To the LCR can we please add: Working Class republicans. What the fuck are you thinking? Honestly. These motherfuckers do not have your interests at heart. To paraphrase Chris Rock - if they thought they could get away with it they wouldn’t even pay you in actual money. For FSM’s sake please fucking think before you check the box
Please don’t edit your posts to include a quote of something that comes after them. It really confuses the flow of things (this is one of the reasons the edit window wasn’t made longer).
Just post another reply to the one that comes after yours.
Not a warning, just a polite request…
If only the state stopped recognizing marriages, things would be so much better. Only people in civil unions get the governmental perks. Then any religious gays who cared could go duke it out in their own denomination.
Almost makes me wish our constitution had some clause about separation of church and state. Wonder why no one’s thought of that before. 
Sorry. Didn’t know that rule.
It’s not a rule–I doubt if the majority of posters have ever thought of it. It’s just something that breaks the normal top-to-bottom flow of thoughts.
Not a biggie.
I was supporting the Republicans when I was working three minimum-wage jobs.
I knew then that I was interested in earning my own wages, not having the government mandate what an employer must pay me. I knew then that my bargaining power with respect to my employer was miniscule, but I had every confidence that it would increase.
So I did think, and I aligned my support with the party that wasn’t agitating for an increase of the minimum wage… even though I was a minimum wage worker. By your lights, I suppose that means I was voting against my own interests. But I wasn’t.
And they say liberals are the idealists.
No, but it’s pretty strongly the unofficial position of the party. Republicans at the national level don’t need to put stuff like that on the national platform because state and local parties can keep anti-discrimination laws for gays from being enacted.
For instance, here’s the Texas Republican Party’s stance on homosexuality:
That’s the official stance of one state party. Think the national party’s going to disown them? Riiiiiiiiiiiight.
And as gobear (welcome back, guy!) accurately says, they view gays essentially as vermin, deserving of no rights.
If one political party stands against your right to be who and what you are, while the other is for it, it’s hard to see what other issue could quite balance that out.
As John Maynard Keynes said, in the long run we’re all dead.
So which political party is for the gays? The Democrats? ISTM that they’ve just been paying them lip service.
Which party has initiated most (if not all) for same-sex marriage bill, non-discrimination, domestic partner benefits, etc.?
If you give an ant a choice between a great big pile of crap and a tiny little sugar cube, it’s going to choose the sugar cube. I’ll take the party that’s at the very least not interested in performing analingus on the people who would prefer that I have the grace and decency to just die, thank you very much.
I don’t quite understand the thrust of your post, actually. It’s pretty much a choice between imperfect and really fucking lousy. I’ll take an order of imperfect, thanks!
And what exactly are the LCRs doing to “hurt” the Republicans and thereby encourage them to change their ways? I’m not the most politically savvy poster around here, but it seems to me that the only way to hurt a political party is to withhold votes and donations. How are gays who donate money and vote for the Republican party doing anything at all to change their stance on gays?
Also: Welcome back gobear! Good to see you again.
It depends. Are you supporting the party that benefits you, personally, or are you supporting the party that benefits the entire country? If hypothetically, you had a gay person who believed the Republicans were 100% right on everything except the gay issue, and who believed the Democrats were 100% wrong on everything except the gay issue, what should this person do? I mean I’m sort of at a loss as to what to say here. If it’s incomprehensible to people that the Log Cabin Clubs exist, I don’t know how to make it understandable other than to say:
- Some gay people don’t really care much about gay rights.
- Some gay people care about gay rights, but find that other issues determine their voting choices more.
- Some gay people care about gay rights and hope that by being part of the Republican party they can pressure the Republicans to be more friendly, or at least less unfriendly on the topic.
I’m not saying anyone here has to agree with any of those rationales or think they’re smart choices for people to make, but can you really not see why it’s possible people would come to those conclusions or make those choices?
By being part of the Republican coalition, they get their voices listened to, and become able, like the rest of the interest groups in the Republican party, to advocate for their position. They get access.
You’re quite the optimist. The only gay Republicans who get listened to by the party are the ones in the closet. At least until they get caught stall-crawling.
Not from what I’ve seen. Unless you mean they are listened to by TV reporters once every four years when the Republicans pull out their latest “Teh Gay is icky” platform planks.
Except that it’s pretty clear that the Republican party isn’t listening. And that it doesn’t have to, since these particular gays are going to vote Republican no matter how big a shit sandwich their party offers them. What has this “access” gotten them? What concessions have they been able to wring from the mainstream Republican party through their particpation in it? In what ways have they managed to moderate the Republican’s stance on gay rights? What difference do these guys actually make to their party?
Now, I’m not quite on board with Sampiro and some of the other posters in this thread who are taking the position that there’s no rational excuse for gays to vote Republican. Everyone votes their self-interest, and these guys have decided that their economic self-interest outweighs their legal status self-interest. Which can be entirely rational: wealth is often a good substitute for formal legal rights, and these guys have figured that more wealth benefits them more than more rights. It just bothers me that the LCR presents itself as a gay-rights advocacy group. They aren’t. They’ve decided to sacrifice legal equality for monetary security. There’s nothing wrong with that, I suppose, but just be honest about what you’ve done, and drop the pretense that you care about gay rights as anything more than an occasional afterthought.
That’s very…optomistic of them.
Queeretic! Stone him! (And at the post stoning party, I have got a new Dolly bootleg you’ve got to listen to…).
They convinced Schwarzenegger to come out against the anti-gay marriage amendment the Family Research Council was trying to get on the ballot in California (which came after the CA Supreme Court found the ban unconstitutional…the opinion being written by the Chief Justice, a Republican named Robert George) Also, a lot of Schwarzenegger’s appointments are Log Cabiners.
They also were invovled in getting Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR) to propose the "Domestic Partner Health Benefits Equity Act/Tax Equity for Domestic Partner and Health Plan Beneficiaries Act ", which would have the IRS treat health care benefits to domestic partners the same way it currently treats health care benefits to married partners and dependents.
Look, there are some pro-gay Republican elected officials out there…not as many as there should be, sure, but they exist. There are the Arnold Schwarzeneggers, the Lincoln Chaffees, to a lesser extent the Gordon Smiths. Isn’t that a good thing, for the cause of gay equality? If Republicans are going to be elected, shouldn’t they be pro-gay Republicans? It’s certainly preferable to Republicans who are actively anti-gay. So isn’t a group like the Log Cabin Republicans, which tries to elect pro-gay Republicans and lobby the Republican party for gay issues a good thing? Sure, they might be wasting their time, but isn’t it worth the effort? And even if all they manage to accomplish is to tell tv reporters every four years, “Not every Republican thinks teh gay is icky”, then that’s at least letting the world know that it’s possible to be a Republican who isn’t a bigot.