By Richard J. Rosendall
First published September 11, 2008 in Bay Windows
I’m sick of the phony reasons some gay people give for opposing Barack Obama. I am not talking about my friends in Log Cabin Republicans, who prefer John McCain for broader ideological reasons. I am talking about angry Hillary Clinton supporters.
For example, Sirius OutQ talk-radio host Larry Flick, still upset that Clinton had not won the Democratic nomination, slammed Obama on Aug. 28 for opposing same-sex marriage. Yet Clinton holds the same position on marriage — except that she would only repeal Article 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, whereas Obama favors total repeal.
Flick challenged Sirius Left host Mark Thompson, an African American minister and activist with whom I’ve worked for years, on his support for Obama. Flick expressed outrage that Obama accepted help from “blatant, aggressive homophobes” Donnie McClurkin and Illinois state Sen. James Meeks. Yet Clinton enjoyed support from homophobic Bishop Eddie Long of Lithonia, Ga., and from former D.C. City Council member Vincent Orange, who as a mayoral candidate in 2006 called his opponents morally unfit for supporting marriage equality.
Elizabeth Birch, longtime LGBT activists and former Executive Director of the Human Rights Campaign talks about the stark differences between Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain on LGBT issues.
In yet another sign of the “enthusiasm gap” between supporters of Barack Obama and supporters of John McCain comes this clever and funny take on Les Miserables.
If you haven’t already, register to vote, request an absentee ballot find your polling location at Vote for Change.
Voter registration deadlines across the country are coming upon us quickly. I don’t want you to miss out on the electoral fun of saying buh-bye to George Bush and Dick Cheney so I am posting registration deadline information for all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
The fight between Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain is a fight for the future direction of our country and we can’t have any sitting on the sidelines.
Visit Vote for Change to register to vote, request to vote absentee, or find your polling location.
There may have been a time when John McCain could have been considered a “maverick,” but that time has clearly come and gone. McCain has hired Karl Rove’s henchmen to run what even the traditional media is calling one of the nastiest campaigns in recent memory.
Okay, this clip from last night’s Saturday Night Live is just for fun. But the barbs that fly between Tina Fey as Sarah Palin and Amy Poehler as Hillary Clinton are the kind of sharp commentary lacking from much of the traditional media’s reporting on this election cycle.
With little more than 50 days to go before election, we are coming down to the wire in being able to reach out to friends and families about why this election is so crucial to the LGBT community. The information that gets shared here on LGBT for Obama is a great resource to help explain why a vote for John McCain is a vote against LGBT people and our families.
Here is a new McCain-Palin ad in which Barack Obama’s usage of the old “lipstick on a pig” cliché is being unfairly decontextualized so that it’s made to sound like a pointed reference to Palin:
But beyond the “lipstick” comment itself, there are several other points of opportunistic impropriety here. Like, for instance — what campaign was Katie Couric actually talking about when referencing sexism? Was “that campaign” referring to Obama’s, as Team McCain implies, or was it referring to…
Last Friday, a reporter from the New York Observer asked me what I thought about Sarah Palin. I told her I thought Sarah Palin was honest and real. I believe that. But, that in no way should be viewed as an endorsement of any kind. I oppose many of the positions of Sarah Palin, particularly those tied to the LGBT community. I am supporting Barack Obama and, in fact, I have lent my name to both Women for Obama and the Obama LGBT Steering and Policy Committee.
