Clift: Dean’s Gay-Marriage Nightmare

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.msnbc.com/news/996601.asp?0cl=c1

This was the week of in-kind contributions to the Bush-Cheney campaign. Between the AARP’s endorsement of the Republican Medicare plan and the Massachusetts Supreme Court decision paving the way for gay marriage, Karl Rove is getting everything he wants.

SENATE DEMOCRATS ARE scared to filibuster a prescription-drug entitlement even though they think the GOP plan is a scam, offering meager benefits while keeping drug costs artificially high and subsidizing the insurance industry. If the GOP can keep rebellious conservatives in line and eke out a victory in the House, President Bush can claim credit for the biggest expansion of Medicare since the program was created 40 years ago. The benefits won’t kick in until 2006 and the AARP membership is in rebellion. Nonetheless, Bush will have refurbished his compassionate-conservative credentials in time for the election.

The issue of gay marriage has been building since the U.S. Supreme Court decision struck down a Texas sodomy law last spring. Gay issues have now replaced abortion as the battleground wedge issue. Every court in the country eventually will rule that committed gay partnerships deserve the same legal protections as traditional marriage. But the inevitability of the social transformation does little to blunt its use as a divisive political issue. “Bush won’t talk about it, but they’ll get the message out through groups like the Committee for the Defense of Marriage,” says a Republican Senate staffer. “By the time Rove gets done with Howard Dean, he’ll have him performing gay marriages.”

As governor of Vermont, Dean signed the nation’s only domestic-partnership bill, an act his detractors and even some of his supporters say make him unelectable as president. Republicans eager to dig up a photo of Dean at this first-in-the-nation historic signing ceremony are out of luck. Dean signed the bill creating civil unions with only his close aides present. The press corps, expecting to record this momentous act, reacted with fury when they learned Dean had “taken the cheap way out,” says Christopher Graff, an AP correspondent in Montpelier, who was in the state capitol at the time.

[xultar]

1. This is one issue where I support Dean.

I am so happy that he took the lead for our country on this issue. I do however think he should be proud that he signed the bill. We need the Gay and Lesbian community in 2004. That photo could have been a plus for the campaign and for the Democratic party.

[BJ]

2. I think Governor Dean's answered this "issue" already.

"MONTPELIER, July 31.-- While former Gov. Howard Dean opposes efforts to ban gay marriages — such as those suggested this week by President Bush — the presidential hopeful won’t push for a federal law making them legal, his campaign said Thursday.

According to campaign manager Joe Trippi, Dean believes that all people are entitled to equal treatment under the law, but the question of what constitutes marriage is a matter for the states to sort out."
(-snip-)
Link to Gay & Lesbian Political Action and Support Groups webpage

[The Zanti Regent]

11. The sad truth is that Gay Marriage will torpedo Dean

Karl Rove produces a commercial of a man and woman walking down the aisle of a marriage ceremony. A voice over says Howard Dean does not support this, but he does support

Hard Cut to

Two men or two women walking down the same aisle

Rove will milk that for all it's worth and Dean will lose in a landslide.

While that goes on, De Lay introduces his Defense of Marriage Constitutional Amendment which will pass by a wide margin, All the Southern and Western states (except CA) pass it.

My sad conclusion is that it is time for Gays and Lesbians to SERIOUSLY consider an exodus to Canada.

[xchrom]

3. wring hands, fold tents

gasp, sob -- with issues like gay marriage facing so called liberal dems there is nothing that can be done against rove.
why try -- rove will say something awful about the candidate.

[La_Serpiente]

4. Dean is the most experienced

candidate on this issue. He knows how to deal with the crap that he is going to get better than any other candidate.

[Cha]

5. I like your smiley "lei" Island girl!

[La_Serpiente]

7. why thank you

you can call me "princess" even though I am male :-)

[Leovigild]

6. What No One Wants to Talk About

There is another level on which this is a disastrous issue.

No one wants to point this out yet, but blacks, particularly the Southern blacks who will decide the outcome of Super Tuesday, are overwhelmingly fundamentalist Christian or Muslim. They have no use whatsoever for gay rights and refuse to accept it as any kind of civil rights issue. Polls show that 66% of blacks are opposed to gay marriage. If you reduced that to Southern blacks it could easily be 75-80%.

No one without overwhelming black support will be the Democratic nominee. Period. Someone who cannot get substantial black support will see his candidacy fizzle. On Super Tuesday, "gay marriage" Dean is going to have a real problem with Southern black voters. This will be a major blow to his candidacy.

Any future Democratic candidate who supports gay marriage is going to hit a brick wall on Super Tuesday with black voters.

[ablbodyed]

8. I'm gay but I'm also practical....

(two very compatible traits) and the gay marriage issue is a no winner for us Dems. There's still too much bigotry and hatred/fear, and the rethugs will use this against anyone who supports civil unions, let alone gay marriage. The fairness of the issue may resonate with some people but most will not wish to understand the issue based on fairness. There are several factors: families want our wealth going to them (even those who have shunned us in life), not some faggot outsider; the 'straight' men who have played around (and there are MULTITUDES of them) will be as over-compensating as always; our supposed lack of responsibility (read jealousy of our freedom to live lives that seem free of demands, both financial and personal); and a mean-spirited reading of the bible.
Do I think that there will ever be an acceptance of gay unions? No, not if the lifetime of any DUer. I believe that we have seen the high-water-mark of gay acceptance.
We are so far along the road to a fascist police state, and the prospects of reversing it are so limited, that I have no hope for broader acceptance. A police state needs an
enemy-within, one that can be used to keep the others in line: "That's YOUR fate in YOU don't behave." Gays are that group in the USA: Jews are too powerful, Blacks and Hispanics too numerous, Asians too economically valuable. Gays have no one: most of us are (aprehensive if not fearful) isolated in hetero communities or TOO concentrated ghettos. And few of us will fight because we, deep down, think we deserve what we get. We don't deserve it, but an entire lifetime of self-hatred, encouraged by most of society, is extremely difficult to overcome.
To you hetero Duers out there who disagree, well, when push comes to shoving us into re-education camps, I hope you protest, but I'm not holding my breath. I KNOW some of you (maybe even a majority of you) believe that you will protest, but I'm not sanguine that the real pressures which will be brought to bear on you can be resisted.
And it will all be 'God's will' as perceived by the vile fundamentalists that will turn this once liberty-infused country into a theocracy.
I pray that I'm wrong, and I WELCOME those of you who can assuage my fears to try to do so.

[xchrom]

9. quick -- run and hide

and make sure only the most zell dem like critter runs for prez.
we musn't vigorously support equal rights for gay people, must not oppose the patriot act, better question affirmative action while we're at it, homeland security -- you bet.
dems can't ever reasonably and vigorously defend themselves on issues bordering on equal rights -- rove might say something bad.

[Leovigild]

10. He's telling the unvarnished truth

The cultural right spans the entire country. The cultural left is concentrated in major media centers and college towns. The cultural right is vastly stronger than the cultural left.

What makes it even worse for the Democratic Party is that the cultural rightist is the grandchild of a New Deal Democrat and the great great grandchild of a William Jennings Bryan Populist. He will accept an economic populist message. But not if couched in the values of West Hollywood. His defection from the Democratic Party and the collapse of the New Deal coalition was a blow it never recovered from.

And don't expect any help from blacks or hispanics on gay rights.