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Pen Points
Letters to Gay Today |
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Log Cabin Republicans
Based upon their defense of John Ashcroft, words cannot describe the contempt that this shameless group should have with the glbt community. According to accounts of yesterday's press conference, they have become right-wing apologists and nothing more. Gays in the Republican party who gave a damn about the civil rights of the glbt community would challenge their party to be more inclusive and reject the religious right's scapegoating of gays. Log Cabin Republicans just don't get it. To me, Rich Tafel is just the reincarnation of Roy Cohn. It's all about what's in it for him. Any simple review of the affair would demonstrate that James Hormel's sexuality alone led to John Ashcroft's rejecting the nomination. Not only did he lie about his alleged personal relationship with Hormel, but he also denied that his sexuality was an issue, though he apparently is on record saying it. One would think that Log Cabin Republican's might want to investigate the contradictions. But no, they proudly endorse Ashcroft, because they think they can score political power points from it. And they let themselves be used as a conduit for Ashcroft to dismiss the charges without having to really address them. Until the day comes when they actually demonstrate discernment, and a concern that goes beyond their place at the table, the Log Cabin Republicans will be nothing more than an irrelevance to the glbt community. Their gayness is probably only evidenced in their sexual activity. I don't know what has become of their heart and soul....let alone their conscience. Scott Miller Log Cabin: Whoring After Recognition
Full Impact of the Bush Coup d'etat I awoke this morning with the full realization of the impact of the judicial coup d'etat that has put Mr. George W. Bush in the White House. This is so utterly appalling that I am speechless. Even if they find a million more votes for Mr. Bush it will not legitimize his position. It cannot do so. The national election was aborted by the court who effectively appointed a head of state! (I believe that only Congress can appoint a president). What if this individual turns out to be a neo Nazi (what makes me think he isn't?)? If George Bush can do it this year, why can't someone further to the right (or left) do it in four years? If the justices can be swayed by partisan politics why would we think that money wouldn't do the same trick at some other time. The Supreme Court should be impeached! Mr. Bush & Company should be removed from office and replaced by Congressional leadership until a new election can be held and the voice of the people heard. What has happened to our Constitution and Bill or Rights that everyone seems willing to let this travesty continue? If the laws of the US governing elections of national officials isn't sacrosanct, what is? Why aren't the people who got so upset about Mr. Clinton's foibles insisting that this contempt for the nation be stopped at once? What has happened is horrific and insidious and utterly mind boggling. Where is the fourth estate in all of this? Why the silence from the front pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post? CNN? I wish someone could convince me that I am wrong. But if I'm not, then the greatest democratic experiment to ever arise on the planet has just failed. Donald Dump Daschle Now!
I call upon progressive Democrats to revolt against Daschle's craven behavior in the face of Republican aggression. Appeasement doesn't work. There's not a bully on earth who responds to it. Dump Daschle Now! Bill Weintraub Nyah Nyah Nader
J. Y. To GayToday's Editor First, personal thanks to you for publishing a three-way exchange of views about the Green Party between yourself, myself, and BuckcuB online at www.gaytoday.badpuppy.com. That exchange was also (and inevitably) about our current electoral zoo, with its dear old Donkeys and its ponderous Pachyderms, alike in their bipartisan zeal to stamp out independent voters. You, Jack, have shown consistent civil libertarian principle in publishing conflicting views at a site, Badpuppy, which bears your personal seal but remains a public forum. I'll be posting this letter freely-- do likewise if you wish. And I do hope you've thrown off that bad cold and are feeling better. Just read BuckcuB's rant, which evades every serious political and historical issue raised by the last election, and the ones to come in 2002 and 2004. Majoritarian reflexes can be called into question by a good number of thinking queers-- though not, apparently, by BuckcuB, an amateur even in his chosen calling of palindromic hyperbole. Forwards and backwards, not a single coherent historical argument is made in his article. Only the assertion, repeated in each paragraph (though at ever higher decibels), that most folks vote for Democrats and Republicans. Which is not news. The real news, whether party hacks like it or not, is that nothing lasts forever-- not the course of the Mississippi River, not the dazzling eyes of that man on the bus, not even the monumental machinery of the bipartisan system. Given the pitch and ferocity of rhetoric coming from panic-stricken Democrats such as BuckcuB, we can safely assume they'd act just like Republican apparatchiks if they were given the power and opportunity to overrule an election they didn't like. My new website,www.openletteronline.com, will devote more analysis in future issues to the radioactive emissions of the Democratic Leadership Council and their "progressive" allies during the past two months. BuckcuB's name might go over nicely in an anonymous chatroom, but I can see why he might not want to be more clearly identified with his own words. Reading them again, searching for either sense or sensibility, I feel (as one citizen said of another during a public debate) as though I'd been "savaged by a dead sheep."
Cheers, |
Log Cabin Republicans Executive Director Rich Tafel 
Ralph Nader was the target of a three-way debate in the
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