Skip to main content

Outright Libertarians: Fact-correcting the Queer Press (and funny)

Ok, when I gave a plug to Outright Libertarians I said I wished they had more of a sense of humor.

Handicapping the presidential race from a gay perspective in Fact-correcting the Queer Press, however, sets me straight--so to speak. (Ouch!)

The humor is dry, but it's definitely there, and the conclusions are solid:

Basically, gay voters have three choices this election season.

They can throw their support to Democrats, who define "outreach" as segregation of gay people into "separate and unequal" legal status; who argue about which is "bolder" by naming so-called partisan gay "leaders" as supporters (or keeping them in the closet, in Obama's case); and who claim to be "supporters of gay rights" yet have done literally nothing after years in the Senate to support even the most rudimentary (and aging) legislation pertaining to equality under the law.

Or they can throw their support to Republicans, who flee at the mention of gay people; thank gay people for their "support" while supporting anti-gay policies; or have the dubious distinction of politically and/or financially profiting from homophobic public statements or publications.

Or they can choose to support Libertarians, who unequivocally support equal treatment in marriage, taxation, immigration, military service, and adoption.

It's not a tough choice for those of us who are aware of the differences (and insist on quality gay journalism, something that's increasingly hard to find in the political arena).


That's the analysis; here's the best line from the piece:

Ben Labolt, a national spokesperson for the Obama campaign, said the campaign was definitely seeking gay support in Georgia and referred calls to Drenner for further comments.

Press releases from the Obama campaign listing Georgia supporters don’t include other notable gay leaders.

I guess that would be called "support from the closet."


Whether you're a proponent of gay rights or not, this piece is an outstanding example of covering the campaign from any single-issue perspective, and ultimately illuminates one serious conclusion:

Your faithful blogger got to meet the former Massachusetts governor at the Conservative Leadership Conference in Reno, Nevada and concluded that Romney is just as pandering and principle-free as Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and the other Democrats. In fact, they could swap places and not many people would notice.


Too true.

Comments

In the A-Gay lists, it's all about face time with elected officials. It validates them as being important people, having the ear of office holders who know a) they will never have to deliver on actually getting laws changed; and b) the gay leaders will always explain to the proles how complicated the political situation is and always will be, making it impossible to get anything done.

Sometimes, however, this view of the world makes sense. Certainly since President Bush discovered gays are a threat to the nation in 2003, it has made sense to work with officer holders to at least try and make sure things get no worse. Or as I remarked to an African-America judge who chided me in the middle of my 2004 seminar remarks for what she thought was an analogy of the African-American and gay experiences, "Judge, are there constitutional amendments on the ballot in fourteen states this fall that seek to make YOU a second-class citizen?"

Popular posts from this blog

A Libertarian Martin Luther King Jr. Day post

In which we travel into interesting waters . . . (for a fairly long trip, so be prepared) Dr. King's 1968 book, Where do we go from here:  chaos or community? , is profound in that it criticizes anti-poverty programs for their piecemeal approach, as John Schlosberg of the Center for a Stateless Society  [C4SS] observes: King noted that the antipoverty programs of the time “proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils,” with separate programs each dedicated to individual issues such as education and housing. Though in his view “none of these remedies in itself is unsound,” they “all have a fatal disadvantage” of being “piecemeal,” with their implementation having “fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies” or been “entangled in bureaucratic stalling.”   The result is that “fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.” Such single-issue approaches also have “another common failing — ...

Libertarian National Committee Deathwatch Part 1

As the LNC continues to lurch towards collapse, with the latest news of mass layoffs at HQ, I've decided to begin tracking those things leading the national party to irrelevance, even as state and local parties gain power. As news, rumors and rhetoric break out, I shall chronicle them in this ongoing series at Delaware Libertarian. Organizations approaching failure have a number of characteristics. One of the most striking is renunciation of their purpose and effort to reinvent themselves as a "me-too" provider of services in the marketplace. In this, the LNC has been on a collision course with destiny for a while now. Recently, for example, it hired Republican Party web site developer TerraEclipse to redesign the LNC web site . Terra created a web site very similar to those of the clients it brags most about -- far-right Republican conservatives like Tom McClintock and BJ Lawson. A quick look at the web site they built for the LNC is instructive. The tagline on the ...

The disturbing decline of the Delaware blogosphere: a very unfortunate Around the Horn (even if it's not Friday)

I've noticed a change in my own blog-checking habits over the past several weeks, and I don't know if it's just me or the reality of the last month of a divisive political campaign. I automatically used to check out Delawareliberal first and several times a day, because it was where I could find edgy, thought-provoking, and (dare I say it) funny banter going on. These days visit several other spots first, and my visits to DL are both shorter and less engaged. Why? Because the combination of invading neo-con commenters with the stridency of some of the major contributors has led to such pleasant exchanges as a post dedicated to labeling another blogger racist by donviti, whose own sense of provocative humor is generally so far out there that he makes John Belushi doing Samurai bartender on the SNL look positively pro-Asian. Or I can find Delawaredem and jason periodically spewing the idea that anybody who is not a liberal or progressive Democrat is somehow a non-American,...