Gay Marriage: Today

Following the sad passage of Proposition 8 in California last month, gay marriage has been in the news a lot lately. Newsweek magazine did a cover story on the spiritual reasons why gay marriage should be welcomed. The magazine then followed up on-line with responses to the article by experts in the field. And just this week, President-elect Obama invited the Rev. Rick Warren, a evangelical pastor from Orange County, California, to give the prayer at his inauguration. Warren is vehemently opposed to gay marriage and was one of the key backers of Proposition 8.

Obama is taking a lot of heat for this selection and justly so. While Warren has a commendable track record on the issue of fighting poverty -- unlike most well-known pastors in America -- his anti-gay stance is completely immoral. The President-elect defended his selection when the outcry against it came by saying that his would be an administration of inclusion, where all sides of a story would be welcome, thus helping America to come together. While I can support this in principle, it rings false to me here. Surely there were other pastors that would have been acceptable to the religious right who would also not have been key supporters of Propositon 8... and perhaps who were not publicly anti-gay. How can a choice truly be inclusive when the man being chosen is so radically exclusive?

Joe Solmonese, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, wrote a letter to Obama that was later published. It sums up the situation and the hurt pretty well.

Dear President-elect Obama -

Let me get right to the point. Your invitation to Reverend Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at your inauguration is a genuine blow to LGBT Americans. Our loss in California over the passage of Proposition 8 which stripped loving, committed same-sex couples of their given legal right to marry is the greatest loss our community has faced in 40 years. And by inviting Rick Warren to your inauguration, you have tarnished the view that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans have a place at your table.

Rick Warren has not sat on the sidelines in the fight for basic equality and fairness. In fact, Rev. Warren spoke out vocally in support of Prop 8 in California saying, “there is no need to change the universal, historical definition of marriage to appease 2 percent of our population ... This is not a political issue -- it is a moral issue that God has spoken clearly about." Furthermore, he continues to misrepresent marriage equality as silencing his religious views. This was a lie during the battle over Proposition 8, and it's a lie today.

Rev. Warren cannot name a single theological issue that he and vehemently, anti-gay theologian James Dobson disagree on. Rev. Warren is not a moderate pastor who is trying to bring all sides together. Instead, Rev. Warren has often played the role of general in the cultural war waged against LGBT Americans, many of whom also share a strong tradition of religion and faith.

We have been moved by your calls to religious leaders to own up to the homophobia and racism that has stood in the way of combating HIV and AIDS in this country. And that you have publicly called on religious leaders to open their hearts to their LGBT family members, neighbors and friends.

But in this case, we feel a deep level of disrespect when one of architects and promoters of an anti-gay agenda is given the prominence and the pulpit of your historic nomination. Only when Rev. Warren and others support basic legislative protections for LGBT Americans can we believe their claim that they are not four-square against our rights and dignity. In that light, we urge you to reconsider this announcement.

Sincerely,

Joe Solmonese
President
Human Rights Campaign

There have been plenty of op-eds on the subject as well. These include those by Chris Durang, Trey Ellis, Morra Aarons-Mele, Phil Bronstein, and Barney Frank.

Also, the HRC is inviting folks to thank Newsweek for covering the topic of gay marriage in a thoughtful, open manner. You can find their call for action here.

19 December 2008

Prop 8: It's Love, Stupid

Kieth Olbermann gave a wonderful, passionate commentary last night on why those who voted for -- or who supported from afar -- Proposition 8 in California last week got it so very, very wrong. He spoke not of politics, but of human decency and the need for love in an unloving world. He asked how one could blindly follow the supposed dictates of one's religion and yet ignore the maxim that all world religions use, namely "do unto others as you would have done unto you."

I highly recommend a look.

BARACK OBAMA WINS

Hope lives.

5 November 2008

Vote Obama!

I've spent the better part of a year telling you why I believe that Barack Obama should be our next president. Part of that, too, was telling the story of why John McCain is not fit for this position. Now, the day of reckoning is at hand. Get out and vote on Tuesday. No line should be too long. No day should be too hot or too cold. No foot should be too tired and no back should ache too much. Just vote.

Vote Barack Obama for President!

Yes we can!

3 November 2008

Trouble Voting?

If you have troubling voting on Tuesday -- or see anyone else having issues -- please, please, please report it. Trouble could include a challenge to your right to vote, trying to get you to cast a provisional ballot, saying that you are not registered, or anything else. Be forceful and do your best to cast an actual ballot. Cast a provisional ballot if all else fails. You should always have that right.

If you run into issues, you can call the Obama campaign hotline for just this reason at 1-877-874-6226. The call is free and the campaign will help you protect your rights and the rights of other voters. You can also contact the campaign via this link if you have a Blackberry or laptop.

You should also report problems to the press. CNN has a free hotline set up as well for this purpose. That number is 1-877-466-2608.

I also mentioned the Video Your Vote campaign in a prior post. If you have a video camera, consider taking it to record any problems at your voting place. You can see what to do with the footage at the link provided. Also at the post are voting tips on protecting your right to vote.

Voting is our most precious right as Americans. Protect and defend it!

3 November 2008

Massachusetts Live!

My wife and I are now Bay Staters. I arrived yesterday and we have managed to move our stuff into our rental home. I'm most excited to begin our new lives here... hopefully celebrating with an Obama victory tomorrow!

3 November 2008

"B" for Barack

Many of you have probably heard of the bizarre case of a McCain campaign volunteer carving a "B" into her cheek and claiming that an African-American Obama supporter did it because she worked for McCain. Yes, the story is horrid on many levels, primarily psychological. However, there is also a strong political slant to the story.

The woman who perpetrated the hoax did so surely to raise racial tension in the campaign. A black man going after a white woman? Carving into her face? Who would have supporters like this? Fortunately, her scheme backfired, with police being on to her from the start. And this brings forth the political story.

In spite of the fact that the police thought it a hoax from the start and treated the would-be victim as the suspect, the right-leaning media ran with the story. What is worse, the McCain campaign ran with it, too. While there is no indication that the national McCain campaign pressed the story, McCain's campaign communications director in Pennsylvania ran hard with the story from word one. Now, the McCain campaign is denying this set of facts, which brings the national campaign into the mix of lies. From TPM's David Kurtz:

In response to our story, campaign spokesperson Brian Rogers told MSNBC that the campaign didn't provide those details to the local reporters, but that the police did, and the reporters were sloppy in attributing them to the McCain campaign.

So here's what the McCain camp would have you believe. Two different TV stations. Two different reporters. Neither could distinguish what they were told by the police (whom they presumably deal with on a daily basis) from what a campaign flack told them. So thorough is their sloppiness that even after the fact, upon reflection, both reporters stick by their stories, continuing to misattribute police statements to the campaign.

The McCain campaign denial also requires you to believe that, more than 12 hours after the concocted attack, the police -- who say they were suspicious of the hoaxster's account from the beginning -- started leaking to reporters an incendiary version of events that didn't even make it into the original police report of the incident.

Perhaps most implausibly, the McCain camp account requires you to give the benefit of the doubt to a crew that wants you to believe that Obama himself is a smooth-talking, baby-killing Islamic terrorist who embraces socialism and white women.

Now, TPM's Josh Marshall calls for the national McCain campaign to come clean and answer for its lies surrounding the matter. Quoted in full.

It is time for the McCain campaign to come clean about what role any of its staffers may have had in hyping or pushing the press to hype the charges stemming from Ashley Todd's vicious and reprehensible hoax.

As Greg Sargent reported yesterday, McCain Pennsylvania communications director Peter Feldman pushed reporters on a highly incendiary version of Todd's hoax -- providing reporters with quotes from the fictitious attacker and telling them the the "B" scratched on Todd's face stood for "Barack." As the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson aptly put it, Feldman's actions showed "not just a willingness to believe it but an eagerness to incite a ... racial backlash against the Obama campaign."

Our reporting did not find any direct evidence that the McCain campaign's national headquarters played a role pushing the story.

However, the national campaign has now come forward and lied about what happened in Pennsylvania. McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers has now told NBC that alleged quotes from the McCain campaign in early reports of the story were actually the product of "sloppy reporting" and that they were actually quotes from the Pittsburgh police.

This is simply not credible.

Initial reports specifically quote the McCain campaign. And at least two sources involved in the contemporaneous reporting have come forward and said on the record that the quotes came directly from the McCain campaign. To believe that two separate local news organizations made the identical mistake with the same quotes and are now both covering it up is simply not credible. But that is what Rogers is now claiming.

The McCain campaign's after-the-fact lie about its role in this hoax makes it essential that it provide a complete and honest account of both the local and national campaign's role. As I said above, we did not find direct evidence of the national McCain campaign pushing this story. But Gov. Palin did call Todd after the purported attack, as did Sen. McCain. And news of these calls was provided to the press.

The involvement of the candidates and specifically the release of such information -- which was clearly intended to bump up interest in the story -- shows some level of involvement by the national campaign.

Perhaps it is simply that the national campaign heard a staffer had been mugged and had the principals call the purported victim. One might further speculate that it was only the Pennsylvania communications director who heard about the calls and took it upon himself to push these out to the media.

Possible, but certainly a generous interpretation. And now that we see the national McCain campaign making false statements about what happened, its credibility on the whole story is simply too damaged to allow such a benefit of the doubt.

Reporters who the McCain camp cannot stonewall need to push for a clear accounting of what happened -- starting by coming clean on Feldman's role. If this were simply some other minor campaign mystery, the sort that is routinely tossed off late in a hard-fought campaign, it might not matter. But the awfulness of what was attempted here makes nothing less than a full accounting necessary.

25 October 2008

Addition: If you can believe it, the Pennsylvania GOP -- and the McCain campaign as a whole -- grows even more putrescent. Now, they are claiming that Obama will bring a second Holocaust on Jews in Israel. I kid you not.