Skip to main content

UPDATED! Gary Johnson breaking through with some coverage of gay marriage stance

UPDATE--Add Talking Points Memo to the list:

Gay rights advocates on the other side of the aisle had a more measured take on the news.
“It is something that’s exciting. It’s obviously a good thing. This is obviously a step in the right direction,” said Christopher Barron, chief strategist for GOProud, which represents gay Republicans. Barron, who supports Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate for president, sees Obama’s move as purely political. Whereas several Democrats called Obama’s announcement courageous, Barron says it’s anything but. “The calls for him to step up to the plate within his own party had gotten to the point where he couldn’t tamp them down anymore,” Barron said. “I think the president has been overtly political about this from the very beginning. I’m glad he finally got to the right place on this, I just think it’s unfortunate that it had to happen the way it did.”

The Albuquerqe Journal quotes Libertarian Presidential candidate Gary Johnson's reaction to President Obama's rather equivocal statement of support for marriage equality:

“Gay marriage equality is not a trick question, and we shouldn’t be getting trick answers from the President of theUnited States. Gay Americans deserve better than a President who winks and nods and tries to convince them that he will protect their rights, but refuses to emerge from the closet and support one of the most basic rights – the right to  equal access to marriage.  And frankly, even opponents of gay marriage deserve the truth from the White House.  Is the President for it or against it? Right now, the Administration is trying to have it both ways.”  
HuffPo does a piece on voter choices with regard to presidential candidates and same-sex marriage and includes Gary Johnson in the mix:


Highlighting the GOP's position on this issue, an issue for which GOProud is attempting to gratuitously attack the president rather than look inward, two-time New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson was run out of the Republican Party primary earlier this year, in part because of his support of full equal marriage rights. As a result Gov. Johnson left the party and now has become the nominee of the Libertarian Party.
--snip--
But if you're a single-issue voter and you're in favor of equal marriage rights for same-sex couples, you now have a choice that at least includes President Obama and former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, who has more political executive experience than Mitt Romney, a one-term governor, and Sarah Palin, a half-term governor, combined.
This is a start--only a start.  From the leading newspaper in Johnson's own state and HuffPo it is yet another jump to consistent inclusion in the stories posed by CNN, FOX, ABC, CBS et al, but the Gary Johnson/Jim Gray ticket can break into that kind of coverage if they (and we) keep pushing.

Comments

Post a Comment

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 — ...
44 comments
Read more

More of This, Please

Or perhaps I should say, "Less of this one, please." Or how about just, "None of them. Ever again. Please....For the Love of God." Sunshine State Poll: Grayson In Trouble The latest Sunshine State/VSS poll shows controversial Democratic incumbent Alan Grayson trailing former state Senator Dan Webster by seven points, 43 percent to 36 percent. A majority of respondents -- 51 percent -- disapprove of the job that Grayson is doing. Independents have an unfavorable view of him as well, by a 36/47 margin. Grayson has ignored the conventional wisdom that a freshman should be a quiet member who carefully tends to the home fires. The latest controversy involves his " Taliban Dan " advertisement, where he explicitly compares his opponent to the Taliban, and shows a clip of Webster paraphrasing Ephesians 5:22 -- "wives, submit to your husbands." An unedited version of the clip shows that Webster was actually suggesting that husba...
70 comments
Read more

A reply to Salon's R. J. Eskrow, and his 11 stupid questions about Libertarians

Posts here have been in short supply as I have been living life and trying to get a campaign off the ground. But "11 questions to see if Libertarians are hypocrites" by R. J. Eskrow, picked up at Salon , was just so freaking lame that I spent half an hour answering them. In the end (but I'll leave it to your judgment), it is not that Libertarians or Libertarian theory looks hypocritical, but that the best that can be said for Mr. Eskrow is that he doesn't have the faintest clue what he's talking about. That's ok, because even ill-informed attacks by people like this make an important point:  Libertarian ideas (as opposed to Conservative ideas, which are completely different) are making a comeback as the dynamic counterpoint to "politics as usual," and so every hack you can imagine must be dragged out to refute them. Ergo:  Mr. Eskrow's 11 questions, with answers: 1.       Are unions, political parties, elections, and ...
31 comments
Read more