Michaelangelo Signorile's latest article is a hoot to read -- you can almost see the veins standing out on his neck and the froth coming off his lips.
First, Siggy bashes all of us gay folk who made the comparison between Bush and Kerry, then decided to vote for Bush, as being "delusional and self-loathing" because Bush has "vowed to make (us) permanent second-class citizens by tinkering with the Constitution". Of course, Siggy conveniently ignores that he and his fellow liberal queers apparently had no problem with John Kerry opposing gay marriage, supporting state constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage, and substitute a "separate but equal" plan that, in the opinion of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, "maintains an unconstitutional, inferior, and discriminatory status for same-sex couples.
In short, both candidates sucked when it came to gay rights. However, there was one crucial difference....the antigay legislation and state constitutional amendments that Kerry supported passed.
After that, Siggy goes after Marsha Martin -- who, starting in April 1997, served in the Clinton administration as Special Advisor on AIDS issues to Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Donna Shalala. She's served as the executive director for AIDS Action, the nation's largest and most powerful alliance of AIDS service organization. So what's her crime?
Daring to be on the hosting committee for an inaugural ball -- which has triggered a smearfest from liberal gadfly Doug Ireland. To show you how desperate, Ireland's smear is, he blasts the AIDS Responsibility Project for taking out a full-page ad questioning the effectiveness and safety of uncontrolled generic AIDS drugs at the summer's International AIDS Conference in Bangkok, but fails to mention that, later in August, the World Health Organization delisted several (eighteen) generic AIDS drugs because they couldn't verify the drugs were effective, but had been prescribing them anyway.
Ireland's bigoted and half-truth rant aside (WHY is he quoting the disgruntled executive director who Martin replaced?), this shows one of the biggest problems in the gay community today -- those who are so desperate to spite Bush, they're cutting off their own arms and legs in the process. Sometimes, I wonder if the best solution for these haters like Ireland, Signorile, and John Aravosis is to simply let them continue down the path towards Fred Phelpsdom and bleed to death.
Personally, Martha's demonstrated an ability to work with both sides and done an outstanding job as a leader of AIDS Action -- I rather like Rich Tafel's suggestion (hat tip to Christian Grantham) to make Marsha head of HRC. They could use someone who knows how to play well with others.
1 comment:
Kerry did not suck when it came to gay rights. He was not perfect, but he did not suck.
Bush sucked when it came to gay rights.
Kerry was about as far to the left on gay issues that you can possibly be and still be viable at the national level. Do I wish that he was better and supported gay marriage. Sure.
But at least he favored civil unions. And at least he opposed the state amendments, like Missouri, once he learned that they banned civil unions too.
The way to judge the candidates on gay issues, is to look at those people who vote solely based on gay issues. And I mean from the other side. Find those people who despise gay people, and whose overriding concern is that we do not cave into the homosexual agenda. To those people, this election was very important. They felt that Bush was on their side and Kerry was adamantly opposed to it.
And from their perspective - they were right.
If they anti-gay people liked Bush, because he was anti-gay, it seems very obvious to say that Kerry was more pro-gay than Bush.
End of story.
Vote for Bush if you want. I won't knock you there. But don't say it was because there was zero difference on gay rights.
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