GayPatriot

The Internet home for American gay conservatives.

Log Cabin: Only gay group with guts to oppose Hagel?

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A few weeks ago, Bruce reported that at least one gay group was knuckling under to pressure from Washington Democrats to accept former Senator Chuck Hagel’s apology for anti-gay remarks he made in 1998.  Do wonder how readily this group would have been to accept a real Republican’s change of heart.

Today, President Obama announced that he intends to appoint Mr. Hagel as Secretary of Defense.

Despite the eagerness of gay groups to approve of Mr. Obama’s appointment, “the target of the 1998 slur, leading gay philanthropist James Hormel, told” the Washington Post‘s Greg Sargent last month that

. . . he never received an apology from Hagel himself, questioned the sincerity of the apology, and said the incident should still raise questions about whether Hagel is the right man to oversee the repeal of don’t ask don’t tell.

“I have not received an apology,” Hormel, who is a major figure in Democratic politics, told me. “I thought this so-called apology, which I haven’t received, but which was made public, had the air of being a defensive move on his part.” Hormel added that the apology appeared to have been given “only in service of his attempt to get the nomination.”

Well, while most gay groups seem more interested in pleasing Mr. Obama than in standing up for gay Americans, at least one gay organization is taking issue with the Hagel appointment.  Log Cabin

. . . called former senator Chuck Hagel’s (R) apology for his past statements on gay rights “too little, too late” in a full page ad in Monday’s Washington Post.

The ad appears the same day President Obama plans to announce Hagel as his nominee for defense secretary.

The Log Cabin Republicans announced their opposition to Hagel and ran a similar ad in the New York Times last month.

(Via Jennifer Rubin.)  Kudos, Clarke Log Cabin.

UPDATE: Just learned that Clarke Cooper is no longer head of Log Cabin, thus is not responsible for this release.

The Obama record on gay marriage: evolution without action

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Today, many gay Americans will vote (or have already) enthusiastically for Barack Obama in large part because of his recent evolution on gay marriage.

This evolution, however, has not translated into action.  He has yet to put forward a legislation to recognize same-sex marriages — or even same-sex civil unions.  Nor has he pressed Congress to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).  He hasn’t even sat down with congressional leaders to map out a strategy.

He never reached out personally to Republicans open (or potentially open) to backing gay marriage to ask for their help in realizing federal recognizing of same-sex unions.  Just as it was with gay marriage, so was it with immigration reform.  Four years ago, he promised Hispanic voters that he would pass immigration reform in his first year in office.

And except for a few perfunctory meetings, he never tried to forge a compromise with legislators from both parties.  He just didn’t make any effort to realize his promises.

The bottom line here is to repeat what we said last month.  Barack Obama’s evolution on gay marriage was for nothing; if he’s reelected he has said, he won’t do anything to push for federal recognition of same-sex marriages.  Or even civil unions.

As it is with gay marriage in 2012, it was with immigration reform in 2008:   Barack Obama was pandering in order to secure the votes and campaign cash of an important constituency.

HRC’s has nothing to say about Obama’s backtracking on marriage
. . .or Kyle Wood’s beating

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Yesterday, as we reported here, President Barack Obama whom HRC endorsed back in May 2011, long before the Republican primaries were even underway, “President Obama told MTV viewers that when it comes to same-sex marriage, it would be up to future generations of Americans to implement meaningful reform.”

This morning, I checked HRC’s web-site to see what the gay rights’ outfit had to say about Mr. Obama’s statement.  I could find nothing in their press releases.  A search on their home page for “obama mtv marriage” (without quotation marks) yielded nothing.

I also wondered what they had to say about the brutal beating of gay Republican, Kyle Wood.  Wood, as you recall, had been beaten after his car had been vandalized with mean-spirited insults, including the word, “faggot.”

Here are the results of my search:

HRC, Two Days of Silence on this assault, Will You Speak Up? [Read more…]

Another symbolic gesture to scare up gay votes* for Democrats

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Yahoo! is currently headlining a story that the “Democratic Party has added new language endorsing gay marriage in its platform draft, the Washington Blade reports.”

Predictably, liberal gay friends on Facebook are cooing over the report.  All the hullabaloo over this story obscures one points which most gay Democrats don’t desire to discuss:  when Democrats had solid majorities in both houses of Congress in the first two years of the Obama administration, neither President Barack Obama nor the Democratic leaders of either house made any serious effort to move forward on federal recognition of same-sex civil unions.  They didn’t even reach out to Republicans open to such recognition to try to craft a bipartisan approach.

With signs that the House will remain Republican after the current elections — and with increasing signs that the Senate will flip as well — this new platform language is meaningless.  The real question is why national gay organizations would rather demonize the presumptive Republican presidential nominee (or a chicken chain) than reach out to Republicans.

(More on this as time allows.)

* [Read more…]

Will gay activists never tire of asking for more government action?

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“How Many Laws”, I asked in October 2010, “Do We Need To Achieve ‘Full Equality’?”

That question crossed my mind again yesterday when I read Paul Bedard’s post in the Washington Examiner:

President Obama’s campaign website lists 41 achievements on behalf of gay voters–a White House record–making him the hero of the community. But for some that’s not enough as he is about to find out during a star-studded Miami fundraiser Tuesday featuring singer Marc Anthony.

As donors gather at the Jackie Gleason Theater three blocks from the oceanfront to fete the president at a Latinos for Obama event, vocal members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community plan to protest for an executive order barring workplace discrimination, the last major gay initiative awaiting action by the president.

No matter how much society changes, it will always pose certain challenges to be different, even the most tolerant environments.

Government will never be able to solve all (or even most of) our problems.  Indeed, more often than not, state solutions exacerbate problems they were designed to rectify.

Let us continue to push for federal recognition of our unions and then once we’ve secured those privileges, look out for our fellows and turn to private associations for social improvement.

Will Obama “do the work” for gay Americans?

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Last week, as even the folks on MSNBC found Obama’s speech on the economy fell flat, many on the right wondered at the effectiveness of Obama’s rhetoric.  As James Taranto put it Friday in Best of the Web:

What’s a bit astonishing is that Obama and his advisers still seem to believe that he has the capacity to work magic with a speech. . . . But has he ever actually done so?

He made a good first impression with his uplifting 2004 Democratic National Convention speech. Since then, what? His “race” speech drew extravagant praise at the time, and it succeeded in diverting attention from his association with his hate-mongering “spiritual mentor,” Jeremiah Wright. But no one remembers what he said in it. We liked his Tucson memorial speech last year, but apart from that the Obama presidency has been a long series of supposedly crucial speeches that amount to nothing.

Mr. Obama so trusts in the power of his own ratory that he seems to believe a speech will do the work of governing for him.  Well, he didn’t quite give a speech when he, as Tammy Bruce put it, became the first “gay for pay” president.  On that occasion, all he did was express his support of gay marriage.  His words, on that occasion, did indeed have a powerful effect, helping the Democrat rake in more cash from partisans eager to have a reason to love him.

Instead of hyperventilating when he says the thing they want him to say, shouldn’t they be asking that he do something?  This past week he made a speech on the economy.  Now, is he going to sit down with congressional leaders in order to hammer out a package that could pass muster with a divided Congress?

Similarly, what are his plans to push legislation recognizing same-sex relationships at the federal level?  And why aren’t those signing hosannas to him asking questions about those plans?

Or holding him to account for failing to act when his party enjoyed strong majorities in Congress?

FROM THE COMMENTS:  “Wouldn’t a better title to your blog,” asks davinci, “be ‘Will Obama Do the Work for All Americans?'”

No, Barack Obama is not a pragmatist, particularly on gay issues

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I know very little about Gordon D. Fox, the Speaker of the Rhode Island House of Representatives.  And that little I have read of the man indicates that in the debate over gay marriage, he is one of the few, to borrow (and build upon) an expression, adult politicians in the room.

Although the Democrat, who happens to be gay, supports state recognition of same-sex marriage, he had a back-up plan when he could not get enough votes (on gay marriage legislation) in a chamber where, according to ballotpedia, his party controls 65 of the 75 seats:

Rhode Island’s House speaker has given up on passing legislation extending marriage rights to gay couples this year, because he says there is no realistic chance for passage of the bill in the Senate.

Gordon Fox says he will recommend that the House doesn’t move forward with a vote on the marriage equality bill during this legislative session, and instead will support a civil unions’ bill that gives legal rights to same-sex couples in the Ocean State.

In short, when he couldn’t get the votes on gay marriage, he adopted a different tack — and today the Ocean State recognizes same-sex civil unions.  For some, this may not be the ideal, but for gay couples, it’s a lot better than it was before Fox’s sensible compromise.

Which brings me to Barack Obama.  Last night, when returning him from an Outfest event, I caught this from a lesbian Facebook friend, who had recently attended what appears to be the Democrat’s 150th fundraiser* where she was one of many gay and lesbian Angelenos giving the president an “enthusiastic welcome” in Beverly Hills:  “He is eloquent and charming, but also a very pragmatic realist.”

A “very pragmatic realist”?  Oh, really?   [Read more…]

Not proud of Obama’s shift on gay marriage

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Yesterday, I wrote that I’d “have to agree to disagree” with Richard Grenell’s expression of “pride in the president’s patently political statement” announcing his shift on gay marriage.  Like two-thirds of Americans in a recent poll, I believe the Democrat flipped on gay marriage “mostly for political reasons“.  Not even one quarter of Americans surveyed thought he made the decision because he believed it to be the right thing.

Perhaps had he better articulated his support for gay marriage, making the case why expanding the definition of this ancient institution would be a good thing both for the individuals who elect its benefits as well as for the society which recognizes same-sex couples as married.

Given the president’s failure to adequately articulate the reasons for his sudden change of heart “evolution” and the survey cited above, his statement which may cause numerous gay activists (nearly all previously favorably disposed to the Democrat) to feel good about themselves, will do little to further state recognition of same-sex unions.

Perhaps had the president, instead of announcing his switch in an interview with a friendly reporter, made a speech, putting forward ideas in favor of marriage similar to those offered by Jonathan Rauch, I might take him more seriously.  But, given the alacrity of his campaign — and Democratic affiliates — to use his new position for political/fundraising purposes, it seems that his switch was more related to the needs of his campaign than to an appreciation of the social benefits of matrimony.

Krauthammer on the Obama gay marriage straddle

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“Notwithstanding a comically fawning press” writes Charles Krauthammer this morning about the president’s sudden switch on gay marriage, “Obama knows he has boxed himself in.”

In his op-ed, the sage pundit talks about two arguments for gay marriage, Argument A, empathy, and Argument B, rights, and the president’s muddled position as he tries to straddle the two, first the former when he first announced his new position, then “five days later” moving on  “to adopt Argument B, calling gay marriage a great example of  ‘expand[ing] rights‘ and today’s successor to civil rights, voting rights, women’s rights and workers’ rights”:

Problem is: It’s a howling contradiction to leave up to the states an issue Obama now says is a right. And beyond being intellectually untenable, Obama’s embrace of the more hard-line “rights” argument compels him logically to see believers in traditional marriage as purveyors of bigotry. Not a good place for a president to be in an evenly divided national debate that requires both sides to offer each other a modicum of respect.

It’s Krauthammer.  Read the whole thing.

NB:  Am working on a post to address the argument that even if Obama is not sincere about his switch on gay marriage, it’s good to have the president speak out on the topic.  In this post, I will note the several arguments, gay marriage advocates make for expanding the definition of this ancient institution and address why Obama’s approach is so unsatisfying.

Although I often agree with Krauthammer and share his views about Obama trying to straddle the issue here, I believe there are more than just two types of arguments for gay marriage.