Guess how many Libertarians or Republicans were endorsed? How about Greens or Independents?
If you guessed "zero," you would be right on the mark. How about Democrats? Twenty-Seven — what a lucky choice!
more . . .
Now, I am not one to disparage partisanship; we practice it here on the Outright Libertarians web site every day. But what I thought somewhat duplicitous was that this bias towards Democrats was nowhere disclosed in either the column or by the HGLBTPC themselves. Nowhere does it mention that the HGLBTPC is just a Democratic party front group. In fact, on the HGLBTPC's web site, the endorsements are all listed, but nary a one with their party affiliation.
I checked out the party affiliation of every single named candidate, judges and all. This, too, turned out to be more difficult than I expected. It may be hard to believe, but about half of the candidate web sites do not mention that the candidate is running as a Democrat! Sometimes I had to find a local newspaper report in order to find out which party the candidate belonged to. Are these candidates ashamed of their Democratic party affiliation?
We are up front about our Libertarian Party bias. It is in our mission statement and even our name. Why can't the HGLBTPC be honest about their purpose? It seems that they are redundent with the Stonewall Democrats, except they try to achieve their purpose by chicanery and deception. I bet they didn't even approach the Libertarian candidates to find out their position on marriage equality and other gay issues.
Partisanship by the Voice's journalist is even less forgivable. While they mention the party affiliation of many of the endorsed candidates, and some of their opposition Republican candidates, the only Libertarian mentioned is Michael Badnarik in the 10th Congressional district, and then only as "also running". Badnarik's pro-gay positions, reported on by us here, are not mentioned at all.
Also not mentioned are all the other Libertarian candidates, not least of which is our Gubernatorial candidate, James Werner. A quick comparison of the 170 Texas Libertarian candidates vs. the 27 HGPC endorsements indicates that about half are opposed by Libertarians, not just one.
Update: Ironically, this 2004 column just got indexed on Google News today. It gives a pretty good overview of Badnarik's views on LGBT issues.
