirmation hearings it has become the new abortion.  ”Unlike abortion, gay marriage has not gained wide political acceptance on a national political level (unlike “civil unions” which are gaining acceptance).”

It is an interesting post with much food for thought and good run-down of two potential nominees’ (Kathleen Sullivan and Elena Kagan) views on whether or not there is a constitutional “right” to marriage.  Jacobson contends that “Any nominee who has come out for gay marriage constitutional rights in the past, or dares to say so during the confirmation process, likely is not confirmable.”

Interesting thought that.

Not sure I agree with him there, may need to think about it for a while, but do agree with him when he writes, “There is no indication that Obama wants a fight over gay marriage, or wants his first Supreme Court nomination to turn on that issue. But he may not be able to avoid the issue, as much as he may like to do so.”  I’ll go one step further; I’m willing to bet that the President doesn’t want a fight over the issue, rather the Judiciary Committee avoid the issue altogether in the confirmation hearings.

But, Obama’s wishes notwithstanding, gay marriage will definitely come up.  Read the whole thing!

When the folks at Pajamas e-mailed me last month and asked me to write a piece on the Perez Hilton/Carrie Prejean controversy, I had little idea what the hullabaloo, so I wrote back, offering to write a piece on Perez Hilton as an example of Hollywood self-promotion.  At the time, all I knew was that the gossip blogger had gotten a lot of media attention for something he had done related to the Miss USA pageant.

Had it not been for this invitation, I might not have even touched the story as I had other issues on my long list of potential blog topics.  But, then again, the way this story keeps growing, I may at one point have looked into the matter on my own.

When I started researching the story for Pajamas piece, I found it offered me an opportunity to present to a larger audience a notion I have addressed frequently on this blog, how all too many advocates of gay marriage prefer to attack supporters of traditional marriage rather than respect their concerns and address their arguments.

And it’s not just supporters of traditional marriage some of these advocates malign.  We gay conservatives have often been the target of their wrath.

So, maybe that’s why when I delved into this story, I kind of related to Carrie Prejean, even if I find her choice of primary past-time somewhat odd.  She is fascinated with cultivating her appearance.  And while I do take care to stay in shape, I spend more time cultivating my mind.  All the same, I have experienced the same sort of attacks she has–albeit on a much, much, much smaller scale–and from some of the same kinds of people.  We have been vilified for expressing our views.

All too many on the left, alas, particularly the gay left, resort to vilification as a means of addressing their ideological adversaries.  And this phenomenon, particularly widespread, all but goes unnoticed outside conservative circles. (more…)

Back during the fall campaign, I was impressed with Joe the Plumber for better criticizing then-candidate Barack Obama’s tax plan than did the Republican Presidential nominee.  He explained in simple terms how higher taxes on the “wealthy” discouraged others from working hard as they aspired one day to be so rich.

But, just because you can understand the perils of high taxation doesn’t equip you to discuss all issues.  In a strange response to a question by a reporter from Christianity Today on same-sex marriage, the erstwhile campaign celebrity rambled from favoring a state-by-state approach to same-sex marriage to calling gay marriage wrong, or was he calling homosexuality wrong or was he calling expression of one’s sexuality wrong?

[QUESTION]:  In the last month, same-sex marriage has become legal in Iowa and Vermont. What do you think about same-sex marriage at a state level?

[JOE] At a state level, it’s up to them. I don’t want it to be a federal thing. I personally still think it’s wrong. People don’t understand the dictionary’s called queer. Queer means strange and unusual. It’s not like a slur, like you would call a white person a honky or something like that. You know, God is pretty explicit in what we’re supposed to do–what man and woman are for. Now, at the same time, we’re supposed to love everybody and accept people, and preach against the sins. I’ve had some friends that are actually homosexual. And, I mean, they know where I stand, and they know that I wouldn’t have them anywhere near my children. But at the same time, they’re people, and they’re going to do their thing.

I mean, it’s just not clear what he believes to be wrong, just that it’s something involving homosexuality.  And that he doesn’t want those homosexuals near his kids (without explaining what harm they could do).  Let me know if you can decipher it.  Maybe he was just trying to say something original and regain the favor he once had on the right.

I don’t think it’ll work.

Seems like someone is trying to prolong his fifteen minutes.

UPDATE (JohnAGJ):  Yes, he did.

The more I think about the Vermont legislature’s vote to recognize same-sex marriages in the Green Mountain State, the better the result seems.  More than anything, their legislation answers the most serious concern raised by social conservatives: that state recognition of gay marriage would mean churches would be required to perform such ceremonies or lose their tax-exempt status.

Throughout the fall campaign on Proposition 8, opponents of the measure charged that those pushing its passage were lying when they suggested “that churches will lose their tax-exempt status for preaching against same-sex marriages. . . . This greatest lie of all is also potentially the most damaging to the No campaign, because it instills fear that our secular marriage laws if allowed to stand will intrude on church practices.”

I don’t dismiss the social conservatives’ fears as readily as does the blogger I quote above.  What he sees as a “lie,” I see as a legitimate fear, particularly given the way courts have limited the free expression of religion over the years.

And the best way to answer the fear is with affirmative legislation spelling out the rights of religious institutions to define marriage according to their particular creed, as Vermont did.  Some may say such provisions aren’t necessary.  And maybe they’re not, but people do fear judicial tyranny, especially when a state Supreme Court acts in direct contradiction to the will of the people.

(That said, maybe even an explicit law won’t be enough to prevent capricious judges from imposing their will on the people as David Benkof contends here.)

Still, the religious liberty provisions serve to answer a charge against state recognition of same-sex marriage leveled by social conservatives.  They help deflate that argument while protecting religious freedom.

*tapping microphone*

Your attention please.  We are switching servers and you may see some disruption over the next 24-48 hours.

Management apologies for any inconvenience.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Today, Glenn links a post by my law school Civil Rights Professor endorsing my favorite left-wing law professor to replace Justice Souter on the Supreme Court.

I have to agree with Glenn that, “We could do worse, and probably will.”

There would be few things more entertaining than to watch Pam Karlan go head-to-head with Justice Scalia on points of law.  I have met few lawyers with a mind as sharp as her and an appreciation for her adversaries’ opinions. She could offer the court’s most articulate conservative a run for his money.

After taking her Voting Rights’ class my First Year, it didn’t surprise me to learn how many conservative law students swarmed to her classes.

One of my peers, a member of Law Review and the Federalist Society, boasted that he had taken every course Karlan taught while he was at U-VA.  I recall in our Criminal Procedure class when she took fifteen minutes to debate a conservative student who took issue with her interpretation of a particular case.  She didn’t berate him.  She let him talk, then responded to his points rationally and respectfully.  He thanked her for her consideration.

When I directed the Federalist Society’s Annual Symposium held at U-VA in 1994, one of our liberal speakers had to cancel at the last minute.  The only solution we could come up with to keep the ideological balance on that panel was to ask Karlan to step in–meaning she’d be on two panels at the national conference of a conservative/libertarian law group.

She agreed. (more…)

Left-wing bloggers are still at it, still demonizing Carrie Prejean.  What do they feel compelled to attack this woman, sometimes in the most vicious terms?  They and their ilk seem to be constantly on the warpath. They just seem to “need” to pick some politically incorrect individual to vilify.

(Yes, I realize that some conservatives are not immune from this “need.”  A good number on the right are always ready to ridicule, but this phenomenon is not nearly as widespread on our side of the aisle, not even close.)

It didn’t begin with George W. Bush.  They were at it long before that good man had even considered following in his father’s footsteps and seeking a career in politics.  When I was at the Reagan Ranch and Library last week revisiting that great man’s record, I recalled how so many left-wing pundits and my liberal collegiate peers reviled the man.  (I saw an ad in the Village Voice for the Regan Countdown Calendar.)  Had there been a “netroots” then, they would have gone after him with the same zeal they pursued his Vice President’s son.

And let’s not forget the LBJ/Moyers/Mainstream Media smear of Barry Goldwater.

Were it not for the left-wing smears of Carrie Prejean, I would pay little heed to her.  Indeed, most of my conservative and libertarian blogging smears would similarly have ignored her.  Nearly ever post related to her (on the conservatives blogs I read) addresses not what she said, but how the left has treated her.

So, let me repeat my advice to those on the left eager to insult Carrie Prejean:  ignore her.  And then, take the time and energy you might otherwise have used to vilify that beauty queen to wonder why it is you so “need” to hate.

RELATED: Why Demonize Supporters of Traditional Marriage?

. . . he’d be on the inside track to take a new job cleaning up a big mess come January 20, 2013.

As I read this article, it struck me yet again how the former two-term Governor of Florida has everything going for him but his last name.  Michael Barone calls him “the Outstanding Governor of This Decade.”

Peter Robinson finds that the former President’s kid brother (and supposed favorite of their dad) had, in his two terms as Governor,

. . . cut taxes, enacted the most extensive public school reform in any state, restructured health care and, after dealing with some three dozen hurricanes and tropical storms, earned high marks for crisis management. In a state in which Democrats outnumber Republicans, Bush held an approval rating of an astonishing 63%.

In matters of style and substance, Jeb differs significantly from his older brother.  But, their last name will forever link him to a man who left the White House with an approval rating half his when he left the Sunshine State’s Governor’s Mansion.

If he can find a way to distinguish himself from his brother in the eyes of the American people, then he should be able to find a way to pull us out of the debts racked up under that brother’s watch and accelerated under his successor.

Actually, from my experience it’s the other way ’round.

I just watched the Harvey Girls where the woman I first knew as a lovable witch played Judy Garland‘s vampish rival for John Hodiak‘s affection.  Probably because I had first seen her in Bedknobs and Broomsticks where I was a very young’un, she always had that aunt-like (avauntular?) quality, you know like your mother’s eccentric older sister who would take you on crazy adventures and showed you a kind of quasi-maternal devotion that made you feel like you were part of something.

That image was reinforced when I would occasionally catch an episode of Murder, She Wrote where she played the very lovable Jessica Fletcher.

Then, I became a movie buff and started discovering her pre-Bedknobs work.  First, it was The Manchurian Candidate where she played the devouring mother, quite the opposite of Jessica Fletcher and the beloved Miss Price.  Then, she was the lower class hussy eager to advance her career by helping out a conniving older man extract money from an innocent fellow female in Gaslight and Kind Lady.

In State of the Union, she was the manipulative other woman eager to advance her lover’s career, even if it meant compromising his ideals and further alienating him from his wife.  And then, last night, she resumed the vampish role in The Harvey Girls.

Interesting how someone who could get a start with such roles would later find her niche in more maternal roles, becoming best known for playning the beloved author of murder mysteries.

As I said last week — Democrats, you can have this old coot.  He’s not only an arrogant and selfish SOB, it sounds like he’s crazy now (or more crazy than usual).

“Well, I was sorry to disappoint many people. Frankly, I was disappointed that the Republican Party didn’t want me as their candidate,” Mr. Specter said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “But as a matter of principle, I’m becoming much more comfortable with the Democrats’ approach. And one of the items that I’m working on, Bob, is funding for medical research.”

Mr. Specter continued: “If we had pursued what President Nixon declared in 1970 as the war on cancer, we would have cured many strains. I think Jack Kemp would be alive today. And that research has saved or prolonged many lives, including mine.”

So just to be clear, if we all went back in time (say, in a DeLorean) and pursued the Democrat healthcare agenda (which Specter thinks is like Nixon’s) — then Jack Kemp wouldn’t have died.

I’m not even sure what there is to say about this ranting.  Except:  I’ll be surprised if he is still the Senator from Pennsylvania after November 2010.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

As an opponent of “Hate Crimes” legislation, I often cringe when I read how some who share this view attempt justify their opposition.  Like the hysterical comments of gay marriage supporters, their arguments make it more difficult to convince others of the merits of their position.

I mean, c’mon assuming that legislation designed to enhance penalties for violent acts based upon the class of the victim being used to punish a socially conservative pastor who offers his interpretation of Scripture without assaulting anyone?  Seems a wee bit paranoid.

On Friday, conservative blogger Ed Morrissey took Republican Congresswoman Virginia Foxx to task for calling it a “hoax” to name the Hate Crimes bill in the House for Matthew Shephard.  He found her contention “absurd on two levels,” the second being:

. . . that even if one accepted that this particular case involved no animus against gays, undeniably people commit crimes based on that animus as well as a range of others.  The animus exists, and can be seen in a variety of criminal and non-criminal acts.  The question, which Foxx eclipsed with this sorry performance, is whether we want to start criminalizing thoughts as well as actions.

While understanding that anti-gay animus does exist and oftentimes leads to criminal acts, Morrissey believes Hate Crimes law do not pass constitutional muster.  He quotes Jazz Shaw who writes that when you attach “greater guilt to certain parties for committing the same crimes, based on nothing more than what they were thinking at the time and the ‘class’of citizens who were the victims, then you are providing unequal protection of the laws.”

I agree with Ed who finds this incompatible with the Fourteenth Amendment:  ”Creating classes of victims means creating classes of citizenry.”

Just because Congresswoman Foxx made a bone-headed comment (for which she should apologize*) doesn’t mean that she was wrong to oppose this legislation.  We need acknowledge that some people do target minorities for violence on account of their difference.  And we need make sure that those who do so are punished accordingly.  Just as we punish those who commit violent acts for another reasons.

Let’s make sure to punish the perpretators for the degree of violence of the crime, but not their thought process.

*UPDATE: Since writing this, I learned that she has (apologized).

At the GayPatriot dinner last week with Thatcher Honoree Dr. Nigel Ashford, we discussed the challenges college students face in coming out.  No, not about their sexuality.  While that’s still not a walk in the park, those who do come out meet with a supportive University administration and campus environment.

What is tougher is coming out conservative.  On colleges, they face a critical University administration and liberal campus environment where young liberals are taught (acculturated?) to deride those holding views at odds with the prevailing orthodoxy.  Those who do come out very often do not have a social network to help ease the transition, so many remain closeted about their political views.

With President Obama and the Democrats working to limit the choices of the younger generation while burdening them with more debt that have all previous Administrations and Congresses combined, many more might move in the conservative direction.  Until then, it’s up to those brave few souls to speak out and so lay the groundwork for renaissance of libertarian ideas on college campuses*.

It’s not just in colleges where conservatives feel isolated today.  As our group noticed when we gathered last week, it felt great to be able to talk openly about our political views, without having to defend them from the attacks, accusations and insults to which we have been accustomed.  Much as it must feel for a gay man or woman in rural America to find others like him or her at the bar in the nearest mid-sized town.

So, it seems, as Dr. Ashford put it, conservatives today often feel as isolated and alone in big liberal cities as gays used to feel in small towns and villages.

RELATED: In Hollywood, Republican is the New Gay?

* (more…)