on the event of Homocon, some thoughts about the rise of the gay right. surprisingly, 27% of self-identified gays and lesbians voted for McCain/Palin. as a group, gay conservatives are more interested in security and the economy (not surprising, given their incomes) than gay marriage. [rquoter]They're gay, conservative and proud By BEN SMITH | 9/25/10 9:10 PM EDT NEW YORK — Even among the gays, the right is on the rise. The broad surge in the conservative grassroots made it as far as PayPal founder Peter Thiel’s grand apartment overlooking New York’s Union Square Tuesday night, where about 150 backers of the conservative gay group GOProud gathered to laugh at Ann Coulter’s red meat riffs on Democrats, blacks, and the Obamas at a fundraiser organizers touted as “Homocon.” GOProud is the tea party of the gay rights movement, with well-tailored dark suits in place of revolutionary war garb. The event, complete with lithe young men in black “Freedom is Fabulous” t-shirts guiding guests to the elevator, marked a new high tide in the shift of the Republican Party away from “social issues” and toward a broader complaint about Democratic management of the economy, national security, and the idea of America. GOProud is an explicitly gay group that isn’t particularly focused on gay rights, and Coulter’s speech – full of conservative red meat, and only the occasional Judy Garland joke – reflected its focus. The gay right is thriving at a moment that the mainstream gay rights movement faces a profound crisis. The set of Washington-based establishment groups led by the Human Rights Campaign have close ties to the White House and have turned gay righs into a plan of the Democratic Party platform. But last week, a Democratic Congress failed to deliver on President Obama’s campaign promise to repeal the ban on gays in the military, and hasn’t even taken up his promise to repeal the federal ban on same-sex marriage. The realization that their alliance with the Democratic Party has – for the moment – failed to produce key policy shifts is producing a round of finger-pointing and bloodletting inside the traditional gay rights movement, with calls for resignations and turns toward the courts and toward civil disobedience. The gay right, meanwhile, has taken its place at the vanguard. Former Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman used his coming out as gay last month to raise more than $1 million for the legal effort, led in part by former Bush administration Solicitor General Ted Olson, to win a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. The plaintiffs in a California lawsuit in which a district court judge ruled “Don’t ask, don't tell” unconstitutional this year, meanwhile, were the Log Cabin Republicans. And even that traditional gay Republican group is struggling to rebuilt from an internal crisis, they – like establishment Republicans everywhere – face a challenge further right from the ascendant GOProud. “We’re Joe Miller; Log Cabin is Lisa Murkowski,” said GOProud founder Chris Barron, dismissively. “We’re not interested in having a seat at the table as part of the establishment.” Log Cabin, though, has also roiled the right this month, when National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn (R-Texas) headlined a fundraiser for the group. “Gay and lesbian voters are small-business owners, mothers and fathers, taxpayers who deserve representatives who will stand up for them and succeeding generations,” said its deputy executive director, Christian Berle. Attendees at “Homocon” universally attributed the rise of the gay right to the rising conservative tide generally. “It really was the economy stupid. There’s a move to the right in general,” said Thiel, who was also an early investor in Facebook and is a prominent supporter of libertarian causes. An awful lot of Republicans want to get out of the gay issue in general.” Thiel compared the current gay rights’ strategy of allying itself with a single party to “trench warfare” in World War I, and argued that gay rights will benefit from a Republican Party that begins to compete for gay voters and donors. Coulter’s presence at the event was controversial, as other gay activists pointed out that she’d made a series of anti-gay remark — she called former presidential candidate John Edwards a "f*****" — which she explained away at the top of her speech as humor. “The people who get gay jokes are gays,” she said, adding that when she talks to Christian audience, “Out of sweetness they don’t laugh at the gay jokes.” Coulter’s jokes Tuesday riffed on the theme that GOProud doesn’t make same-sex marriage central to its appeal; it considers, Barron says, national security and the economy more important. Marriage “is not a civil right – you’re not black,” Coulter said to nervous laughter. She went on to note that gays are among the wealthiest demographic groups in the country. “Blacks must be looking at the gays saying, ‘Why can’t we be oppressed like that?’” Coulter’s talk drew a mixed response, but her presence marked the increasingly mainstream Republican embrace of gay rights. Coulter had a falling out with a conservative website that has published her, WorldNetDaily, over her attendance. “She’s doing something important – she’s showing her base that it’s OK,” said one attendee, Michael Lucas. (Lucas also confided to a reporter, “I wonder what Ann will think about the fact that I am the biggest producer of gay p*rn on the East Coast and probably in the whole U.S.") Attendees struggled to characterize the momentum they feel on the right at large and the gay rights in particular. One, radio host Tammy Bruce, who is on GOProud’s board, said the moment has the “same energy” as the radical ACT-UP protests in the 1980s, which drew attention to the AIDS crisis. Another, former New York Log Cabin GOP chief Chris Taylor, said people are discovering what he’s always found self-evident: “I don’t see what being gay has to do with being socialist,” he said. As for Coulter, she told POLITICO the embrace of gays on the right could only be reciprocated. “Right wingers have always liked gays. Look at all of Ronald Reagan’s gay friends,” she said, proceeding to cite an unverified rumor dating back half a century: “Look at my personal hero Joe McCarthy and his” – airquotes – “special assistant.”[/rquoter] Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0910/42711.html#ixzz10jhB27Xu
LOL... so gay libertarians vote Republican?! SHOCKING!!! The right is going to lose out big time on the moderate gay vote. It has been the champion of fighting against gay rights and the voice of 1960s America of intollerance and hate. These people are straight up pocketbook voters... nothing to see here.
<object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/znQe9nUKzvQ?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/znQe9nUKzvQ?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object> ultimately, you pick your poison in life. I suppose for some, money and delusion makes for a blissful combination. BUT, if this accelerates the religious right fracturing away from the uneasy Republican alliance, then HOORAH. it's hard enough for the poor babies to accept godless business liberals, now this? (Lucas also confided to a reporter, “I wonder what Ann will think about the fact that I am the biggest producer of gay p*rn on the East Coast and probably in the whole U.S.") hmm.
Hilarious... So, a handful of rich gays and some other rich Repubs gather in Manhattan to hear a harpy and we're to believe this a burgeoning movement. Call me when this group has a public meeting at the South Carolina GOP Convention.
The real distinction in this country - the difference that has the most influence over the lives we live - is not sexuality, it's not Republican/Democrat, it's not racial - it's rich/poor. Which makes it even more sad that the wealthy in this country have managed to dupe so many working-class lapdogs into voting against their own working-class interests.
John Kerry, a very rich dude, agrees with you- he said this weekend that the reason the dims are in trouble is voters are too stupid (which is the same assumption you're making.) a rather condescending attitude, rebellion against which is at the heart of all things tea.
His excuse is that he has an open mind and sees that our government's policies are weakening America by hurting our economy and exacting social policies that make for a less productive populace in the long run. He sees that the democrats are not for the middle class or the working class, they are for the poor class and their political masters. Socialists want to create people who are dependent on the government - they are easily controlled. If you believe that welfare and non-ending social programs are good for their recipients and their families in the long run, you might be a democrat - and you should probably take some time for some deep thoughts about what happens when we create a culture of dependence. America was created by a culture where people pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, and succeeded by merit and hard work. It will be destroyed by a culture of entitlement and public debt.
What I'd like to know is why exactly did the Tea Party take their name from the Boston Tea Party. Specifically, what similarities do the current Tea Party members share with the original protesters in Massachusetts? Repubs, TeaPartiers, anyone?
It's because there is a positive correlation between a lack of education and susceptibility to fear. So put the two together, offer quick sound bites that are easily remembered and fit on a bumper sticker and that play on irrational and baseless fears. For example death panels, muslim, take away your guns, welfare, entitlements, bailouts, socialism, birth certificate, etc. Convince a poor and frightened public that this black guy, who wasn't born here and isn't Christian, is out to take away every freedom you ever had and to round up every lazy welfare queen and illegal immigrant and hand them over to them. Afterwards he will kill your grandma by cutting Medicare and kill your children's future by increasing Medicare all while stomping on apple pies, mom, and shooting bald eagles by the truckload. The fact that this exact scenario was played out before with McCarthy makes it no less effective now. Especially with the aforementioned uneducated population who even if they could somehow recall who McCarthy was could not understand the parallel. Difficult to learn from history when you slept through it. It's a losing battle against a public who is too lazy to go and do their own research, too stupid to understand what they read if they did, and too scared of cognitive dissonance to actually have a meaningful debate and reveal their laziness and stupidity.
How is this even true? You have so many factual errors that it makes me wonder if you live on the planet earth. Dems have cut welfare over the years, not increased it. The poor get less now than they did under any other president. They are the middle class party. Do you think the poor even vote in large numbers? Dems for the most part believe in some level of social justice for ALL. Not just the poor, but the sick, the handicapped, and those who suffer from unfair discrimination. Only a neo-conservative could twist the desire to help others - which should be viewed as noble - as some sort of twisted socialist agenda to create dependence. Having abject poverty does not serve a nation well. You only have to look what happens in countries that have the miserably poor and no social means for betterment to look at the results. Mexico you have vast drug cartels and violence commited not just against the poor but the rich too. In the Islamic world you have fiery extremism. Poor begets poor and drags an economy even without a social safety net. Look at India...the amount of poverty each state began with determines its economic rank today. Health care reform won't impact the poor much. They already get free health care - either through current programs of simply free and having the costs past on to you via higher insurance premiums. You already pay for them. But the health care reform the dems pass will protect mainly the middle class. Your insurance, unless you work for Microsoft, is probably a lot crappier than you think. And republican policies aren't best for the middle class, they are best for the rich. The policies they take are pro-rich business owners, and often lead to pain amongst the hardest working americans through practices that result in less real income being put into their pockets. Since the Reagan revolution, manufacturing salaries have been flat - the worst performing segment of employment. That's your idea of helping the middle class? The public debt is a Republican creation, every republican president since Reagan have given us back breaking public debt...it was dems who last successfully balanced the budget. I think dems have done a much better job to create an atmosphere where people can rise up from the ashes and create opportunities where conservatives have always been able maintaining the past power structure and keeping things the same. No civil right, no women's rights, no education system, no job training, no investment in science. that's the world of republicans. no thanks. i think you are grossly misinformed and have fallen prey to the right-wing propaganda you have been fed on for much too long.
This board is so left tainted it's losing it's relavence. I can count on my hand the posters who's posts I'll even bother reading (two hands actually). They ride both sides of the fence. But they don't just jump on to pile on. Is Basso really the Glynch that balances each side? That's pretty much how it reads to me. It's really a microcosm of what's going on in politics. Get ready for 8 more years of Repub/Conservative government because while the Conserv's make mistakes the Lib's are just completely bilegerent in incompetence. Put together 8 years. It's impossible. The Lib's self implode. The funny thing is that Basso posts cr@p just to get you Lib guys riled up. The fact that it does almost says scoreboard. The best part of his posts are the replies by the sensible ones. Sorry to use both Basso & Glynch as the examples but to my eyes that's where it stands.
