Not to beat a dead horse, but this op-ed column from the LA Times (
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-ehrenstein31oct31,0,4417577.story?coll=la-tot-opinion&track=ntothtml) gives perhaps some of the best analysis as to why
Obama really screwed up with the
McClurkin disaster. It will be interesting to see if he can redeem himself with those in the LGBT community. Watching him in the debate last night, I truly do not feel that
Obama is anti-gay. I do, however, wonder how hard he would push for gay rights if elected. Here are highlights from the column:
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But what's really on Obama's mind isn't LBGT Americans. It's black voters. With so much of the African American vote snugly in Hillary Clinton's pantsuit pocket, the Illinois senator clearly is hoping to make inroads before South Carolina's crucial 2008 primary.
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The offspring of a Kenyan father and a white American mother, Obama was raised in Hawaii and Indonesia without much churchgoing until he grew up and ran for office. So he is not only a generation but a world away from the political leadership most of us African Americans have come to know. Putting on Baptist drag and staging a gospel music show is precisely the sort of pandering Obama had scrupulously avoided. Until now.
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Now a gospel star may have driven a wedge between Obama and his gay supporters and roiled others as well. For, by putting McClurkin in the spotlight, Obama has broken black America's 11th Commandment: "Don't talk about it in front of the white people!"
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Black churches are so much at the center of African American public life, and so much in denial about the gays and lesbians in their pews and choir stalls. As the late Marlon Riggs said in "Tongues Untied," his acclaimed 1990 documentary about gay blacks and AIDS, "How many choir directors have to die before we know who we are?" The "Embrace the Change" lineup reflects how this struggle is far from over. McClurkin, who is a minister at an evangelical church in New York, calls homosexuality a "choice" -- needless to say the wrong one. The duo Mary Mary claims to love gays in a love-the-sinner kind of way, equating us with murderers or prostitutes. It is only Byron Cage of the Mighty Clouds of Joy who has been actively working to heal the gay-straight divide.
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Gays played pivotal roles in African American history, but the community continues to wish away their sexuality. Blues legends Bessie Smith, Alberta Hunter and Ethel Waters all took female lovers. (Impresario Leonard Reed once said Waters was "so mean she married her second husband to spite her girlfriend when she found out she was sleeping with him.") Gay composer Billy Strayhorn gave the Duke Ellington Orchestra its sound, including its theme song, "Take the A Train." The fabled Harlem Renaissance was, frankly, a gay and lesbian movement led by the likes of Zora Neale Hurston, Bruce Nugent and Langston Hughes.
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Over and above all these towers James Baldwin, the novelist and essayist whose accounts of the civil rights movement are without peer, and Bayard Rustin, the most important civil rights figure after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Rustin conceived of the 1963 March on Washington, but thanks to a vice arrest in Pasadena a decade earlier, he was forced to take a back seat during the unveiling of his masterpiece.Coretta Scott King never forgot Rustin's sacrifice and went on to support the gay-rights movement. Her daughter, however, the Rev. Bernice King, joined a 2004 march against same-sex marriage.
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And so we now find Obama trying, as it were, to court both branches of the King family. It won't work. And his continued relevance to gay and lesbian African Americans is over.
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Personally, I find it ironic that blacks as a whole, including the (in my view extremely biased) judge who heard the property settlement portion of my divorce, are incensed when faced with discrimination against them, yet are far more likely than other domestic racial groups to be discriminatory against LGBT individuals. One would think that victims of discrimination would be a bit more less discriminatory towards other minority groups.
Virginia is such a wonderful place. I mean, where else can you run for office, not address the real issues confronting the state, and just demonize your opponent and other citizens. Virginia State Senate candidate Jill Holtzman Vogel has joined other GOP sleaze bags and a mailer, with anti-gay and anti-Muslim overtones, is being sent by the Republican Party of Virginia on behalf of her campaign. The cards were sent to arrive in mailboxes less than one week prior to election day, November 6th, and after the endorsements of the areas largest papers. PageOneQ has the following highlights (http://pageoneq.com/news/2007/Republican_Party_sends_last_minute_antigay_antiMus_1102.html): 
I hope this story (http://content.hamptonroads.com/story.cfm?story=136132&ran=237314&tref=po) plays out and Jim Gilmore does in fact run against Mark Warner for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by John Warner. Gilmore left office as an unpopular Governor in contrast to Mark Warner who left with a roughly 70% approval rating. In fact one reason that Mark Earley did not succeed in being elected as Governor and lost to Mark Warner was because Earley, a former law partner of mine, did not sufficiently disavow and repudiate some of Gilmore's unpopular positions. In fact, when I first met Mark Warner as Governor, it was at the Equality Virginia Legislative Reception during Mark Warner's first year in office. Needless to say, people found it humorous that I had switched parties since Gilmore had appointed me to a state authority and I had been Earley's campaign co-chair in Virginia Beach. But I digress. Here are highlights from the story:
The results of the poll on the "Male Beauty" posts was running 67% in favor of keeping the posts. Therefore, I will continue to mix them in with serious and other posts. I also moved the Neopod down on the blog since some said the novelty had worn off. Until the trial period is over, I will keep it since to me it interesting to see how varied the locations of visitors can be within a period of only a few hours.
The " Rev." Fred W. Phelps Sr., is truly a nasty character and I find him personally reprehensible. Thus, I was pleased to see that his "church" was hit with a $10+ million judgment from a case arising out of the picketing of the funeral of an Iraq War victim. What is interesting is to hear the straight solder's family basically saying what the LGBT community has said about Phelps for years. Here are highlights from a New York Times story ( http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/02/us/02protest.html?_r=1&oref=slogin):
No doubt some of the Christianist will have their panties in a wad over the addition of a gay couple to the Desperate Housewives character line up, even though I am sure the show is already on their "condemned list." My feeling is that the more gay characters there are on television - especially in rolls that show we are basically like everyone else - the better. Here's what USA Today reports on the new characters:
A number of us bloggers debated via e-mail whether the principal player (no pun intended) this story deserved to have his story further circulated and commented upon. In general, my feeling is that if someone is actively taking and/or supporting anti-gay actions (either via legislation or religious message), they are open game. e.g., Richard Curtis, the recently resigned Washington State GOP cross-dresser or baptist pastors and Catholic priests who demonize gays in the pulpit and then seek out gay sex on the sly. Thus, someone like Catholic High School principal, Paul Schum is less clear cut case. 
This story New York Times story (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/world/middleeast/01dubai.html?_r=1&oref=slogin) about a 15 year old brutally attacked and raped in Dubai also highlights the hypocrisy with which gays are treated in the Middle East. Likewise, it underlines the fact that foreigners in Islamic countries (something we were told regularly when I worked for the oil company in the 1980's) truly need to use heightened care since you often will not get fair treatment under the host countries' laws. Moreover, frequently, your embassy either cannot or will not do much to help your situation. I applaud this boy and his family for refusing to let the dirt be swept under the rug. Here are highlights:
While the Chimperator and Emperor Palpatine Cheney try to convince the American public that things are improving in Iraq (personally, I take everything they say as a lie at this point), a veritable revolt has broken out in the State Department where diplomats are on verge of refusing to accept assignments in Iraq. One senior diplomat described assignment to Iraq as a "potential death sentence." Hmm, seem to me as if the folks within the State Department would have some feel for the reality on the ground. (We know that the Chimperator surely does NOT). If they do NOT want to go, I suspect things are in fact pretty bad. Here are some highlights from the Washington Post's coverage (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/31/AR2007103101626.html?hpid=topnews):
John Aravosis at America Blog (http://www.americablog.com/2007/11/bush-and-gop-on-economics.html) has a nice, concise summary of what has happened to the US economy under the reigns of the Chimperator and the previously GOP controled Congress. It is not pretty:
This story (http://www.365gay.com/Newscon07/11/110107army.htm) shows the idiocy of banning gays from military service (particularly when gang members and felons are being waivered in). When this country will follow simple common sense and tell the Christianists to take a hike remains to be seen. In the interim, I feel no sorrow for the foes of recruiters in trying to achieve enlistment targets. Here are highlights:
Magic BellyButton (a former Catholic like me) scores a hit with her analysis of the Nazi Pope's latest pronouncements against any form of contraception. I have swiped her photo and posted it above, but for the full story, go to: http://mymagicbellybutton.blogspot.com/2007/10/bear-still-shits-in-woods-pope-still.html.
