Given that your cite is a few people who claim “direct knowledge” of a smear campaign against Lingle, without names or facts to speak of, it does look to me like this smear campaign is going the opposite way: it looks like Lingle’s campaign is trying to paint Hirono as a homophobe in order to alienate Democratic voters from her.
I do expect to see a denunciation from you of such untoward tactics – we know, after all, that you’re not the kind of hypocrite who would “deny the obvious” when it’s about your own party.
A handful of people isn’t a great cite. And you need to do MUCH better than that to convince me that Hirono is behind this campaign, or even that the Democratic Party is behind this campaign. For all we know, some crazy lady who used to be Lingle’s neighbor is behind this campaign.
If Hirono is behind this campaign, she’s an idiot. Hawaii is famous for being progressive on gay rights; the only thing such a smear campaign would accomplish would be to alienate Democratic voters from her. In other words, look who would benefit from such a campaign: in this case, the only beneficiary I can see would be Lingle herself, who might see fewer Dems coming out to the polls.
Goldfinger didn’t say, “Once is crazy paranoia. Twice is an actual case of homophobia from a Democrat. Three times is just crazy paranoia again.” That leads me to believe that he was talking about something else.
It isn’t? IANAR, but I thought that two sources were sufficient to print a story.
But, the article said that the rumor was being spread to specific individuals.
Possibly, but trying to get elected by denying a false cay-baiting campaign would be pretty Macchivellian. Furthermore, I don’t think it would help a candidate to do that. The homophobes would assume she really was gay; others wouldn’t pay much attention. They’d find ways to overlook it, just as you have.
You are not allowed to use the word “third” without some type of qualifier. You can say this it the third instance of what you believe to be the use of homophobia. But, as per my count you have ONE instance of homophobia being part of a smear campaign orchestrated by an element of the Democratic party. Your latest piece, the one about Lingle, is hearsay. Reveal the source, talk to the alleged “former lover” and show evidence that the local Democratic campaign put her up to it and you’ve got instance number two. Right now they stand accused, and convicted by you, on the evidence of a handful of anonymous people outside the Republican Party(Hey! That group includes me! And minty, and Libertarian. And about 90% of the POPULATION OF THE ENTIRE PLANET) who CLAIM they have “direct knowledge” of this “whispering campaign”. This is flimsier evidence than you had of homophobia in the Montana campaign.
Personally I find the revelation that some members of the Democratic party are hypocrites, especially during an election year, entirely unremarkable. Even if we were willing to concede the instances of homophobia exactly as you claim they exist, what does it prove? Some Democrats are hypocrites? Or do you continue to assert that SDMB members will ignore the facts, when they are genuine facts instead of vague assertions or individual interpretations, and defend the Democrats unfailingly? In the one instance you DO seem to have concrete evidence of I’ve not seen this defense. Everyone who has weighed in with an opinion on the comments by Alex Sanders(aside from our beloved Stoid) seems to agree he was wrong to use such tactics.
I’m willing to bet you could be matched, case by case, with cites of Republican party members who are hypocrites, especially during an election year. Is this what you’re driving for? An admission that there are Democratic hypocrites? Is this the ignorance you’re trying to fight? MY SIX YEAR OLD KNOWS THIS! Politicians, of every stripe, LIE. This is NOT NEWS. It certainly isn’t one of the “great questions of our time.”
You mean all Democrats think alike? All of them hold to exactly the same principles? Wow, now I have a problem with them too! I had no idea they were so insidious!
december, perhaps if you thought about people in individual terms rather than victims of some form of horrible GroupThink, you’d be less likely to make posts like this, and less likely to create topic after topic in search of a defendable, logical OP.
Some Democrats are bigoted jerks. Some Republicans are bigoted jerks. Does anyone disagree? Good. That’s the game, kids. Mystery solved. Not that there ever was a mystery in the first place.
I strongly doubt that Democrat Alex Sanders, for one, claims to hold to the principle of gay rights. So he ain’t violating dick. He’s a homophobic asshole, but he ain’t a hypocrite.
And that’s the point you can’t seem to understand - unlike in a parliamentary system, there is no such thing as party discipline in America. Alex Sanders can be a homophobe, but still be a Democrat. Bob Casey can be opposed to abortion, but still be a Democrat. And Connie Morella can vote against the party line on just about every issue, and still be a Republican.
What would you like us poor, benighted Democrats to do about Mr. Sanders? I don’t give any money to him already, so I can’t threaten to cut off the teat. I can’t vote against him, since I don’t live in South Carolina. I could denounce him - well I just did that above. And according to the instant tracking polls, my denunciation did not affect Sanders’ poll ratings.
But you are not speaking to that outside world when you post here. You are speaking to the Straight Dope Message Boards. If you want to spread the Gospel that Republicans aren’t bad people to the outside world, speak to them. Why are you wasting our time, since we already know this?
I would wager that we’re probably up to hundreds of times that Democratic candidates have tried to smear their Republican opponents by spreading rumors he/she was homosexual.
The part of this that you keep skipping right past is this: in all three instances of supposed “democratic homophobia”, the * real * homophobes are the Republicans…or shall we say perceived or assumed.
What has been done, or seems to have been done (two of the three “examples” are subjective and/or questionable in their intent), is skanky in its own right, which has been to “appeal to” the perceived homophobia of the Republican constituents. Not by in any way bashing gay people, but by implying close personal ties with gay people on the other side, or actual gayness in the most recent example.
That’s the safest strategy to use, by the way, since it walks the line. With voters like me, for instance, you get a big shrug and a “yeah, so?” but you get the good recoil from voters of a more truly homophobic bent.
You can definitely point a finger at the tactics and make your case for how icky they are, but your attempt to stretch them into cases of “democratic homophobia” falls far short of the mark. Try “Democrats exploit Republican Homophobia For Political Gain”. Argue the problems with that, and you are on much firmer ground.
I find it extremely disheartening that you would merely shrug when a candidate engaged in gay-bashing. Methinks you let your partisanship get in the way of your decency.
** Sua, ** you missed the point entirely! There is no gay bashing occuring! Wher is the gay person who is being bashed? The only thing that MAY be going on is that one person may be pointing at another and saying “he likes gay people” or “He IS a gay person”. And to that, I respond, “Yeah, so?”
However, I understand that the reason the finger pointing is going on is because the person doing the pointing is assuming that there are other people out there whose response would be “Ew! He likes gay people? Gay people suck! I wont’ vote for him!”, which, as I stated, is skanky.
Are you suggesting I should get het up about skanky campaign tactics? I’d spend every election season in a perpetual froth.
Now, show me a Democrat who is reviling gay people as evil, worthless, wrong, bad, what the fuck ever, I will have a big problem with that.
** Sua, ** you missed the point entirely! There is no gay bashing occuring! Wher is the gay person who is being bashed? The only thing that MAY be going on is that one person may be pointing at another and saying “he likes gay people” or “He IS a gay person”. And to that, I respond, “Yeah, so?”
However, I understand that the reason the finger pointing is going on is because the person doing the pointing is assuming that there are other people out there whose response would be “Ew! He likes gay people? Gay people suck! I wont’ vote for him!”, which, as I stated, is skanky.
Are you suggesting I should get het up about skanky campaign tactics? I’d spend every election season in a perpetual froth.
Now, show me a Democrat who is reviling gay people as evil, worthless, wrong, bad, what the fuck ever, I will have a big problem with that.
Oh puh-leaze. That’s exactly what Mr. Sanders was saying about his opponent.
“Don’t vote for my opponent. He lives with gay people.”
Why would this be presented as a reason not to vote for Mr. Sander’s opponent unless Mr. Sanders was taking the position that living with gay people was bad?
Would we even be having this conversation if Mr. Sanders had said, “you shouldn’t vote for my opponent, he lives with black folk”? rolleyes:
Stoid, you had been doing good for a while, but you are once again giving liberals a bad name.
I see the distinction Stoid is creating. I think it’s a matter of semantics, and I think that Sanders is doing something worse than being a homophobe if you use Stoid’s definitions, but it is a valid distinction.
Imagine a slightly different situation. I know a local animal-rights person who is avowedly atheist. However, he often, in promoting veganism, quotes Bible verses at people.
He doesn’t believe in the veracity of the Bible himself, but he knows that his audience does. So he cynically uses arguments that he himself doesn’t believe.
He’s quoting the Bible. Does that make him a Christian?
I’d argue it doesn’t. Similarly, there’s a possibility that Sanders is parroting homophobic arguments, but isn’t a homophobe himself.
Frankly, I’d need to see evidence that that’s the case: I think that, given what we know now, it’s safe to say that Sanders is a homophobe. But there is the possibility that he’s a big ugly hypocrite and not a big ugly homophobe.
I don’t, however, think he can be both. At least, not about this issue. And if you define homophobe as “someone who makes homophobic arguments,” instead of as “someone who dislikes homosexuals as a class,” then he’s definitely a homophobe.
But I think Stoid is using the second, not the first, definition.
Daniel, you may be right about “homophobia,” but we were discussing “gay bashing.” So the question is whether what Mr. Sanders said was intolerable, not what he thinks.
And what he said was intolerable. And Stoid pretends that it wasn’t because his words didn’t inspire hatred of gays in herself.
That’s irrelevant. If a guy tells me that Jews are evil money grubbers, the fact that I’m not inspired to paint swastikas on my car doesn’t mean that the guy didn’t make an anti-Semetic remark.
Where is the equivalent anti-homosexual statement by * anyone, anywhere *in these discussions to “Jews are evil money-grubbers”? Show me, please, because I sure ain’t seen it. The equivalent using Jews would be almost identical: “He’s a liberal! He lives with Jews!” Blacks? Same: “He’s an ultra liberal! He moved in with a black family!” He is appealing to the assumed bigotry of his audience, by stating an otherwise neutral fact. He is not saying a single thing which would inspire anti-gay feeling in a person in the audience, he’s making a statement that pre-existing gay-haters will react to. To tell me that someone lives with gay people or is gay themselves is a completely neutral fact of their existence, and nothing more. Yes, it tells me that they are probably liberal-minded people, and if anything, that is positive.
I am not defending his statements as a nice way to act, because Daniel nailed it exactly. It may be hypocrisy, it may be dirty-dealing, but it is NOT evidence of “Democratic Homophobia”, which is what ** december ** has been arguing.
My beef is with sloppy arguments and sloppy thinking. Precision is important if you are going to debate. In the OP example, there was a scent of homophobia in the air, but it was not the Democrat’s. The Democrat stank of hypocrisy.
As for me, ** Sua ** , you can refrain from giving me report cards about how well I’m representing liberals everywhere, because I’m not representing anyone but myself, thanks.
I do agree with you that the Democratic Party tends to be more friendly to gays than the Republican Party. I don’t want to go into your other points here, because they are deep and complex. Some of your points are worth a thread in themselves.
Just for fun (and to get around all the misdirection in this thread): here is the section of the South Carolina GOP platforn regarding homosexuality. The specific plank is as follows:
I feel better now.