It’s too bad Wayne Besen’s colleague can’t let go of his distaste for gay conservatives long enough to realize the significance of the news Wayne linked on his facebook page and that colleague reported on his website:

Liberty University Law School has withdrawn as a co-sponsor of next month’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington because a Republican homosexual activist group is being allowed to co-sponsor the event.

That “homosexual” activist group is our friends at GOProud.  While the colleague uses the occasion to slam gay conservatives, we have an (yet another) example of the increasing tolerance conservatives are showing for gay people.  Ridden out on a rail we are not.

Kudos to CPAC for standing up to pressure from a social conservative group seeking to keep gays out of the conservative movement.  And kudos to GOProud for reaching out to the conservative movement.  Their efforts help break down prejudices against people like us, promoting a broad-based conservative movement, based on the ideas of Ronald Reagan rather than the prejudices of Pat Robertson.

Gay activists should welcome this news; it shows that Americans of all stripes are becoming increasingly tolerant and accepting of gay people.  And shouldn’t their goal be an America were gay people are welcome in all endeavors?  But, it seems that trashing conservatives has become such a part of the modus operandi of some gay leftists that even as the facts change, their prejudices do not.

So, let’s sum up, this is great news, particularly for broad-minded conservatives; a leading conservative organization, perhaps the leading conservative group, would rather lose the sponsorship of a prominent social conservative institution than exclude a fledging gay conservative organization.

Well, that brave new future Obama and his Democrats promised for America didn’t last long.  The age of a new kind of politics, you know that post-partisan kind, has been brought to an end before the first anniversary of the Chicago Democrat’s taking the oath of office as President of the United States.  Well, that is, unless  you count taking the politics of his home town to the national level as a new kind of politics.

In their attempts to hold the Senate seat once held by Ted Kennedy, a seat that has been in Democratic hands since the twilight hours of the Truman Administration in a state which hasn’t elected a Republican Senator since the Nixon Administration, which hasn’t picked a Republican for President since the Reagan Administration and which last sent a Republican to Congress in the Clinton Administration, Democrats and their special interest allies have bought up hours of TV to attack the Republican nominee. And they’re going all negative, all the time.

In a state where John McCain barely got a third of the vote, where George W. Bush was held under 40%, where every Democrat this century won over 60% of the popular vote, the Democratic candidate isn’t running on her record or her party’s policies, she’s attacking the Republican.

Guess they realize that even in Massachusetts (the state without a single Republican in its congressional delegation), it’s not a good strategy to run on the party’s ideas.

Democrats could hold this seat in next Tuesday’s election, but they can only win ugly.  No matter what happens on January 19 in Massacusetts, the GOP will have scored a moral victory.  And the Democrats revealed for playing the kind of attack politics their most recent standard bearer once so famously eschewed.

Below is my op ed published today by the DC Agenda on the smearing of US Senate candidate Scott Brown (R-MA) by the gay left.

Next Tuesday, voters in Massachusetts will go to the polls for a special election to replace U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy (D). Recent polling shows Republican State Senator Scott Brown in a virtual tie with Democrat Martha Coakley. As the polls get closer and closer, Democrats and their allies on the left get more and more desperate. Democrats are unable to defend their record on taxes, spending, the economy, job creation, healthcare or the global war on terror, so instead they predictably turn to smears, distortions and name-calling.

The gay left, always willing to do the bidding of the DNC, is attempting to characterize Scott Brown as ‘anti-gay’. This paper ran a headline that blared “Could an anti-gay Republican win Kennedy’s Seat?” The Edge, a New England gay paper, had a similar headline in December, “Anti-gay Mass. Pol Seeks to Succeed Kennedy.”

Unfortunately there are far too many folks in this country who deserve the label anti-gay, and some of those folks are politicians. Indeed some people in this country make a living demonizing gay people and our families. However, attaching the label “anti-gay” to every single politician or person who is not 100 percent aligned with the political agenda of the gay left is not only unfair but wildly counter-productive. In the case of Scott Brown, the gay left is guilty of being little more than the partisan boy who cried wolf.

What’s the truth about Scott Brown? I will concede up front, that Scott Brown doesn’t support same-sex marriage. Brown, however, has stated that same-sex marriage in Massachusetts is settled law and that he personally supports civil unions. Brown has also said that he believes marriage is a state issue and that each state should be free to make its own law regarding same-sex marriage. Sound familiar? It should, because it’s the same position taken by President Barack Obama.

Despite Brown being in favor of civil unions, opposing a federal marriage amendment and having the same federalist approach to marriage that President Obama has, the gay left would have us believe that the future of gay rights hangs on the Democrat winning this special election. Indeed, Michael Mitchell, executive director of National Stonewall Democrats, said helping Coakley win the special election “couldn’t be more important” for LGBT people because a 60-seat Democratic majority in the Senate is needed to advance LGBT rights in Congress.

What has 60 Democratic Senators delivered for gay families so far? Unemployment over 10 percent, spending spiraling out of control, an expansion of discriminatory government-run healthcare, and an administration unwilling to confront the spread of radical anti-gay Islam. (more…)

Like Martha Coakley, I spent four winters in Williamstown, Massachusetts.  As I recall, it gets pretty darn cold at that time of year in that part of the Bay State.  It goes with the territory, you could say.

Now, it would seems to me that someone who wants to represents the Bay State in the United States Senate would, appreciate what her constituents have to endure every winter.  But somehow, when it comes to the cold, this Democrat is pretty faint-hearted.  Responding to charges that she hasn’t been campaigning aggressively enough, she retorted that she has better things to do than face Massachusetts winters:

Coakley bristles at the suggestion that, with so little time left, in an election with such high stakes, she is being too passive.

“As opposed to standing outside Fenway Park? In the cold? Shaking hands?’’ she fires back, in an apparent reference to a [Scott] Brown online video of him doing just that.

Wonder how her constituents, many of whom must spend hours in the cold every week in the winter, doing their jobs, getting to their jobs, shoveling show so they can get to their jobs or just plain working outdoors as some folk do.

It seems that someone who bristles at the notion of campaigning in the cold probably shouldn’t be representing a state were it gets pretty darn cold every winter.  And sometimes in the fall and even in the spring.

(H/t Legal Insurrection.)

One of the most telling aspect of the left-wing prejudice against conservatives and Republicans is how people who have never been to a meeting of a Republican committee, club or auxiliary or rarely associated with conservatives (if at all) will tell us just exactly what our party and our movement is all about.  Matched up against their prejudices, our experiences count for nothing.

I can decide in order to have a story to tell that when I went to the Republican National Convention as a credentielled blogger, I’d come out as gay as often as possible in order to gage people’s reaction.   It won’t matter that my sexual orientation barely elicited a raised eyebrow because, you see, well, Republicans hate gay people and would never allow a single one who openly professed his preference for his own sex within their midst, much less as a guest at their national convention.  Heaven forfend!  They’re just so bigotted, intolerant and all around not nice.  And they have bad hair too!

For ten of the last fifteen years, I have been out a a gay man in Republican circles and yes, I have encountered some of my fellow partisans less than pleased with my orientation, with at least one, scratch that, with just one wondering if I were aware of Exodus Ministries (or some similar outfit).  Another woman once cut short a conversation upon learning I was a homosexual (she couldn’t bring herself to speak the word, “gay”), but was remarkably polite in doing so.  Contrast that with the rudeness of the gays who learned I was Republican.

On the whole, I have found my partisan peers remarkably welcoming, even those who have religious objections to expressions of homosexuality.  Yet, our experiences notwithstanding, our liberal friends know better just how our party should treat us.   (more…)

Just wondering if any of Pat Robertson’s followers are asking how he knows the details of a pact made with the devil.  I mean, wouldn’t he need an inside source to get that information?  So, Pat, better lay off talking about this kind of deal, not just that it’s just bad form at a time like this, but, well, people might start wondering about your associations.

As, you may know, shortly after falling off his rocker*, the minister offered an explanation for the earthquake in Haiti:

Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. . . . They were under the heel of the French … and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, ‘We will serve you if you’ll get us free from the French.’

Now, Pat wasn’t around two hundred years ago when the Haitians threw off French tyranny.  So, I don’t think the Haitians around back then would be able to inform him.  And when I studied Haitian history (for a paper on the Vodou mythology) and didn’t find any details of such a pact.   And, well, since it’s not in history books, the only way Pat could know is if . . .

———–

*Yeah, I know, it’s been happening a lot lately.  Someone needs get him that model with a seat belt.

In the third quarter of the Eighteenth Century, one of the issues which pushed the once loyal British subject Benjamin Franklin to the forefront of the revolutionary movement was his opposition to policies which prevented the “Proprietors,” large landowners, from paying taxes. Against such privileges he and the Founders fought as Parliament continually encroached on the rights of the then-Englishman living in the American colonies.  There were in many cases, particularly in “Proprietary” colonies like Pennsylvania, two sets of laws, one which applied to an aristocratic class, the other which applied to everyone else.

Their notion of equal rights, in short, was elimination of laws which privileged certain classes.  Similarly, the Civil Rights movement began, in large measure, to repeal laws which discriminated against a certain class of people.  In short, their notion of equal rights was eliminating laws which privileged or discriminated.

Today, however, when gay leaders talk about “equality,” they seek not just to eliminate bad laws (like Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell), but also to enact well-meaning legislation (like ENDA and Hate Crimes).

And this is why I remain uncomfortable with the notion of “equality” as put forward by the left-leaning gay groups.  It seeks the expansion of government to pursue a desired outcome.  Under an “equal rights” regime, government got out of the way, no longer privileging or punishing a certain class.   The equality regime, however, involves government in determining how individuals govern their private lives–and that of the institutions in which they participate and otherwise support of patronize.

There he goes again.  Once again, Barack Obama is telling us all about is great vision of uniting the nation:

President Barack Obama says he has not succeeded in bringing the country together, acknowledging an atmosphere of divisiveness that has washed away the lofty national feeling surrounding his inauguration a year ago.

“That’s what’s been lost this year … that whole sense of changing how Washington works,” Obama said in an interview with People magazine.

The president said his second-year agenda will be refocused on uniting the country around common values, “whether we’re Democrats or Republicans.”

(H/t Gateway Pundit.)  At atmosphere of divisiveness, Mr. President?  Wonder how that happened.  Do you think attacking Republicans, repeatedly criticizing your predecessor and whining about the problems you inherited (even after spending two years working so you could face those problems head-on) might have something to do with it?

I’ll believe you’re interested in uniting the nation when you stop attacking Republicans and insist that your fellow partisans follow suit.  For, while you’re telling us you intend to unite the country, your campaign apparatus ensconced in the DNC is sending out an e-mail calling a Republican candidate for federal office, “extreme.”  Great way to unite the nation, that.

Meanwhile, one of your closest allies in the Senate is usually sexual slurs to badmouth that good man.  I trust that in the spirit of unity, you’ll tell Chuck Schumer to clean up his potty mouth.

And it also might help unite the nation if you, understanding the popular mood, asked Congress to stop consideration of the health care overhaul which remains highly unpopular.  So, you’ll have to pardon me, Mr. President, if I don’t take you at your word on national unity.  Your actions this past year contradict your words this past week.  But, then, we can all change.

So, if you change your actions, I’ll change my attitude.  Fair?

In doing some research on the background of Massachusetts Republican Senate nominee Scott Brown, I uncovered an interesting factoid.  That good man was first elected to the Massachusetts Senate in a special election to replace Cheryl Jacques who had resigned her seat to take up the presidency of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC).

That partisan woman wouldn’t last a year, stepping down in November shortly after the project which defined her tenure at that left-wing organization failed.  Under her leadership, HRC sunk untold sums into stickers and signs with the slogan, “George W. Bush, you’re fired!”

Well, just as her erstwhile constituents didn’t pay much heed to Jacuqes in March of 2004, preferring Brown to her aide, Angus McQuilken, neither did American voters pay heed to her attempt to unseat W. Let’s hope Brown shows a similar resilience next week.

Please find below the text of my post, “Cheryl Jacques, You’re Fired” from November 2004. It disappeared when someone hijacked our original site on blogspot. (more…)

In the cliff-hanger election of 1976, three states with large suburban populations, now considered reliably Democratic, went Republican even as a Democrat won the White House.  Connecticut, Illinois and New Jersey wouldn’t find themselves in the Democratic column until 1992 where they have remained ever since.  Indeed, two of those three states (Illinois and New Jersey) went Republican in all six presidential elections from 1968-1988.  Hubert Humphrey won the Nutmeg State in 1968.

As the image took hold of social conservative domination of the GOP and as Bill Clinton reassured voters of his centrist bona fides, those once Republican states become as Democratic ones in large part due to swings among suburban voters (more concerned with fiscal than social issues).  But, now with Obama’s big-government agenda revealed, voters in Northeastern suburbs are returning to the Republican fold.  Two counties in the New York City metropolitan area which, respectively, delivered 63% and 54% of their vote to Obama in 2008, elected Republican executives last fall (the irony being that the Democrat incumbent ran better in the county, Nassau, where his party had the smaller margin in ’08).

Should this shift hold and be repeated in the Chicago suburbs, Illinois, a state which only elected Republican governor from 1976 to 2002, could move from reliably Democrat to marginally Republican, with Connecticut and New Jersey becoming potential future bellwethers.  Since we’re on the topic of Governors, it’s been nearly a quarter-century since the Nutmeg State elected a Democrat Governor.  By contrast, the Garden State, while having elected three Democrats Governor in that time period, didn’t reelect a single one.  Both Democrats who ran for a second term lost whereas both Republicans who ran for reelection won.  Not since 1977 has a Jersey Democrat renewed his four-year lease on Drumthwacket. (more…)

Welcome Instapundit Readers!

As I’ve been preparing for my presentation tonight to LA’s Westside Republicans, I’ve been reviewing statistics on corporate policies toward gay employees and have been impressed to discover how quickly these private enterprises have responded to the increasing acceptance of homosexuality in American society.  And the pace at which they offered benefits to same-sex domestic partners of employees did not slacken during the supposed dark days of the George W. Bush Era.

Indeed, the bellyaching of the gay left notwithstanding, the Bush Era was a Golden one for Gay Americans, thanks in large part to the greatness of the federal structure our framers designed–and to the freedom inherent in the American “experiment.”   It has become increasingly easy to live openly as a gay person in the United States.  Private organizations–and even some government ones–have made greater efforts to accommodate gay employees.

In 2000, only 255 corporations in the Fortune 500 had adopted non-discrimination policies including sexual orientation.  When Bush left office, that number was up to 472.  Last February, just a few weeks after that much anticipated (in gay political circles) departure, HRC (yes, that HRC) reported that its  ”2007-2008 [State of the Workplace] report revealed rapid expansion of protections for LGBT workers in the private sector over the past decade.”  A decade in which Republicans dominated Congress and where for eight years George W. Bush had been in the White House.

In 2000, only 102 Fortune 500 companies offered benefits to same-sex partners of their employees  In 2008, 286 did. Two years previously, before Democrats had recaptured Congress, Amy Joyce reported in the Washington Post that the “number of Fortune 500 companies that include domestic partner benefits has more than doubled since 2000.”  More than doubled under W’s watch?  Interesting.  Very interesting. (more…)

In many ways, the Tea Party movement was for 2009 was the Obama campaign was for 2008, the defining political movement of the year, the primary difference being that the former was built around an idea (or set of ideas) and the latter around a man (and his contrast with another).  In a must-read essay at the Washington Examiner, Obama’s rapturous style versus tea party substance, Michael Barone sums up the difference:

But when you look back over the surges of enthusiasm in the politics of the last two years, you see something like this: The Obama enthusiasts who dominated so much of the 2008 campaign cycle were motivated by style. The tea party protesters who dominated so much of 2009 were motivated by substance.

Remember those rapturous crowds that swooned at Barack Obama’s rhetoric. “We are the change we are seeking,” he proclaimed. “We will be able to look back and tell our children,” that “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

A lot of style there, but not very much substance. . . . .

In contrast, the tea party protesters, many of them as fractious and loudmouthed as David Brooks thinks, are interested in substantive political issues. They decry the dangers of expanding the national debt, increasing government spending, and putting government in command of the health care sector.

Read the whole thing.

Responding to a man who felt depressed after seeing Avatar because this world did not match the beauty of the imaginary world of James Cameron‘s creation, Ann Althouse muses that when she was “was younger  . . . [,]  movies had a very strong effect on me, but it wasn’t that it turned the world disappointingly gray“:

When I walked out into the light after a great movie, my experience was that things seemed sharpened, intensified, and refreshed. The real world felt newly real. It was more in color — the opposite of depression.

Yea, that describes it.  Reminds me of how I felt when, as a young’un, I first saw Star Wars and its sequels.  And I’ve still felt that, on occasion, as an adult, when I’ve seen a really good movie.  Such flicks kind of inspire me in a way, to be a better person and to work harder toward my aspirations.

In the wake of the devastating earthquake which struck Haiti, the poorest nation in our hemisphere, I encourage you to support efforts which provide relief to the victims of this disaster.

Michelle links a variety of ways to help:

State Department resources and charities.

Relief efforts list via The Anchoress.

Fund-raising efforts via Chuck Simmins.

In past crises, I’ve supported Jewish World Service, so will make my contribution via their Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund. I encourage y’all to support at least one relief organization. Any contribution, no matter how small, helps at a time like this.

If you’re in Los Angeles next week, please stop by Jerry’s Deli, 10925 Weyburn Avenue in Westwood tonight Wednesday, January 13 at 7 PM for the monthly meeting of the Westside Republicans.  They’ve asked me to talk about blogging and to explain why Republican ideas are better for gay people.

If you’d like to eat, please arrive at 6:30 to order your supper.  Hope to see you there.

NB:  Bumped and revised.

UPDATE:  This comment from HRC will help inform my presentation:  ”The 2007-2008 report revealed rapid expansion of protections for LGBT workers in the private sector over the past decade.”  As will this line from a 2006 Washington Post article:  ”The number of Fortune 500 companies that include domestic partner benefits has more than doubled since 2000.”

Until last night, I had been less sanguine about Scott Brown’s chances in the Massachusetts Senate election next Tuesday than were other conservative bloggers.  But, after watching him describe the office to which he aspires as “the people’s seat,” I began to wonder if all the elements were falling into place for a Republican upset in John Kerry’s home state.

While the Republican was raising $1.3 million dollars from ordinary Americans online, his Democratic opponent is collecting cash from well-healed lobbyists in Washington.   While he’s praising a late member of the opposing party, whom his fellow partisans delight in excoriating, operatives for his opponent are decrying Sarah Palin’s silence.  National Democrats are pouring over $1 million into a state which hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since the president was in elementary school.  The Democratic candidate rhetorically removed all terrorists from Afghanistan much as Gerald Ford so removed Soviet domination from Eastern Europe in 1976.  And in a TV ad, her campaign misspelled the name of the state she seeks to represent.

Oh, and that ad was the first negative one in the race.  The challenger has remained on the high ground, praising his opponent as a person while criticizing her policies.  And his grassroots activists are energized.

Meanwhile Bay State voters are chewing on the shenanigans of state Democrats seeking to keep the Senate seat in their column, with state legislators revising a law they passed just five years to prevent a Republican Governor from appointing a successor to a Democratic Senator.  Back then, it was okay to keep that seat vacant for a spell if the occupant might have been a Republican, but last fall, they couldn’t risk its vacancy when national Democrats needed an extra vote.  Now, Democrats talk of delaying certification of the winner to allow their fellow partisans to vote on a burdensome and unpopular piece of legislation.

Things do seem to be breaking Scott Brown’s way.  Polls show the race a dead heat.

Still, Brown has an uphill climb, with Democratic special interests now aware that they’ll have to fight to keep this seat and ready to activate their Get-Out-the-Vote machines.  But, consider this:  in most races where one side repeatedly makes errors* while the other runs a good campaign, the error-prone side loses.

And it hasn’t been Scott Brown making the mistakes.

* (more…)

If almost seems a certainty that if a public figure veers off into America-bashing conspiracy theories, he’s soon going to start apologizing for our enemies.  Usually, such apologetics focus on run-of-the-mill despots like Daniel Ortega, Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, but occasionally spills over into full-blown defenses of Communism and even Islamofascism.

Rarely, however, have such self-haters shown sympathy for Adolf Hitler.

Until now.

According to a smart young writer, the ”man who immortalized Che Guevara is off to set the record straight and correct the right-wing’s misinformation campaign about Hitler“:

In a new documentary series titled “Secret History of America,” Stoned says, “I’ve been able to walk in Stalin’s shoes and Hitler’s shoes to understand their point of view. We’re going to educate our minds and liberalize them and broaden them.”

Most of us know the man my nephew called Stoned as filmmaker/conspiracy theorist Oliver Stone.  So, if we, as Stone claims, “can’t judge people as only ‘bad’ or ‘good,’” guess that lets W off the hook?

Right, so even as the Left accuses George W. Bush of killing one million Iraqis in his illegal war for oil, Bush has done nothing wrong. It’s all… America’s?… fault.

Surely, Stone’s next project will be to walk in Bush and Cheney’s shoes and understand their point of view.  So, if you do want to educate your own minds, take a gander at my nephew’s column, it’s well worth your time.

Scott Brown is not the only Republican Senate candidate who can raise over $1,000,000 in a short time.  In the sixty days since Carly Fiorina announced her bid to unseat Barbara Boxer, one of the Senate’s most liberal members, she cleared that amount in donations, pulling in $232,000 online alone.  It took Chuck DeVore, her rival for the GOP nomination, nearly a year to raise a million.

The campaign reports that “Eighty three percent of all donations are in amounts of less than $250 and the overall average donation amount to Carly’s campaign is less than $350.”  Given the loan that she and her husband made to the campaign, Carly starts the year with $2.7 million cash on hand.  She’ll need more to remind voters of Boxer’s arrogance and her record, but she’s off to a good start.

Expect fundraising to pick up as Golden State voters focus on this race and as Republicans realize that Boxer can be beaten.  Scott Brown’s success in the Bay State can help.  He’ll show that what appears a quixotic quest may, in the current environment, become a winnable race for a Republican.

So, for the next week, let’s focus on helping Scott Brown, then, next week, we’ll have his example to inspire us as we work to elect Republicans across the nation, even in states like California where our fellows have not fared well in recent years.

I hope that GOP candidates across the country are paying attention to Scott Brown’s bid to succeed Teddy Kennedy in the United States Senate.  And not just to see how a Republican can run in a “blue” state, but also to see how a Republican should run for office. Brown has kept his focus on fiscal and national security issues as this clip from last night’s On the Record with Greta van Susteren shows:

Not that not once, but twice in this seven-minute interview does he pause to call his opponent a “good” person who happens to be “wrong on the issues”.  He shows similar class (about 5 minutes into this clip) when asked about the late Senator Kennedy.  Instead of faulting that liberal lion for his left-wing views, he praises him for his constituent services.  He has refrained from attacking his opponents or engaging in that Washington pattern of “always looking for somebody else to blame.”

Classy guy that Scott Brown.

Other Republicans would do well to follow Brown’slead when asked about President Obama, praising perhaps that Democrat’s story while criticizing his policies, daring to call their opponents good people.

And note what he defines is the biggest difference between himself and his opponent:  ”taxing and spending.”  Nice to see a GOP candidate recognizing that as the key difference between the parties.  Given Brown’s record, I trust this Republican will remember that once he arrives in our nation’s capital.

. . . so go the other polls.

The pollster left-wingers love to hate was the first to show Obama’s approval rating dipping below 50%.   Now the latest CBS News survey, one which normally tilts toward the Democrats, shows only 46% of Americans approving of how the president was handling his job.

Why does that 46% figure look familiar?  Oh yeah, it’s the popular vote percentage John McCain drew in the 2008 presidential election.

Oh, and, the CBS number is consistent with Rasmussen.  And Quinnipiac.  And NBC.  And ARG.