Title of thread should read: “Famous self-hating lesbian supports anti-gay bigot”
But this is more than cancelled out by rentboys and tearoomers who do 
I could see your point if Republicans were advocating killing or jailing homosexuals. Let’s be realistic though, things would have to change drastically in this country for that to be a real concern.
We’re going to think each other idiots because we have opposing political views, no big deal. Judging people based on their values is plenty valid.
What sticks in my craw is the notion that I should set aside all of my beliefs and vote based on sexual preference. I should support an entire party based on one issue? That’s completely ridiculous. That’s like me telling you that Democrats clearly hate jayjays so you should forget everything you believe in and join the Republican party.
Nothing that new really. Bestselling writers Patricia Cornwell and Florence King are also famous lesbians who have supported anti-gay right candidates, which is more surprising than Mary Cheney since Mary’s huge inheritance could be jeopardized for taking a very vocal anti-anti-gay stance.
I’ve always enjoyed reading Florence King. She’s an extremely funny woman. Politically she describes herself as a royalist - she’s come around to kind of regret that whole American Revolution thing.
The question is, what do you define as gay rights? It isn’t just warm fuzzies and rainbows, you know.
I’m a lesbian, and when I “married” my partner (in Canada, so it doesn’t count here) and we had a baby, it became very clear to me that gay rights aren’t some kind of window dressing, icing on the cake in a friendlier, slightly-nearer-to-equal-although-not-really-close-to-equal environment. It matters to my “personal freedom” to be able to choose who I live with as a fully participating member of society. But this isn’t just some soft-headed liberal stance.
What it comes down to is: gay rights hits us at the bottom line. To be blunt, it’s about the money – letting me and my partner keep the money we already have or get back some of the money we’ve contributed over the years to the government and other programs.
Gay rights matters for taxes, it matters for inheritance, it matters for survivor benefits, it matters for health care coverage, it matters for military service, etc., etc. For example, we pay our taxes and make social security contributions just like everyone else, but I can’t benefit from my partner’s contributions if she dies, or she from mine, because we can’t get married. Surely even a Republican-leaning person can grasp how that is an unfair distribution of wealth to straight people. We pay into it, but damned if we can get it out.
Now, I agree, Democrats aren’t the gay party. They prevaricate with the best of them. But they’re a damn sight better than the Republican party, whose core constituency actively works against gay rights. Being able to conceal and carry will be cold comfort when you’re old, and sick, and broke because you paid a bunch of money into something and because people hate your lifestyle you can’t get anything back out.
Brava rivulus! Whole post really, but especially this. It’s unreal to me how few people quite grasp that, like most gays I know, I don’t really give a damn whether others think my relationship (actually I’m not in one at the moment but hope springs eternal) is equal or my orientation is a sin. I care very much about inheritance issues, death benefits, legal next of kin status, etc., and even things as basic as the right to not lose my job for being openly gay. As I’ve said about “gay marriage”, gays can marry in any number of churches (Unitarian/Universalist pretty much marry gay couples as a matter of course while some Lutheran, Episcopal, Presbyterian, even some Baptist churches or liberal synagogues and the occasional Catholic church with a heretical priest have all been known to conduct gay services, but it legally it has the same recognition of a rabbit and a poodle mock married by a 4 year old; it’s meaningless outside of that church. I want the legal recognition; what Fred and Irma Midamerica think of it is something I am not particularly concerned with.
I’m not gay, nor do I support either major party, but I think Chopper9760 illustrates what confuses me so much about this sort of topic. That is, if someone is gay, why are they necessarily self-hating for voting against their best interest for picking someone who opposes gay rights? Unless it’s the only thing that person cares about, I think it’s entirely possible that a reasonable person my be willing to pass up on something personally relevant for who they think is ultimately better fit for the job.
To illustrate my point, let’s try an admittedly not-that-great analogy. Let’s say someone agrees absolutely with every single piece of the Democratic platform, except for one, they’re a certified gun nut. Hell, they got target shooting no less than once a week, hunting several times a year, and own two dozen pistols and rifles. Should they vote Republican since they’re the party that supports this all important activity and the Democrats “core constituency actively works against gun rights”? Or maybe they should vote Democratic, even if it means voting for an anti-gun candidate, and try to work to make changes inside the party and make sure that all of the other issues that they care about, and probably will ultimately shape the country more in terms of their vision in the long run, are handled.
That is, by and large, you may find a lot of Republicans who think homosexuality is immoral and that gay marriage should be banned, but that’s a far cry from “God hates fags”. Ultimately, where a politician stands on things like taxation, foreign relations, size of government, etc. will have a much larger impact on where this country ends up than gay rights.
Even worse, if you take that argument to the logical conclusion, how much do you have to disagree with a politician who supports gay rights before you consider switching your vote to one who doesn’t? I won’t bother to construct a silly hypothetical, but I’m sure you can imagine plenty yourself. At some point you just can’t be a single issue voter, and I think for some people, that threshold is a lot lower than some people may think it should be. Just because an issue is that important to you doesn’t mean it should be to every else.
And really this mentality bothers me at a much deeper level. I see a lot of ideas, not just that gays should vote Democratic because Republicans, at their core, work against them, but I see many of the same arguments for blacks, hispanics, and even women. I forget the survey I saw, but I remember reading that blacks and hispanics are considerably more likely to have conservative beliefs than whites, and yet they’re also far more likely to vote Democratic. Maybe if more people voted in line with what they actually believed, some of those anti-gay and racist sentiments would disappear and they could push some of the religious right-wing back to the fringe. Maybe then, being a gay Republican wouldn’t be an oxymoron anymore.
The way to effect change isn’t to vote for the lesser of two evils, it’s to vote in the best candidate and campaign for the changes that need to be made. As it stands now, Republicans have incentive to work against gays since, quite frankly, it’s a winning issue for them (eg, Virginia has 2 Democratic Senators and a Democratic Governor, but voted overwhlemingly for an anti-gay marriage amendment). Democrats, on the other hand, have no incentive to actively work in favor of it, because then they may lose some people who oppose it and, thanks to that mentality the mentality above, they don’t have to do anything to earn the majority of the gay vote. So in the end, I don’t think that mentality does anything but hurt gay rights.
Yeah, but they don’t actively work against your interests. Honestly, isn’t that exactly what you want, anyway- for people not to give a shit about you?
To this day, I think that’s what Obama’s infamous “cling to their guns and bibles” comment meant.
You’re right. I definitely shouldn’t make light of gay rights as a single issue because we still have a long damned way to go. Your situation sucks shit through a tube.
You and Miller both raised valid points. If a Democratic candidate stepped up and really advocated for us instead of just paying lip service, I’d probably vote for that person. Hell, I’d be hard-pressed not to vote for such a candidate no matter what else they stood for.
Until a candidate unequivocally supports gay marriage, I see no reason to throw in with Democrats.
Democrats supported Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Democrats supported DOMA. Where, exactly, are these Democrats who aren’t actively working against my interests?
Blaster Master, my take is that gay rights is a core value. This is something that affects me MUCH more than gun rights or big government or taxes. If I don’t have equal rights to straight people, then I can’t enjoy the other rights securely. Period. As long as I’m a second-class citizen, I can have pretty much anything taken away. There are still a lot of places where I could be fired for being gay, where I could be evicted from my house/apartment for being gay, where I can spend a few nights in jail for being gay (although, of course, the police won’t say it’s because of that, officially), where I can end up dead for being gay and the police don’t really care whether my killer is ever found, arrested or tried.
If I had kids from a previous marriage to a woman, I could lose those kids for being gay in some places. I could be forced to never allow my life partner to be in the house when those kids are visiting, since having my gay lover there would be a corrupting influence.
In some places, my partner could be cut right out of my will when I die, if my family doesn’t like him, or if they’ve never accepted my orientation or our relationship. He could be kept from visiting me in the hospital if I were unable to give consent to it, he could be evicted from OUR house if we somehow never got his name on the deed, he could be kept from keeping ANYTHING of mine as a remembrance.
If my brother and his wife died, I could be prevented from taking his two sons in and those two boys would end up in foster care even though they have a loving uncle.
There are SO MANY things, little things by themselves sometimes, that add up if there is no guarantee of our rights. Or if the party in power is dedicated to actively working against them to appease their nutcase religious base.
Well said. We’re well into the age of litmus-test single issue voter politics and it has served neither party well. I voted Ron Paul in the primary last year and that’s only time I’ve cast a positive vote for President, the rest were always a lesser of two evils argument.
Yeah, but Patricia Cornwell is cuckoo-for-cocoa-nuts and Flo King hates everyone equally. She didn’t call herself a misanthrope for nothing.
She’s always been my model for nondiscrimination. 
Is this the pit? This thread is a more reasonable and intelligent discussion than some of what appears in great debates. Maybe the OP should ask for this to be moved? Or else work to show some vitriol.
DADT happened a long time ago, in terms of public opinion on homosexuality. How many Democrats Bush’s supported DOMA?
ETA: Motherfucker!
Happens alla time! It’s an example of the perversity of human nature – a thread that in GD would be a flamefest tuns into rational discourse in the Pit, simply because there’s no thrill in cursing where it’s permissible! 
They are out there, Camille Paglia, Tammy Bruce is another one, all she does is shill for conservatives.