You can download a PDF of the full text of the Policy Paper here. I particularly like their use of the word “impose”, as if Gay people want to impose a same-sex marriage on people who don’t want one. Look, we’re not asking you to marry us. Some of us just want to marry some others of us.
The Log Cabin Republicans have had to argue with the President, ironically by quoting the Vice-President. Before, they could argue that Santorum was speaking for himself and not offical policy. Now, the Senate’s Republican Policy Committee is taking the lead against gay people. I still don’t understand how their loyality to tax and economic policy is stronger than their loyality to their own personal liberty. Wake up, kiddos, they don’t want you in their Big Tent.
These days, it seems that the group “Log Cabin Republicans” has a lot in common with the “Christian Fundamentalists for the implementation of Shari’a (Islamic law)”.
I suppose that doesn’t contribute much to the GD point here, but I really don’t understand how gay and lesbian people can ally themselves with a political group which tells them that the very core of their being, their sexual identity, is wrong.
Maybe because most people don’t consider their sexual identity to be “the very core of their being”. I’m straight, and I don’t think that way, so I don’t expects gays to, either. There are also many women Republicans even though most Republicans are anti-abortion. It’s only the fringe groups that play single-issue politics. Most of us consider the whole platform and vote for the person who comes closest to one’s overall philosophy.
No offense, Homebrew, but the OP is absurd. One of the great problems with a two-party system is that it is well-nigh impossible to have all of your political beliefs match those of a party. So you have to decide which beliefs are more important. Log Cabin Republicans have obviously decided that their beliefs about fiscal policy/national defense/whatever are more important than their beliefs about civil rights for homosexuals.
Hell, I think a whole lot of us wrestle with this problem. I’m a Democrat, but I disagree with a lot of the Democratic platform. For me, it comes down to (in shorthand and it ain’t a great choice), that I’d rather be a member of the party of Jesse Jackson than Jesse Helms.
But, John Mace, you likely haven’t had your sexuality made the subject of punishing laws. Likewise, if you’re white you’ve probably never really identified your race as being at the “core” of your being because no one’s making a fuss about it. The point isn’t really one person regards his own identity, it’s how other people regard that individual’s identity. Clearly certain segments of society do reduce people to their skin color, their sexuality, and so on. And these segments of society have at times been powerful enough to influence the laws of the country in fairly obscene ways.
My belief is this: one hundred years from now (barring some global catastrophe) gay marriages will be an everyday occurrence in Western society, and people will look back on folks like Scalia, shake their heads, and laugh at the folly. Society won’t crumble, the Rapture won’t happen and those who consent to express their mutual love can do so openly.
Oh yeah, and the Boy and Girl scouts will merge to form the People Scouts.
Montag: But clearly your argument is contradicted by the reality that there are female, gay and minority Republicans. And just because another person may reduce you to a stereotype, it doesn’t follow that you will reduce yourself to that one dimensional vision as well. Yes, there are many single-issue people out there. I know some myself. But they are in the minority.
The OP seems to suggest that all gays should now clearly become Democrats. That’s absurdly simplistic.
And let me ask this question: Is support for gay marriage a part of the Democratic platform? I actually don’t know, but I suspect it isn’t.
What happens next is that the Log Cabin Repubicans ally themselves with that faction of the party that don’t oppose gay marriage. Neither party is monolithic, and there’s room for a wide variety of people within both.
I find it puzzling that gays would be either Republicans or Democrats. I hardly think that the Democratic party has any real commitment to gay issues, although they talk a good game.
But, Sua is right. In some countries, parties are narrowly focused, and coalitions happen between parties. In the US, we have two giant parties, and the coalitions happen within the parties. Gay people who are Republican have found a party that aligns with whatever issues they find important.
Additionally, after reading the disappointing thread where so many people admitted to not voting in either the 2000 or 2002 elections, I’m not going to fault anybody who takes an interest in politics.
I’d like to know what some of the leading Dem candidates say about gay marriage. I wouldn’t blame the Log Cabin guys staying with the Republican party if they don’t hear anything better from the opposition.
Personally, and purely personally, Log Cabin Republicans disgust me. I can’t imagine having my head so far up my wallet that I’d support a party whose unofficial policy has been to consider me subhuman and whose official policy is rapidly coming in line with that.
They don’t have to become Democrats. They just have to stop helping the stormtroopers herd us into the cattlecars…
I think our affinity towards relationships with other people is at the very core of our being. Being gay isn’t just about sex, anymore than being straight is just about wanting to have sex with the other gender. It’s about who you love. Who you love IS at the core of our beings.
I never said that. Obviously love can mean many things. I love my cat, I love my parents. I love ice cream. All of those are different shades and degrees of love, with different means of expressing each of them.
The greeks have about 8 different words for love, which I think would be a better system if english adopted it, so there would be less confusion.
When love finds overt expression in intimate conduct with another person, the conduct can be but one element in a personal bond that is more enduring.
I assume that when most people get married, they expect sex to be involved, and would be sorely disappointed if they couldn’t have sex with the one they love. That’s not to say that their relationship is only about that, but it’s a major component.
Sex is kind of like air. It’s no big deal until you can’t get any.
Just like Black people who were in favor of civil rights but who voted for pro-segregationist politicians. I’m sure there were some. Maybe they thought Thurmonds economic policies were better or something.
Personally, I hope and pray that this recent bit of verbal inanity and pandering is just one more prybar to get the Party of Lincoln away from the darn Religious Right that hijacked it.
I can’t reswpect the LCR. Only two conditions apply:
They’re idiots, and don’t realize that the Repubs would happily persecute them vigorously. the Dems are considerably less interested. The notion that the Dems are just like the Pubbies just because they aren’t as committed to gay issues as some gays think they should be is ludicrous. Pay some attention, people.
They’re wealthy, cynical bastards who figure the Pubbies will protect their wealth better than the Dems and that the same wealth will protect them from any persecution the Pubbies might get up to on behalf of the Religious Right.
I could conceive of them joining the Republican Party to vote in the primaries and get more moderate (less gay hating) candidates on the ballot… but if those efforts failed I don’t see how they could ever in good conscience vote for a Rick Santorum purely out of party loyalty.
The whole issue of the member’s orientation is a smokescreen. If a gay republican is morally bankrupt, then a straight republican is morally bankrupt as well. If you think that someone “owes” you anything because they share the your orientation, you’re the bigot. This thread is simply a disguised means to call the entire Republican Party a bunch of bigoted homophobes. You’d have been a lot more honest if you had titled your thread “What now, gay-hating bastards?”
Oh, and BTW, almost everyone pays taxes. Almost everyone is affected by economic policy. There are plenty of people who aren’t married and have no intention of ever becoming so.
If one takes a look at my personal political beliefs, one would easily say I am in the GOP. But I am not, because no matter how conservative I can be (and I can be pretty damn conservative), but I cannot support the GOP because of the hard core religious right that controls it (and I don’t accept the arguement that moderates control the GOP in one or two token states (all being liberal havens like Hawai’i, New York or Rhode Island.
So I am perplexed why the LCR can support a party that is controlled by people that want to exterminate them and being so complacent about it. If I was them I would be screaming bloody murder at every opportunity that I think the state of the GOP stinks and I don’t like it and i want it to go back to its moderate Nixon-Ford days. (and yes, I am a big Nixon fan).
