GayPatriot

The Internet home for American gay conservatives.

Why NGLTF doesn’t get people of faith

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In a statement last week, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) once again showed why gay groups are making little headway in reaching out to “red-state” Americans, particularly people of faith.

Although the statement is titled Articles of Faith: Reframing Issues of Religion, Public Policy, and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community, NGTLF’s Religious Leadership Roundtable does not itself reframe such issues, but instead seems to be insisting that its opponents should be the ones reframing the issues:

Faced with the long history of societal, legal, and religious change in favor of greater freedom and equality, the burden of proof rests on those who oppose equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people

It seems far-fetched for the organization promoting change to insist that the burden of proof falls on those defending the status quo. No, it’s up to us to make the case for change. It’s one reason I have been promoting gay monogamy on this site. If we want social (including religious) institutions to recognize our unions, we need to make clear that we are willing to accept the same conditions attached to traditional marriage.
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Join GPW at Log Cabin/LA’s March 28 dinner

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On behalf of the blog, I have reserved a table at the March 28 Dinner of the Log Cabin Republicans of Los Angeles at the Wyndam Bel Age Hotel in West Hollywood. Ben Stein, one of my favorite Hollywood writers, will be speaking.

If you’d like to join me at the this event, please send an e-mail to hold a place: GayPatriotWest@aol.com. Tickets are $50 a piece ($10 less than if you reserved directly through Log Cabin/LA).

-Dan (aka GayPatriotWest): GayPatriotWest@aol.com

LCR fails to tell truth about president’s record on gays

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As the amount of hate mail that GP and I receive has increased of late, I wondered what, if anything, Log Cabin has done to take issue with the mean-spirited anti-Republican comments in the gay media. While so many hate us for supporting President Bush, last night as I worked on my piece, Republican Parents of Lesbians, I realized once again how mixed this Administration’s record on gay is.

And yet while the record is mixed, the impression we get from our gay peers, from the gay media and even from the largest gay Republican group with a full-time office in Washington is that President Bush and his Administration are extremely anti-gay. To be sure, he — and some of his appointees — have done several troubling things. He has backed the Federal Marriage Amendment. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings singled out for criticism one episode (of a PBS television program her department funded) featuring a same-sex couples.

That said, the Clinton Administration also had a mixed record on gays and yet gay activists go ga-ga over the man. Just like his successor, Bill Clinton did some very troubling things. The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) refused to rescind its endorsement of that Democrat in 1996 when, in the dead of the night, he signed the Defense of Marriage Act into law.
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Valentine’s Day Open Thread–How’d you meet your schweetie?

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For those of us lacking a schweetie (my term for significant other) on Valentine’s Day, I ask that those partnered Patriot fans to write in and share stories of how they met their schweetie. Register a comment below or drop me a line here.

I have found that it is difficult to meet other gay men who seek long-term monogamous relationships and want to learn ways to face this challenge. What can those single ones of us do so that we will not be celebrating Valentine’s Day alone again next year?

Thanks and Happy Valentine’s Day!

Republican parents of lesbians

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Once again, I am grateful to Christian Grantham’s blog for alerting me to important happenings in the gay world. Just last week, he posted two items on conflicting attitudes of two different Republican parents of lesbians. Fortunately, the one with the better attitude has an office in the White House, while the other ran well behind the president in his bid for elective office in a “blue state.”

Christian reported that Alan Keyes, a three-time loser in his bid for Senate seats in Maryland and Illinois, kicked his lesbian daughter out of the house. He also noted that America’s Second Lady, the wise and classy Lynne Cheney, opposes an amendment to the constitution banning gay marriage.

While in my previous post, I agreed strongly with one of Christian’s, this time I’m afraid I have to disagree with that hard-working blogger and web guru. He suggests that Dr. Keyes who ran 17 points behind the president in Illinois represents the “compassionate conservatism of Republicans.” While I believe the president is wrong to back a constitutional amendment defining marriage, he better represents the face of the real Republican party than does Alan Keyes.

This president has refused to cave in to the demands of social conservatives that he rescind a Clinton-era Executive Order barring discrimination against gays in the federal workforce. He believes states should be left alone to decide whether or not to recognize same-sex civil unions. His Vice President (and some say, his closest political advisor) has been open about his disagreement with the president on the marriage amendment. And once again, the Vice President’s wife has made public her opposition to the amendment.

Not only that. This president allowed the Vice President’s daughter to bring her same-sex partner on stage with him when he declared victory in the presidential election. That young woman sat in the presidential box at the Republican National Convention. And she sat right behind the Vice President’s daughter, her beloved, at the inauguration last month.

It is reprehensible what Alan Keyes has done. There are few worse things that a parent could do than to reject his own child. His daughter must be one remarkable woman for, despite her father’s inexcusable behavior, the “WASHINGTON POST” reports that she still loves him.

A man who rejects his own children is not the face of the GOP. I condemn Mr. Keyes strongly for this action and encourage him to show true love and to welcome his daughter back into his family even if he opposes what he might call her “lifestyle.” And I note that many Republicans have rejected Dr. Keyes as well. Nearly one million Bush-voters in Illinois refused to cast a ballot for Dr. Keyes last fall in his bid for the U.S. Senate.

No, that three-time loser is not the face of the GOP. The Vice President presents a better image of compassionate conservatism than does that conservative firebrand. We must always remember that our president, the standard-bearer of the Republican party, picked as his second in command and closest advisor a man who cherishes his lesbian daughter and welcomes her partner into his family.

-Dan (aka GayPatriotWest): GayPatriotWest@aol.com

Christian’s “nemesis” & irresponsible behavior

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I don’t always agree with Christian Grantham. Indeed, like many readers of this blog, I often find myself at odds with him. But, in short post on a New York man’s contraction of a “highly drug-resistant” strain of HIV, he’s right not to mince his words:

I’m tired of irresponsible gay lifestyles so obsessed with sex that the value of other people’s lives come second to personal pleasures. The incessant appeals by a handful of community “leaders” for liberal sensitivities on crystal meth abuse and the willful spread of HIV is nothing short of complicit neglect and murder.

Maybe his language is a little strong, but his outrage is that of the Greek goddess Nemesis, righteous indignation. Some readers accuse us of self-hatred, but what do they call the behavior of men who frequently do drugs and repeatedly practice unsafe sex?

Dean’s Democrats–hating Bush more than they love America?

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While I enjoy her singing voice and her performances in many movies, particularly her three greats, “FUNNY GIRL“, “WHAT’S UP DOC?” and “THE WAY WE WERE,” I tend not to agree with Barbra Streisand‘s politics. Both of us, however, admire the late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.

That great woman once said that Israel “will have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.” We could paraphrase that to describe the state of civil discourse today in Washington. We will have civil discourse again in Washington when Democrats love their country more than they hate President Bush.
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