As I worked on Pajamas piece on the President’s benefits package for the same-sex partners of federal employees, I kept coming across articles and blog posts indicating the disappointment and even betrayal gay Democrats feel at the President’s failure to follow through on the campaign promises he made to our community.  This morning, when I checked my e-mail, my in-box was inundated with missives from readers alerting me to other such posts and articles.

After my mid-day workout when I returned home to surf the web and blog, I found more such pieces, with straight blogger Glenn Reynolds alone linking three four just today.

While I certainly understand their frustration of gay Democrats, I almost feel like telling them, “I told you so.”  (I guess I just did that.)

Democratic politicians, with a few notable exceptions, have an uncanny habit of breaking the promises they make to gay people.  Aware of the affluence of our community and the dedication of our activists, Democrats know that by appealing to our interests, they can increase both their campaign contributions and their grassroots efforts.

Their enthusiasm for Democrats who say the right things, however, seems a little unmoored from reality.  Then-President Bill Clinton backed down on his promise to repeal the ban on gays serving openly in the military as soon as he saw there was a political cost.  He signed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 1996 when he thought he might help him with evangelical voters.  Obama sat in a church for twenty years where a racist pastor spewed anti-gay rhetoric and never once challenged him on his prejudiced attitude toward homosexuals.

Now, some may say, “Well, Dan, you support the GOP and Republicans are no better, perhaps even worse.”  And I’ll reply, “Yep, you’ve got a point, my party’s not perfect, but at least my guys don’t treat our community like a cash cow, milking it when they need funds and hiding it in the barn when they fear it might offend the neighbors.”  it’s not just that.  As a conservative, I don’t believe state action is the appropriate means to advance social acceptance of gay people. (more…)

We here at GayPatriot have long believed the Second Amendment offers a particular benefit to gay Americans, protecting our rights to bear arms so we can defend ourselves against those who would do us harm because of our sexuality.  Just under a year ago, we contended the that the U.S. Supreme Court’s Heller decision was a gay rights’ victory:  “With this ruling, gay people will have greater and more ready access to handguns and so be better able to defend ourselves against gay-bashers.”

Over at the Huffington Post (yes, the Huffington Post), GOProud’s Christopher Barron builds on this notion, holding that Concealed Carry Laws do a better job of protecting gay people against hate crimes than do Hate Crimes laws:

This summer, the Senate will consider the Matthew Shepard Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, more commonly know as Hate Crimes legislation. Unfortunately, the bill, as currently written, will do little to actually prevent violent hate crimes from occurring. There is, however, a way to stop hate crimes before they happen: help law-abiding Americans at risk of hate crimes defend themselves from predators. . . .

A bill in the Senate, S. 845, co-sponsored by Senator John Thune (R-SD) and Senator David Vitter (R-LA), allows for reciprocity among all the states that currently allow citizens to lawfully carry a concealed firearm.

This common sense legislation would allow an individual who is lawfully licensed to carry a concealed weapon in his home state, to also carry a concealed weapon in another state - as long as that state permits conceal carry and as long as the individual complies with the concealed carry law of that state. . . .

According to a comprehensive study which reviewed crime statistics in every county in the United States from 1977 to 1992, states that passed concealed carry law reduced their rate of murder by 8.5%, rape by 5%, aggravated assault by 7%, and robbery by 3%.

And I would wager that states with concealed carry laws don’t have as comprehensive hate crimes legislation as do those without laws furthering Second Amendment protections.

Knowing that the gay man or lesbian may be concealing a fire arm would cause a potential gay basher to think twice before assaulting him or her.  The legislation that Senators Thuna and Vitter have introduced would give gay people one more tool to protect ourselves against thugs meaning to do us harm.  Let us hope that other gay organizations join GOProud in lobbying for this bill would protect the rights of gay Americans–as well as those of all Americans.

Kudos to GOProud for pointing out the gay rights advanced by Concealed Carry Laws.

My only response:  I TOLD YOU SO.

AMERICAblog reports:

Obama joked about gay protesters asking him to keep promises: “I don’t know which promise he was talking about.”

So, Mr. Obama doesn’t know which promise the protester was talking about? Did he even know what was going on in California? About the Prop. 8 decision? Does he know who Lt. Choi is? Who briefs Obama on LGBT issues? Anyone? Because, it was well known that the LGBT community would be protesting. And, as for promises, there were several. To remind him, we could say check the White House website for a list of the promises Obama made to the LGBT community during the campaign. But, that wouldn’t probably wouldn’t do any good.

HAHAHA.

Obama, The First Gay President?  Hardly.  The ADVOCATE is reporting today that the White House will not move on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

Here’s a wise commenter from the ADVOCATE story:

I read all these comments slamming Obama, but we all know he will still get your votes when he runs again, regardless of his stance on “don’t ask, don’t tell” and the Defense of Marriage Act.  How do I know this?  Because he has a D after his name, and when it comes to discrimination, being a Democrat means never having to say your sorry.

Here’s another news item that should set the Gay Left’s panties on fire this weekend:

Washington Blade: Gay rights bills remain stalled in Congress

So let me get this right.   When the Democrats held the Congress for nearly 40 years (until 1995), there was no significant gay-rights legislation passed.  And now, after all of the promises and money given by The Gays — no progress after the Democrats have held Congress for two more years and now the White House.

Hey, Gays Who Support Democrats:  You are suckers.  Hopeandchange, hopeandchange!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Hot off the wire:

GOProud Applauds Introduction of the Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Bill
Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) lead co-sponsor in the Senate
and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) lead co-sponsor in the House.

(Washington, D.C.) – Today, the bipartisan Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations (DPBO) bill will be introduced in both the House and Senate. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) is the lead co-sponsor in the Senate and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) is the lead co-sponsor in the House.

“GOProud applauds the bipartisan, bicameral introduction of the DPBO bill,” said Jimmy LaSalvia, Executive Director of GOProud. “GOProud strongly supports this common sense legislation.”

Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) join Collins and Ros-Lehtinen as original co-sponsors.

“Passage of the DPBO bill would make retirement benefits, healthcare benefits and life insurance benefits available to domestic partners,” continued LaSalvia.

“As conservatives, we believe that the federal government should take its cues from the successful practices of private enterprise. With more than half of Fortune 500 companies offer domestic partner benefits, it is clear that the time has come for the federal government to do the same.”

“GOProud looks forward to building conservative support for the passage of this legislation,” said LaSalvia.

Major kudos to Senator Collins and Rep. Ros-Lehtinen — she is one of my favorite Members of the US House, I might add.

And I would also note that it seems to me (and I am certainly biased as the Treasurer) that GOProud is doing a lot more to advance gay conservative causes in the past few weeks than Log Cabin Republicans did for the past few years.

I’m just sayin’.

There is a LOT more to come.  Thanks to Jimmy & Chris, GOProud is on Capitol Hill talking with leading GOP lawmakers on a regular basis.  It is a great time.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Just wondering… if allegedly-gay Adam Lambert loses American Idol, how long will it be before Perez Hilton (and the gay minions) declare it is because Americans are homophobic and want to deny Adam his rights?

PS - I have no idea, and don’t care, if Lambert is gay. But P.Hil has been pushing that meme to the hilt.

Not in the mood for large crowds this weekend, I was pretty much a homebody, reading a lot and watching the latest movies to arrive from Netflix.  All three I had seen before, one holding up better than the other two, perhaps, in part, because it was shorter, but largely because it provided a window into how much things have improved for gay people in American society.

I first saw the original Planet of the Apes; did not engage me as much as it did when I regularly caught it on TV as a child.  Spartacus, the film I just saw, seemed to require a bigger screen for the second viewing.  While many scenes were really quite stirring, the story seemed less compelling given that I had recently a book detailing the actual story of that eponymous slave’s fight for freedom as best as military historian Barry Strauss could reconstruct it.

Like Mel Gibson with Braveheart, Stanley Kubrick turned a historical hero into a martyr for liberty.

But, the movie which kept me thinking — and not just about its subject matter — was Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 classic Rope.

Here, the protagonists are a gay couple (though not called as much), one, a pretentious, self-important snob (John Dall’s Brandon) and the other, a neurotic drama queen (Farley Granger’s Phillip).  They decide to murder a friend because they consider themselves intellectually superior.  Yet, once they’ve done the deed, Brandon becomes vainglorious while Phillip begins to feel remorse.  Yet, his conscience doesn’t make him reflective so much as overwrought.  Neither is portrayed sympathetically.  Nor should they be, considering what they’ve done.

Sixty years ago, that was how Hollywood portrayed homosexuals.  To be sure, there are gay people like Brandon, arrogant, full of themselves, thinking they are better than their fellows.  And we do have our share of drama queens–of many sorts.  But, while we are far more than those caricatures, such images were all we saw on the silver screen.

Now, sixty years later, we see images gay people portrayed as more than just cocksure killers.  We see them as the loyal friend to the protagonist, the supportive brother of a man trying to become a better father and the lover devoted by his partner’s passing.

We’re no longer relegated to the role of the degenerate reprobate. (more…)

Over at the Rhetorican, Jehuda wonders “you can be a ‘fierce advocate’ of gay rights and still oppose gay marriage.”  It’s called being a Democrat.  Having that (D) after your name often renders you immune from criticism from gay activists for stands which would warrant attack for those with the mark of Cain an (R) after their names.

You see the President calls himself a “fierce advocate for gay and lesbian Americans” and he’s a Democrat so gay activists and bloggers swoon at the mere mention of his name.  And yet he holds the exact stand on gay marriage which has made Carrie Prejean the latest target of the politically correct.  She just didn’t learn that what she needs do to avoid such calumny is declare herself a Democrat, committed to social justice and full equality (whatever that latter expression means).

Now, with the President favoring the traditional definition of marriage and doing nothing to repeal Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell, we’re beginning to hear some grumbling from gay activists.  He will try to quite this discontent by signing the Hate Crimes bill into law, possibly placating the leaders of various national gay organizations by inviting them to the White House for a signing ceremony.

My sense is they’ll take the bait, given the Go Along/Get Along approach to Democratic politicians.  Obama may be under pressure to engage on gay issues, but if he doesn’t, well, that won’t dampen the enthusiasm of all but the most principled gay activists for this Democrat.  You see, he’s a Democrat.  And for all too many gay leaders, activists and bloggers (with notable and honorable exceptions, including some on the far far left), that’s all that matters.

RELATED:  How about some change on these two fronts, President Obama?

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.

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…)

Last night, I went to see a straight friend performing in a gay-themed play at West Hollywood’s Celebration Theater and was quite impressed with his performance in particular and the show in general.  The play, The Prodigal Father, depicts a strained father-son relationship when the father suffering from Alzheimer’s escapes from his Tennessee nursing home and barges in on his son and his lover in a Chicago loft.

I had this strange thought as I was waiting for the show to begin, perhaps sparked by the poster for Tony Kushner’s Angels in America on one of the set walls.  It was almost like wincing, anticipating some anti-Republican barb in the play.  It seems standard fare for gay productions.  (And I wonder if such portrayals where the playwrights write their own biases into the script help create the dishonest stereotypes which exist in our community.)

This show lacked such barbs, indeed, treated the father’s faith with a degree of respect.  But, during the show a thought occurred to me:  Has there every been a positive portrayal of a gay Republican on stage?

I don’t know.  I’ve never seen one, but do wonder.  If you’re aware of such portrayals, let me know, even in plays written for and produced by local (and or community) theaters.

We are having a party tonight at a dueling piano bar in Charlotte. To our great shock, the piano player announced the death of Bea Arthur. In memory of her, the first song was the theme from “Maude”.

I am quite saddened by her passing. I loved her in “The Golden Girls” and thought she would live forever.

I’m having a beer and raising it in a toast to one of my childhood icons, Bea Arthur.

RIP.

UPDATE (from Dan):  After reading that Maud had died, I headed over to the blog to write out a quick tribute to the great Beatrice and saw that Bruce had similar feelings for this star of stage and screen (big and small).

I can still her voice as Yenta (the Matchmaker) on the cast album for Fiddler on the Roof and only wish Angela Lansbury had reprised her role as Mame in the screen version of the musical.  To see Lansbury opposite Arthur as Vera!  What would a treat that would have been!  So, here, in memory of a truly great lady, I offer their classic duet on friendship:

In his book The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University,” Brown University student Kevin Roose writes about his semester as transfer at Liberty University, the Virginia university founded by Jerry Falwell. In an article about that student and this book, AP’s Eric Tucker reports that “A roommate he depicts as aggressively anti-gay — all names are changed in the book is an outcast on the hall, not a role model.“

Even students at Liberty University, like patrons at a New Jersey sports bar, they have no truck for loud-mouthed anti-gay attitudes.  Not all young people may support gay marriage, but it does seem that the overwhelming majority are remarkably tolerant of their gay peers, even in socially conservative institutions.

We really have made a lot of progress in the last forty years.  And it’s important that we acknowledge it.

Bashing gay people is no longer a parth to gaining favor with one’s peers.  It’s just not cool.  And that, my friends, is something to cheer.

(H/t Instapundit.)

Just released today from GOProud Executive Director Jimmy LaSalvia….

(Washington, D.C.) — “In the next few days, the Democratic controlled House of Representatives will do exactly what the Republican controlled House in the 108^th Congress did — pass hate crimes legislation.  In their cynical never-ending quest to lower expectations, the gay left will undoubtedly hail the passage of hate crimes legislation as ‘historic.’  While the passage of hate crimes may be laudable, its passage, and indeed even its enactment into law, is not historic.

“The truth is that Democrats have spent no political capital on moving on important election year promises such as the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the partial repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act.  Instead of making excuses for the lack of action by Democrats in Washington, the leaders of the gay left should be demanding that Democrats commit to living up to the promises they made.”

That will be the day.  Oh, if you haven’t joined GOProud, please sign up and donate today.  Our group is the only one engaged in the issues that matter to gay conservatives in America.

I have committed $2,000 to the new organization.  Please help us spread the word!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

It’s not just lesbians who are being open about their sexuality at Tea Parties. A reader sends this picture from Philadelphia where he protested excessive government spending at the Tea Party there.

We’re out, we’re proud and we’re agitating against spendthrift budgets and for freedom!

The various national (and some local) gay and lesbian groups have promoted a great variety of silly gimmicks to get their message across that it becomes hard to determine which is the silliest.

Well, today the Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) is sponsoring a Day of Silence where at schools across the country, “students take a day-long vow of silence to symbolically represent the silencing of LGBTQ students and their supporters.”  That certainly ranks up there.

I just don’t see what these stunts accomplish in a day when gay students are free to organize and speak out in favor of openness and inclusion and against discrimination.

I know that some social conservatives overreact to this Day, with one promoting a video about the project which “exposes how our children are being indoctrinated, held captive and forced to accept an unproven and dangerous ideology while Biblical Truth is undermined” (via Althouse).  Silly the stunt but be, but indoctrination it’s not.

I just wonder though at the need of gay groups to promote events where people go out of their way to advertise their difference and to make a statement.  Wouldn’t it just be easier to encourage students to come out and live their lives openly and telling them to be unafraid to report any harassment by their peers?

Such stunts seemed geared to a different time when people were less open about their sexuality than they are today.

(It seems I had something else to add–and may at a later time–but am drawing a blank right now.  Maybe it will come out in response to the comments.)

Big kudos to Chris Barron and Jimmy LaSalvia for this outstanding coverage of the formation of our new gay conservative organization, GOProud.

William McGurn writes in his WSJ column today:

Some of these issues are explored at GayPatriot.org, whose founder, Bruce Carroll, is also on the board of GOProud. From the disastrous economic policies of Massachusetts Democrat Rep. Barney Frank to the outing of gay Republicans to the importance of male sexual monogamy, this conservative site offers a perspective you just won’t see anywhere else. Even on hot-button social issues, it can make for some strange bedfellows.

Take abortion. Christopher Barron, GOProud’s chairman of the board, points to an example from a few years back, when a Maine state legislator introduced a bill that would have outlawed abortion for a child thought to be gay, in the event genetic testing ever reached that point. That politician, Mr. Barron says, received virtually no support from gay groups. Though he himself is pro-choice, he says, “I want pro-life gays to know they have a home here.”

Whatever else it is, these are not your father’s gay Republicans. To the contrary, GOProud springs from a growing dissatisfaction among some gay Republicans that the Log Cabin Republicans, the traditional gay advocacy group within the party, has drifted to the point where its positions are indistinguishable from those of the left. It didn’t help when the Washington Blade chimed in with a report that Log Cabin’s biggest contributor, Tim Gill, is a Democrat.

Messrs. LaSalvia and Barron are themselves former officers for the Log Cabin Republicans. They know they belong to a defeated party that has no clear leaders but is now making decisions that will determine that party’s future in the years to come. They say they have formed GOProud in part to participate in that conversation — as conservatives who want to contribute to the team.

The ironies are legion. Since the loss of Congress and Mr. McCain’s defeat in November, any number of people have come forward to suggest that if the party ever wants to win again, it has to abandon its conservative principles. What does it say about the Beltway’s established ideological boxes that it is the gay wing of the Republican Party which is now advocating for a return to the party’s Reaganite roots?

We are now the “gay wing” of the Republican Party.  Awesome.  Thanks for the recognition of our new group, Mr. McGurn.

I hear a lot of gay liberals heads exploding today.  Andrew Sullivan’s brain matter is probably on the floor, too.

*pop*  *pop*  *pop*

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

I’m not sure I’ve seen a more succinct summary of why most Americans oppose the strategy, tactics and language used by the Gay Left in the marriage debate than this excellent comment by GP Reader Ashpenaz in Dan’s posting yesterday.

Here’s why—gay advocates want to undermine the traditional understanding of marriage as a lifelong, sexually exclusive relationship and change it to include multiple partners, open relationships, and serial monogamy. They are not trying to be included in the tradition—they are trying to warp the tradition because they believe they are victimized by a cruel patriarchy who uses marriage as a tool of oppression.  Attempting to justify their inclusion in an established tradition would be contrary to their desire to destroy that tradition.  It’s that simple. Now you know why.

As a gay American, it is hard to argue with those points.

And if you are a straight American, it is easy to see why you would recoil at judicially mandated gay marriage when anyone with honest intellectual capacities can figure out the real agenda.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

The folks at Pajamas asked me to write an essay for them on an ABC News segment on the reaction of patrons in a New Jersey sports bar when they (i.e,. ABC News) dispatched a gay couple to that locale.  Then, they spiced it up by having another actor verbally harass them.  Here are the first three paragraphs.

The news division of another broadcast network has been staging “news” in an attempt to show the prejudices of the American people.  Only this time, it didn’t work out as planned.  After planting a gay couple and an actor portraying a loud-mouthed anti-gay bigot at a New Jersey sports bar, ABC News learned that the bar’s patrons are, on the whole, a remarkably tolerant lot.

This wasn’t the first time that ABC staged “news” in an attempt to show the prejudices of those from more “conservative” segments of American society, supposedly macho sports fans or Southern whites.  This network has not been alone in engineering events designed to show such prejudice.  Three years ago, NBC sought to dispatch Muslims to a NASCAR race in order to show how “red-state” America would react.

These news producers seem convinced that the places to look for prejudice in America are places where conservatives congregate.  Or, perhaps, it might be more accurate to say where people different from them congregate.  They always do seem to discern prejudice in the “other.”

Now that I’ve whet your appetite, click here to read the rest.

For the better part* of Andrew Sullivan’s career, he was something of an iconoclast.  While he identified himself as a conservative (he still does), he was really more of a conservative by default.  He got his start in American journalism, writing for The New Republic, the flagship magazine of serious liberal thought, but he was anything but an American liberal.  Nor did he fit within the mainstream of conservative thought, yet in his heyday (from about 1989 to 2004), he was philosophically closer to contemporary conservatism than he was to Anglo-American liberalism.

What distinguished him more than anything was that he was the first (or at least the most prominent) gay public intellectual to write about gay issues in a way that challenged the gay orthodoxy.  And for that he earned the scorn of those with whom he liked to socialize.

An intellectual by day, Andrew enjoyed (and I presume still enjoys) frequenting gay haunts at night.  He summers in Provincetown, long a retreat for East Coast gays, nearly all of whom (the outspoken ones at least) hold left-of-center political views.  And while Andrew, like all of us (or most of us at least), didn’t push his political ideas during every hour of the day, many of his ideological adversaries were determined to define him by his departures from said gay orthodoxy.

Instead of finding his off-time as a respite from the rigors of his working life, his angry adversaries used it to remind him of his unorthodox opinions.  They insulted him in bars, threw drinks in his face and, if one account is to believed, even spit on him.  Other gay writers and activists were no kinder, regularly ridiculing him as a traitor to the cause.  One such individual made Andrew’s private life a source for public censure.

Such nastiness takes its toll even on the hardiest of human beings.  And Andrew is, if anything, human, very human.

That’s one reason I think he has, in recent years, gone so far to the left, more out of a sense of fatigue at being the outcast among his peers than anything else.

(more…)

As a Jew, I shudder every time I see Bernie Madoff on the news.  Even though most of the people whom he bilked were also Jewish, I fear some people may attribute his misdeeds to his faith, even though his professional actions violated so many tenets of Jewish ethics.  He is not only a bad man, but also a bad Jew.

Similarly, as a gay man, I cringe when I see such people as Barney Frank take the public stage.  There is no doubt that Mr. Frank is a very, very bright man who perhaps comes up with more clever quips than any of his congressional colleagues, yet he is also a vicious partisan with a very fixed vision of the world.  He rarely admits his mistakes.

Watching him join what Michelle Malkin has called The Kabuki Theater of AIG Outrage, grandstanding over executive bonuses at the troubled company while silent on worse outrages at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, I wonder how the American people see his hypocrisy.  And if they do take note of it, will their unfavorable opinion of him translate into a negative opinion of gay people, given that he is the most prominent openly gay politician in America.

Having read some of my posts on the Massachusetts Congressman, Blogger Bill Jacobson asked me to consider whether “Barney Frank is bad for gays.”  In offering his thoughts on the matter, Jacobson notes how Frank’s political prescriptions are reminiscent of “political witch hunts” which cheapen public discourse.

In sum, I think he is.  While most gay activists focus on the prominence of this openly gay man as the chair of an important House committee, I see instead a man ever eager to engage in partisan warfare and always ready to blame his ideological adversaries for whatever problems face the nation.  If people identify gay people with Frank, they will see us a group who fails to take responsibility for our actions and instead continually blames others.

(more…)