For my fellow Americans who are gay - I just advise you how Bill Clinton treated your cause in 1993 after you went flat out for him in 1992. You will be betrayed again, if you are fool enough to back Democrats in 2008. True, we conservative Christians might not seem the logical home for you, but you do know where we stand, we are ready to compromise and we will never, ever betray you. You might want to think about that as you watch the debate, and make your donation and voting choices.
That's right.
Republicans -- right-wing conservative Republicans, who have blazed a trail of hatred and bigotry against gay people for 20+ years -- are positioning themselves as the alternative for gay people tired of Democratic duplicity.
The mind boggles. The jaw drops. The eyes cross.
How desperate can the Republicans get, as their party continues to crumble into dust?
I mean seriously. Think about this for a second.
These are the same Republicans who sponsored a Constitutional Amendment designed to make us second class citizens.
These are the same Republicans who launched an anti-gay jihad in dozens of states the last two elections, culminating in laws that took health benefits away from gay families in Michigan; that threatened the private consensual contracts of gay couples in Virginia with nullification; that passed state amendments that made gay people forever non-citizens of their states in major areas.
This is the same Republican Party that was instrumental in banning gay parenting in Florida, whose "moderate" Bush governor endorsed that law.
This is the same Republican party under which discharges from the military have soared to new heights in the middle of a war -- and then complains about shortages in the areas where the discharges have hit hardest.
This is the same Republican Party whose administration dramatically increased the number of challenges to asylum applications for gay and lesbian foreigners seeking refuge in this country from murder -- while simultaneously loosening standards for religious persecution and other categories of individual less under threat than ever before. (Dozens have been sent back to their countries to be tortured and murdered as a result).
This is the same Republican Party that runs a fake "libertarian" presidential nominee who declares in Congress that the Constitution doesn't "guarantee a right to sodomy," and that Supreme Court justices who cited the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection under the law overruled the rights of "the people of Texas" to imprison their gay populations.
This is the same Republican Party whose "pro-civil union" candidate thinks that New Hampshire's civil unions "go too far" because they're called "spousal unions."
This is the same Republican Party who wields federal ERISA regulations as a club to target gay families who are legally married or partnered and permits employers to cite ERISA as a precedent for overruling mutually-agreed-upon employment benefits -- ex post facto.
This is the same Republican Party who colluded with Democrats to do a lot of this stuff -- and plenty more.
Yes, we "know where the Republicans stand." They stand on the precipice of the chasm of irrelevant, hateful, mean-spirited, meddlesome, statist politics -- and thankfully they'll be hurtling off the edge shortly.
And Republicans will "never, ever betray" us?
They haven't just betrayed gay Americans. They've betrayed all of us -- ALL Americans -- through their un-American campaigns. . . their persistent assaults on our shared humanity, our shared and cherished Constitutional rights and freedoms, our families, our men and women in uniform, our neighbors, and our very decency as a nation of laws.
Disillusioned Democrats and Republicans already know that if they want a party that REALLY stands for something -- including the equality under the law of ALL Americans (gay or straight) -- they've got a real choice. . . the Libertarian choice.
The only choice Republicans have, given their record, is to what degree they'll ask for forgiveness for their sins against our Republic and the American Way.
