No sooner do I post on yesterday’s march, thinking I’ve all but exhausted the topic that when reading two of my major sources for news and blog ideas, I chance upon the White House’s (apparently) strange reaction to the rally.

Quoting CNBC’s Chief Washington Correspondent John Harwood, left-of-center blogger John Aravosis concludes that the White House has dismissed the protesters as a left-wing “fringe”:

NBC just did a piece about today’s gay rights march in Washington. For the political context of the gay community’s ire, NBC went to Chief Washington Correspondent John Harwood. Harwood was asked if the White House was worried about “the left as a whole,” and concerns they have that the White House isn’t doing things that “the left” expected them to do. Harwood said the following:

Barack Obama is doing well with 90% or more of Democrats so the White House views this opposition as really part of the Internet left fringe.

Now, to be fair to the Administration, we don’t know what the White House officials (with whom Harwood spoke) actually.  That correspondent was making a general observation and not quoting anyone in particular.  Actual Obama spokespeople may not have so dismissed the rally, so I would caution* Aravosis against getting too worked about about this journalist’s observation.

That said, Aravsosis is onto something.   The Administration seem to think they can “buy off” gay people by playing nice with the heads of various gay organizations (and prominent community activists), inviting them to the White House for cocktails, speaking to HRC’s dinner.  They are aware of how gay leaders fawned all over Bill Clinton in the 1990s while that Democrat said all the right things, but, (almost) never did anything which he feared could hurt him politically, even when it meant breaking the promises he made to gay people on the campaign trail.

Seeing how many gay Democrats were lickspittles, more eager to support a Democrat than stand up for their issues, Obama’s team surely assumed playing nice would be enough.  But, they didn’t take into account the bloggers.  In 1993, when Clinton backpedalled on his promise to repeal the ban on gays in the military and in 1996, when he signed DOMA*, there was no blogosphere, that is, there were fewer means for gay people at odds with our (supposedly) “official” representatives to make themselves heard. (more…)

Seems I’m doing pretty well on my predictions this weekend.  First, I predicted that the President would get a standing ovation when he addressed the Human Rights Campaign dinner last night.  And he did.  Then, I predicted that no matter how large the crowd, the MSM would offer better coverage of yesterday’s “National Equality March” for gay rights than they did for last month’s Taxpayer March on Washington.  And it seem they did.

Yahoo! had a link to pictures from the rally all afternoon (Pacific Standard Time); it remains up there as I sit down to write this post at 11:36 PM PST (and when it went up at 12:12).  Please note I don’t object to this headline.  Indeed, I find it entirely appropriate. It is news when a large number of people from across the country gather in our nation’s capital to demonstrate.  And a large number did assemble yesterday in front of the Capitol steps.

But, a far larger number gathered last month.  And yet yesterday’s smaller rally garnered more coverage on Yahoo! than did the Taxpayer March with a considerably smaller turnout.  The highest figure I’ve heard for yesterday’s rally was 100,000, with the consensus coming in at ’Tens of thousands“.  So, we’re talking about a rally no bigger than a quarter the size of the earlier march.  People seem to turn out more readily to march for freedom than they do for equality.

Still, Yahoo! provided 31 pictures, including the ones below, not from the current rally, but from the “April 25, 1993 . . .  National March on Washington for Gay and Lesbian Rights” where 300,000 showed up.

And note the sign above.  These guys have noticed the same thing we have noted—as have a number of gay lefties.

Interestingly, albeit likely for different reasons, Barney Frank and I agree on one thing about the rally.  According to the New York Times, the unhappy Massachusetts Democrat  ”called the march ‘emotional satisfaction’ for its organizers and said of their intention to pressure the Obama administration, ‘The only thing they’re going to put pressure on is the grass.’”  The Washington Post quoted him as calling the march “useless.”

I’m not so sure it was entirely useless.  While the organizers may have had diffuse goals, they acted independently of the leading gay organizations.  The Times reported that HRC  had “virtually no involvement in Sunday’s event.”  And through this grassroots effort, they brought “tens of thousands” to Washington. No small achievement that.  Given the tone of the organizers’ communications, I hope they will build on their efforts.  And wish them well in their future endeavors.  It would be nice to have an alternative, even on the left, to HRC and the other establishment left-wing gay organizations. (more…)

I have blogged only once on today’s National Equality March in the nation’s capital.  And I might not have done even that had Bruce not encouraged me to participate in a conference call with the organizers.  While impressed with their tone, I was uncertain about their strategy for achieving their seemingly diffuse array of goals.  Still, I appreciate the grassroots nature of their endeavor.  They do not come from the mainstream gay organizations, thus not bringing with them their partisan baggage and petty animosities.

Still, while they invited both Bruce and me to participate in their conference calls and sent (each of) us regular e-mails, they don’t seem to have done much more to include gay conservative in this event.  For example, while there are five people on the speakers’ roster identifying themselves as transgender, there are none identifying as Republicans (though I had seen Michael Huffington’s name on a list released on September 30).

That said, while I did I note the absence of Republicans, I also noted the absence of such supposed leading lights of the gay community as HRC President Joe Solmonese and “Equality California’s” Geoff Kors.  Nice to see a move away from the “establishment” gay leadership.  Perhaps, with the new tone adopted by the march leaders, we might even, should this march prove to be a galvanizing event empowering its leaders, a new crop of leaders who understand they could benefit the community by reaching out to and working with gay Republicans.

All that said, let me make one prediction (hey, I’ve got a pretty good record on predictions so far this weekend).  No matter how large the crowd today, the event will get better press than did the September 12 Taxpayer March on Washington for smaller government.  The media is much more comfortable with the leftish mantra of equality than the conservative/libertarian ideal of liberty. (more…)

Well, just as I predicted, last night when he the addressed the annual dinner of the Human Rights Campaign, the all but de facto gay auxiliary of the Democratic National Committee, the President got his “standing ovation“.*  The “cheering crowd” gave the Democrat a warm welcome even as he acknowledged “some policy changes he promised on the campaign trail are not coming as quickly as they expected.“

Christine Simmons of the Associated Press summed up the evening:

He expressed strong support for the Human Rights Campaign agenda — ending discrimination against gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people — but stopped short of laying out a detailed plan for how to get there.

Promises, promises, but not a plan.  That’s not enough for many gay activists, but it will win over the Washington-based leadership of HRC and other gay groups, ever eager to sing the praises of a politician with a (D) after his name who says the right things to their audiences.  Of course, to those activists, with highfalutin language and that (D), it really doesn’t matter what he does.

Once again, it was typical Obama, lofty words with little to show for them.  But, this time, even the New York Times noticed that some gay activists aren’t buying the swill the Democrat is trying to sell them:

Bil Browning, a blogger for Bilerico Project, a Web site aimed at a gay audience, said moments after the speech ended that the site was flooded with critical comments by people who said they had heard nothing new. “I could have watched one of his old campaign speeches and heard the same thing,” one wrote.

Even inside the room, reaction was mixed. Terry Penrod, a real estate agent from Columbus, Ohio, said some gay rights advocates were being impatient with the president, while Raj Malthotra, 29, a management consultant from Washington, said he thought the speech was a rehash of Mr. Obama’s past promises.

“For him, it’s buy more time until he needs our votes again,” Mr. Malthotra said.

It’s nice to see that some gay people, particularly those on the left, see through the President’s hollow rhetoric.   (more…)

While some conservatives have engaged (and indeed continue to engage) in some overheated rhetoric when taking issue with Democrats and their allies in the media and blogosphere, I wonder if anyone at the Republican National Committee (RNC) has ever denounced Republicans in the hysterical rhetoric of Democratic National Committee (DNC) communications director Brad Woodhouse, who yesterday told POLITICO

The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists – the Taliban and Hamas this morning – in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize. . . .  Republicans cheered when America failed to land the Olympics and now they are criticizing the President of the United States for receiving the Nobel Peace prize – an award he did not seek but that is nonetheless an honor in which every American can take great pride – unless of course you are the Republican Party.The 2009 version of the Republican Party has no boundaries, has no shame and has proved that they will put politics above patriotism at every turn. It’s no wonder only 20 percent of Americans admit to being Republicans anymore – it’s an embarrassing label to claim.

Gosh, sound like he’s talking about his own party. And seems he, like many on the left, is living in the past.  That 20% number is from the early days of the Obama Administration and before the Democratic incumbent made clear he had no intention to fulfill his campaign commitment of a “net spending cut.”  Serious polls now show a narrowing of the party gap.

Contending “the DNC needs a smarter class of public-relations flacks,” Ed Morrissey takes Woodhouse to the woodshed:

Woodhouse argues (almost assuredly uncomprehendingly) for a fuehrerprinzip where the head of state must never be questioned or criticized, lest one become a traitor to the fatherhomeland.  Will Woodhouse also start labeling late-night comedians like Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien terrorist sympathizers for their (very) occasional ridicule of His Reverence?

I don’t think any official of the RNC ever made a comparison as nasty as Woodhouse’s when taking issue with then-President George W. Bush’s critics who offered barbs far more mean-spirited and ad hominem than the GOP’s rather restrained critiques of the incumbent’s recent honor (most in the same vein as criticism offered on the left and in the MSM).  To be sure, a few bloggers did so, but none has directly say that the party has really thrown its lot with the terrorists.  As Morrissey puts it, that really “takes the cake.”

RELATED:  Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL): “Republicans Probably Wish There Was a Nobel Prize For Fear, Hatred & Racism”

As many of our readers know, in just a few hours, President Obama will be addressing the Human Rights Campaign annual dinner tonight. While there might be a handful of boos from the principled lefties in that largely liberal audience, expect the Democrat to receive a sustained standing ovation.

Such a reception will be on a par with his receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize, for accomplishments anticipated not results achieved.

They’ll be honoring him for his good intentions and partisan affiliation–because to all to many on the gay left, that’s all that really matters.

Wait, I thought liberals claimed you would be committing crimes against humanity or the equivalent of denying the Holocaust if you questioned the religion of Global Warming?

I guess the BBC decided to depart from the Earthist Scripture this weekend:

For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

<…>

So what can we expect in the next few years?

Both sides have very different forecasts. The Met Office says that warming is set to resume quickly and strongly.

It predicts that from 2010 to 2015 at least half the years will be hotter than the current hottest year on record (1998).

Sceptics disagree. They insist it is unlikely that temperatures will reach the dizzy heights of 1998 until 2030 at the earliest. It is possible, they say, that because of ocean and solar cycles a period of global cooling is more likely.

One thing is for sure. It seems the debate about what is causing global warming is far from over. Indeed some would say it is hotting up.

Aside from the bad grammar, this is quite a liberal media breakthrough.

It also kinda sucks when the ACTUAL WEATHER gets in the way of the environmental talking points, eh?

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

UPDATE (from Dan): Gateway Pundit reminds us of another scientific fact: Brrrr… Antarctic Ice Melt at Lowest Level in Recorded History.

Welcome Instapundit Readers!!

Perhaps the most interesting thing in the latest Pew Research Center survey on public attitudes toward gays was the juxtaposition of these two numbers.  While 57% of Americans supports civil unions “allowing gay and lesbian couples to enter into legal agreements with each other that would give them many of the same rights as married couples,” 49% say “homosexual behavior is morally wrong.”

Does that mean that at least 6% of Americans think it’s fine for us to enter into relationships, but would rather we didn’t have sex?

While Pew finds a steady increase in support for civil unions over the past six years (as the chart below indicates), a solid majority (53%) still opposes gay marriage.

Interesting to note that public support turned in favor of civil unions, with ever increasing levels of support during the Administration of George W. Bush.  Even that diabolical Republican (in the eyes of the gay left) could not thwart social change.

Not just that, left-wing bloggers notwithstanding, in the past year, Pew found a “significant change” in the number of Republicans supporting civil unions, jumping from 40 to 48%.

These numbers suggest that we should perhaps push more aggressively for state recognition of civil unions in the public sphere, while working in the private sphere to change attitudes toward gays, so that fewer people find the expression of our natural longings morally repugnant.  And so they understand and appreciate the choices we make and the relationships we seek.

When appearing on TV, Ma’am once again echoes the Democratic Party line.  This lady never seems to have an original thought, nor has she tailored her left-wing views to the concerns of Californians.  She just assumes people will see that (D) after her name and vote her back in.

You see, my state’s junior Senator, Barbara Boxer (D-CA) said that RNC Chairman Michael Steele sounded like the Taliban in wondeing at President Obama’s winning the Nobel Peace Prize.  Allahpundit says “the left’s nastiest senator” was just singing a “tune from the DNC songbook . . . . capped by a trill of irony when she wonders why people have to spoil the day by being mean.”  Ma’am, if you want to stop people from being mean, just look in the mirror and examine your own rhetoric.

Democratic Party spokesman Brad Woodhouse wrote the lyrics to the tune Ma’am was singing when he said, “The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists — the Taliban and Hamas this morning — in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize.”

Here’s the statement from Republican National Chairman Michael Steele that got these Democrats all worked up:

The real question Americans are asking is, ‘What has President Obama actually accomplished?’ It is unfortunate that the president’s star power has outshined tireless advocates who have made real achievements working towards peace and human rights. . . . One thing is certain – President Obama won’t be receiving any awards from Americans for job creation, fiscal responsibility, or backing up rhetoric with concrete action.

Gosh, that sounds like what a lot of liberals have been saying.

Well, guess accomplishments don’t matter too much to Mrs. Boxer, ’cause in her 17 years in the Senate, she’s accomplished about as much as the President has in his (not quite) nine months in the White House.  So, she’s probably thinking, if he has earned the Noble Prize, I’ve earned reelection.  Let’s just hope that the unemployment rate doesn’t jump by 33% during Obama’s tenure in the White House as it has during Ma’am’s tenure in the Senate.

I have too many thoughts swirling in my head to be able to write right now the post on the President’s Nobel Prize I would really like to write.  When I first heard it this morning, it struck me as strange. I thought I had misread the chyron on my TV monitor.  When I realized it wasn’t my absence of coffee which caused me to read that the President had won the Nobel Prize, I asked the question I’d been asking at least since the Spring of 2008 when I noticed the devotion of so many of the then-presidential candidate’s admirers to their man:

What has he accomplished to deserve such accolades?

So, I hacked out a quick post, still uncertain what I wanted to say.  And then when I read something a critic had written in our comments section, it seemed I understood why the Nobel Committee decided to bestow this particular honor on a man of so few accomplishments: “Its really just the “Not a warmongering, torturing neocon, thank god!” award.”  The Nobel Committee honored him for not being George W. Bush.  

Indeed, that seems to be the nature of his appeal and the entire basis of much of his rhetoric and many of his policies–that he’s not his immediate predecessor.

Even lefty Glenn Greenwald finds this award “ludicrous.”  In fact, his reaction on hearing the news was similar to my own, that ”this was some kind of bizarre Onion gag that got accidentally transposed onto the wrong website“.

Commenting on former United States Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton’s remarks on FoxNews, Ed Morrissey finds that good man got at why “why many of us found it both risible and offensive“:

Risible in the sense that Obama had been President for 12 days when he got nominated and hasn’t accomplished anything on the world stage since — no new treaties, no peace brokering, and certainly no change in the Bush “war priorities” that they explicitly criticized in their 2002 award to Jimmy Carter. Offensive in the sense that it smacks of lecturing America on our foreign policy rather than focusing on real efforts for peace, a number of which the Nobel committee overlooked, although by this point it’s so unsurprising as to be only barely offensive

Indeed, let me ask again, what has the president accomplished (beyond being elected)?  What did accomplish before he was elected president to merit the accolades of his admirers?  What has he accomplished since his inauguration to earn what was once a prestigious prize?

Has he reconciled the Hatfields and McCoys?  Has he ushered in a new era of civility into America’s politics and reduced the polarization that has defined it for these past sixteen to twenty years?  Has he effected greater cooperation among our allies? (more…)

Yes we HE can!

Feel free to post in the comments any and all other “Certificates of Participation and Badges of Effort” that The One needs to be decorated with to keep “hope and change” alive.

(h/t – Ace of Spades)

– John (Average Gay Joe)

Since the President won the Nobel Peace Prize based on his good words and anticipation of future accomplishments, can I now get my Ph.D. based on the good idea I have for my dissertation and the anticipation that I’ll write a great thesis, even if I haven’t completed it yet?

This will do wonders for his ego.  I’m sure he’ll become far more humble.

I’m just trying to figure out what exactly he’s accomplished to merit this honor.

(Right now, I’m kind of speechless, but expect to update this over the course of the next hour, perhaps with quotes from other blogs.)

The thing which has struck me the most about some of the reaction to my various posts on Kevin Jennings is the thing which disappoints me the most about blogging, that people deliver form responses to the posts, as if reacting to the standard conservative line on that issue or, more likely, their interpretation of what that line is.  To be sure, there have been notable exceptions, particularly the commentary from Jody.

Perhaps, he has been more civil and has taken more care to address the actual ideas I expressed because we know each other.  He is aware I’m not some rabid right-winger spouting the party line.  And on this issue, as on many others, I have offered a different view on the situation than have other conservative bloggers who have addressed it.

From the outset, I indicated I’d be wiling to cut Jennings some slack and reconsider my call for his resignation if evidence emerged that the Obama official had publicly said he wished he had handled the situation (he related in his oft-repeated anecdote) differently.  As I wrote in my first post on the topic.

It is troubling, to say the least, that the Administration would tap such a man to serve in the Education Department who detailed the boy’s confession in a book One Teacher in 10, yet did not express regret until long after his appointment.

Recall that he is the one who brought up the subject in various public fora, including a published book.  Recall that he had said the boy was fifteen at the time.  Recall that he never expressed regret that he didn’t discourage the teen from picking up adults in public bathrooms.

Shouldn’t a gay teacher, concerned for the welfare of his gay students, want to tell his charge that there are better ways to meet men? (more…)

I don’t normally agree with Dan Savage and thought, when I first read the title of his recent post, A President’s Brave—And Meaningful—Ambassadorial Appointment, he was going to be sing hosannas to the incumbent Democrat for appointing an openly gay ambassador to New Zealand and ignoring his Republican predecessor’s appointment of an openly gay ambassador to Romania. Teaches me not to make assumptions about left-wing bloggers.  (Well, at least I waited to read the post before commenting on it. )

Instead, Savage praised W for that appointment while singling out the Gipper for the “audacity” of appointing Edward Perkins, a black man, as ambassador to apartheid-era South Africa.

Indeed, calling that New Zealand appointment “a symbolic sop to disgruntled Democratic interest group, Savage wishes “Obama had Reagan’s balls”:

If Obama wants to show the same boldness and guts that Reagan did—if he wants to make a point about American values—he should appoint an openly gay man as ambassador to Russia, where anti-gay violence is tolerated/encouraged by the state. Or Saudia Arabia, where gay men are publicly executed. Or Iraq, where death squads hunt gay men.

I couldn’t agree more.

It does seem that some left-of-center bloggers are anything but lickspittles for the incumbent Democratic Administration.  Kudos to them for standing up for their principles and speaking truth to power.

Not since the Nixon Administration (and perhaps not even then) has the White House been so actively engaged in efforts to discredit the President’s critics. With all the news networks but one all but singing Mr. Obama’s praise (well, in CNN’s case, actually singing), White House Communications Director Anita Dunn and her staff have the knives out for the one that won’t buckle under:

The White House is stepping up its attacks against the Fox News Channel, labeling it a bastion of stilted and opinionated journalism. A top administration communications official has called the Fox “opinion journalism masquerading as news,” and vowed to wage a war of ideas against the network.

Speaking with Time Magazine, White House Communications Director Anita Dunn said that the administration intends to be “more aggressive rather than just sit back and defend ourselves, because they will say anything. They will take any small thing and distort it.”

The White House blog has begun singling out and taking on the cable news network. Recent blog posts carry pejorative headlines such as “Fox Lies,” and “even more Fox lies.” Time calls Dunn the “general” of this anti-Fox campaign.

Remember how we were told that the president’s predecessor would brook no dissent, that he wanted to lead the nation in a fascist direction.  Well, in fascist nations, they control the press.  And the adversarial press (including and especially the Internets) flourished in the George W. Bush era.

And his White House didn’t step up its attacks against CBS News, MSNBC, the New York Times or the Washington Post.  Currently, “more people in the all important A25-54 demographic watch. . . [FoxNews] at three in the morning (east coast time) than CNN had for the show that leads off their prime time.”  The more the White House attacks, the more likely people will rally round the successful network.  Its ratings will continue to increase and people will see it as an independent voice challenging a spendthrift Administration adrift.

James Taranto echoes my thoughts upon reading that the Congressional Budget Office had scored the Baucus health care bill (still lacking legislative language) and found the $829 billion boondoggle would cut the deficit by $81 billion over the next 10 years:

So Congress is going to reduce the deficit by increasing spending $829,000,000,000.00? Doesn’t this sound like–well, a joke?

How do they do that?  Sounds like, well, you know that word whose dictionary definition was, well, not entirely satisfactory to the president.  That dreaded “T” word.  (Oh yeah, and there are going to be cuts in Medicare too!):

CBO’s estimate of the Baucus plan substantially understates its true cost because it is based on key assumptions that will never hold up over time.

First, there is the new tax on so-called high-cost health-insurance plans.  The Democrats are trying to sell this as a tax on insurers.  But no one is buying that, especially not the unions.  It’s the insurance enrollees who will pay it, in the form of higher deductibles and cost-sharing to keep premiums below the thresholds.

Don’t think the American public is going to buy that.  As taxes go up, James C. Capretta (who wrote the above) finds that the Democrats expect fees to go down:  ”the Baucus plan assumes deep and continuous cuts in physician fees that no one supports or believes will occur.  Restoring those cuts would add more than $200 billion to the plan’s bottom line.”  Read his analysis of all the assumptions being made to make the plan deficit neutral.

Having also looked at the CBO’s ”fairly sketchy description,” Megan McArdle finds that “virtually all of the extra benefit appears to come from estimating that employers will see their health care costs fall“.  There they go again, with their estimations, assuming costs are going to fall! (more…)

Whenever we are linked on left-wing blogs, the comments generated by those who follow those links provide a window into the ignorance of all too many on the left (particularly the gay left) to the changing reality of the contemporary GOP.  They make assumptions about the welcome we find on the right which could be easily dispelled if they just scanned our archives.

Commenting to a recent post, one reader repeated just such a refrain, “I don’t think republican conservatism is honestly open to gays.”

Hardly. Indeed, we — and many readers of this blog — have found a more ready welcome as openly gay Americans in conservative circles than we have as openly conservative gays in gay and lesbian circles.

Since this blog’s inception over five years ago, we, a blog which openly defines itself as gay, have been linked (always favorably as far as I can tell) by (nearly*) every major mainstream conservative blog.  Bruce and I have met a good number of right-of-center bloggers and have always received favorable treatment.  The McCain campaign even invited both of us to blog at the Republican National Convention last summer.

And yet all to many left-wingers (including some who should know better) act if the GOP hasn’t changed since 1992.  To be sure, their ignorance of and prejudice against the Republican Party is not limited toward its attitude toward gays.  The assumptions they make about Republican intolerance (of gays) is emblematic of how they see conservatives in general and Republicans in particular, defining us not by our reality, but by their prejudices.  Their narrative trumps the facts.

To be sure, it was not always this way for gay Republicans.  A handful state parties in the 1990s, particularly that in Texas, did attempt to exclude gay people.  But, with improving social attitudes toward gays, the GOP has become more welcoming (though, in some places, it may be more correct to say less inhospitable).  Last month, commenting on past statements both candidates for Virginia Governor had made on gay issues, Michael Barone cites those very changing attitudes to suggest that neither man is anti-gay:

A fairer interpretation, I think, is that both Deeds and McDonnell have changed their opinions on gay rights issues over the years, as indeed have a majority of the American people, and that neither man has any animus against gay people.

Exactly.  As the American people, including many Republicans, have changed their attitude on gays, all too many readers of left-of-center blogs, particularly those who find their way over to this right-of-center one, hold a vision of the GOP firmly rooted in the past.

* (more…)

Okay, Dan Choi of Knights Out doesn’t pass much for Gary Sinese’s famous movie character but Donnelly certainly resembles Forrest Gump – without the charming innocence.

DADT advocates still need a much better spokesperson for their cause, although as a staunch opponent of this law perhaps I shouldn’t say anything more on that…

Oh yeah, one more thing: can you feel that “hope and change” yet? Me neither.

– John (Average Gay Joe)

I no longer pay attention to anything Andrew Sullivan does or says unless it is linked on a right-of-center blog.   And given that one of his latest narrow-minded rants appears on this very blog, I feel it somehow incumbent upon myself to address it.

Based on ad put up by Protect Marriage Washington, the one-time serious advocate of gay marriage has concluded that “the GOP believes in no rights for gay couples whatsoever.”  Talk about painting with a broad brush.  With prominent left-wing bloggers like Sullivan spreading misinformation like this, no wonder we regularly receive comments from unhappy left-of-center gay activists incredulous that a gay person could support the GOP.

Yup, there are Republicans who don’t want the state to recognize same-sex unions even if they’re not called marriage, but many elected Republicans have voted (or spoken out) in favor of civil unions (including the immediate past GOP Governor of Utah).  (Not to mention the fact that a certain Republican Governor of Connecticut signed civil unions into law in her state.)  Last summer, a poll showed 43 percent of delegates to last year’s Republican National Convention supported civil unions.  Maybe Sullivan should check his facts before launching into broadsides against the GOP.

Seems Sullivan would rather attack the GOP than consider the party’s increasing openness to gay people.

Given his ignorant broadsides, it’s amazing he still, with an apparent straight face, claims to be a conservative.

(As just another example of Andrew’s admiration for Obama and (deliberate) ignorance of his predecessor’s accomplishments.  While he commends* the Democrat for appointing openly gay ambassadors, he ignores (as does the article he links) that Sullivan’s great antagonist, George W. Bush, way back in 2001, appointed an openly gay man, Michael Guest, to serve as Ambassador to Romania.)

* (more…)