The Republic of T.

As almost always happens, some major political story breaks when I’m on vacation or traveling, and thus have less-than-ideal-or-immediate web access. Last time it was the Mark Foley story. Last week it was the the controversy over HRC presidential candidates forum and the initial decision not to invite Mike Gravel, one of a handful of Democratic candidates who one of just a handful of Democratic candidates who support fully equality for gay and lesbian Americans and our families.

Though I engaged in discussions with several other bloggers about the news of the forum and Gravel’s initial exclusion, I didn’t get the chance to post about it here last week. But Mike Rogers has a great round-up posted at the Huffington Post.

The progressive gay blogosphere has arrived and the rest of the political world is cordially invited to take notice. The addition of former Senator Mike Gravel (D-AK) to the upcoming Democratic presidential candidate forum sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and MTV’s LOGO channel represents a sea change for our corner of the netroots community.

Whether or not one thinks Gravel should have been included in the August 9th event is not very important to the story. The real lesson here is that the growing gay blogosphere is “a new form of political commentary leaving adolescence with all the swagger of a twenty year old,” says fellow Huffington Post blogger Sara Whitman

…Blog posts were written, emails flew, phone calls were made, ideas tossed around. Netroots activists and organizational leaders were united by technology and by week’s end the event was expanded by a half-hour (to 90 minutes) and Sen. Gravel was invited to attend.

What struck me most during the whole debacle is echoed in Rogers’ first sentence: “The progressive gay blogosphere has arrived…” Note, he said “the gay progressive blogosphere,” and not “the gay Democratic blogosphere.” That stood out to me because as I floated somewhere out in the Atlantic and watched this unfold, it occurred to me that it may be past time to distinguish between “Democratic” and “progressive,” and acknowledge that the two are not one and the same.

That’ occurred to me after reading John’s post, somewhat pooh-poohing the events that Michael heralded in his post.

Technorati Tags: 2008 election, civil rights, civil unions, current events, gay marriage, gay rights, john edwards, politics

(more…)

In a similar vein as the last two posts, I couldn’t help noticing news of a change in blog rankings that may favor session length over page views.

Nielsen/NetRatings has changed the way it rates Web sites and in the process has upended the rankings of the top online destinations, vaulting AOL and Yahoo over rival Google.

The research service announced yesterday it would measure popularity by how long users linger on sites, not by how many pages they view, a move that could affect how online advertising works.

This new measure will report the total time spent for all visitors and provide a better understanding of users’ total engagement of Web pages and volume of traffic, Nielsen said.

For the past several years blogs have been ranked either by page views or unique visits, with the blogs generating the highest amount of either or both ending up as the top ranked blogs. There are a number of implications worth examining,

Technorati Tags: blogging, blogs, current events, politics

(more…)

This has been a day for blogging-related posts, but I couldn’t resist. Especially since I couldn’t help responding to this bit of advice from Atrios earlier this year, after reviving the blogroll purge discussion, from his post entitled “Why Your Blog Sucks.”

If you’re a thoughtful writer who tends to write longer essays then you’re at a disadvantage. On the other hand, Glenn Greenwald provides a pretty good model of how to make this work: generally one post per day, followed by a couple of updates, and some participation in his comments section. Oh, and truly excellent, original, and important content.

My response?

I could probably generate 10 or more posts a day if most of them consisted of one word, maybe one sentence, a link, and a blockquote. But that’s hardly what I’d call “original content.” (“Excellence” and “importance” are subjective, I think, and depend entirely on the audience you’re writing for.) Besides, that’s not writing. That’s aggregating, and there are already plenty of aggregators out there.

It’s also just the way my mind works, in a kind of perpetual “associative mode.” I can’t think of just one thing at a time. That is, I can’t think of one thing without also thinking of how it relates to something else. How it plays out in my blogging is that I read something, and immediatly think about how it relates to something I read before and/or posted earlier. Once that happens, leaving out those other threads feels like an incomplete picture to me. So I end up with longer posts that link all over the place, or series of posts.

I was surprised, and somewhat vindicated to hear from readers who stated the read this blog precisely because of just those kinds of posts. Kinda like Tony.

Technorati Tags: blogs, current events, politics, blogging, web

(more…)

Being on vacation for a week is hard for a blogger, especially a political blogger. Were it not for the fact that I was co-presenting a blogging seminar during the R Family Vacations cruise, it would have been healthier (and cheaper, considering the cost of buying internet minutes at sea) to leave the laptop at home. But I didn’t, so I couldn’t resist keeping abreast of the news by grabbing my RSS feeds for offline reading. The problem was, I ended up watching stories unfold while I was dying to comment on them, but didn’t want to take time from my vacation with my family to blog about them. So, the next few posts may fall into the “day late and a dollar short” category, but there were a couple of things I couldn’t let go unaddressed.

One of them was the launching of OpenLeft, by Chris Bowers and Matt Stoller, formerly of MyDD fame, which describes itself as “a news, analysis and action website dedicated toward building a progressive governing majority in America.” Stoller, however, goes a bit further in a post titled “What is OpenLeft.com?”.

It’s time to get over the idea that ‘the left’, liberals, progressives, or anyone who believes that power should be distributed and not concentrated in the hands of a few is a scary hippy. And that’s why we called the site ‘OpenLeft’; we see our ideas as a mark of pride, not shame. We think that businesses – like Google – have built highly profitable organizations based on principles of sharing information and distributing power. The genuine radical threat at this moment in history is coming from elites who believe that concentrating power, information, and wealth in their hands should be America’s priority. The response to this threat is a new era of left-wing activism, promoted by normal Americans, who have innovated with the tools we have.

That’s interesting in and of itself, but it’s Bower’s post on the end of the flat blogosphere that particularly piqued my interest, especially in light of what’s been written about blogging recently and in the past couple of years.

Technorati Tags: blogs, current events, gender, politics, race

(more…)

I’ve started a clippings file of stories like this, the kind that make me ask myself what kind of world we’re living in, for a writing project I’m just starting to work on. I’ve written about the mob who killed a man in Texas, and the people in Minnesota who stepped over a dying woman to make their convenience store purchases. This next story falls in to the same category. But not because of what happened to the victims.

Mother and son huddled together, battered and beaten, in the bathroom — sobbing, wondering why no one came to help. Surely the neighbors had heard their screams. The walls are thin, the screen doors flimsy in this violence-plagued housing project on the edge of downtown.

For three hours, the pair say, they endured sheer terror as the 35-year-old Haitian immigrant was raped and sodomized by up to 10 masked teenagers and her 12-year-old son was beaten in another room.

Then, mother and son were reunited to endure the unspeakable: At gunpoint, the woman was forced to perform oral sex on the boy, she later told a TV station.

Afterward, they were doused with household cleansers, perhaps in a haphazard attempt to scrub the crime scene, or maybe simply to torture the victims even more. The solutions burned the boy’s eyes.

The thugs then fled, taking with them a couple of hundred dollars’ worth of cash, jewelry and cell phones.

In the interview with WPTV, the mother described how she and her son sobbed in the bathroom, too shocked to move. Then, in the dark of night, they walked a mile to the hospital because they had no phone to call for help.

It’s not even that no one came to help them, or even bothered to call for any kind of help. It’s this response:

“So a lady was raped. Big deal,” resident Paticiea Matlock said with disgust. “There’s too much other crime happening here.”

The article goes on to talk about the grinding poverty of the residents in the housing project where this happened, and I think that the bigger picture behind that plays a significant role in the “big deal” response to this particular crime. If you pull back to the 10,000 foot view, what does this say about us?

Technorati Tags: crime, culture, current events

I’ve had solid ground under my feet since about 10:00 am yesterday (if you count the train ride from New York to DC), but I can still feel the boat moving. Having finally gotten my “sea legs” under me, I know find myself getting reacquainted with the rules back on land. In a sense, the physical adjustment after the R Family Vacations cruise is similar to the emotional adjustment. After such a long period of freedom, it’s a matter of getting used to a reality that — however familiar — is even more constricting than it felt before.

I can understand why some people cry when its time to get off the boat. We’re pretty lucky, actually. We were coming back to a relatively progressive community where our family is accepted and welcomed, and where we experience very few problems. Some of the families on the cruise are returning to communities that are a lot more conservative, and a lot less accepting or welcoming. For them, this cruise is the one time each year when they can get away from the anxiety of wondering how people will respond to their families or what their kids might have to face.

And even for me, it was a noticeable change, like suddenly relaxing a muscle that has been tense so long you begin to think that’s its natural state.

You have to understand, it’s like I said in the previous post.

(more…)

So, yesterday was day four of the R Family Vacations cruise, and it's been huge fun, unlike any other vacation I've ever taken. Monday, we did Disney World. Yesterday we were in Key West, where we visited the Butterfly preserve and the aquarium before hightailing it back to the air-conditioned refuge of the ship. Today we're on a private island in the Bahamas for two days before we head back to NYC and then it's back to metro-DC for our family.

One thing that's been truly amazing is seeing the variety of families. Of course, there are people here with infants and small children (probably taking their first real vacation since becoming parents. There are people here with older, teenage children. And people are incredibly friendly. I can't count the number of people who've just walked up to us and started talking with us and commiserating about parenting, and how many of them we discovered are in our area. We've even met families with opposite sex parents, gay men and lesbians who are co-parenting.

It's hard not to breath a sigh of relief upon seeing so many families like ours and seeing the variety of ways they deal with the same things we do. (I can't count how many times I've said to myself, "Wow, so my kid isn't the only one who does that," or "That's exactly what we do." It's a relief to see other LGBT families being real families instead of trying to appear to be the "perfect gay family"; whether it's kids melting down or spouses exchanging tense words during the meltdown, only to see the same family laughing and playing together, or the grandparents who've been married for 48 years, who still get irritated with each other but are still very much in love. (Campy as that old song by Charlene maybe, it gets a couple of things right about love.)

It's been a relief to see many families like ours; to know that we're not "doing it" alone. But after talking to other guests, I think I'm not the only one breathing a sigh of relief, but for different reasons.

What's particularly moving is how many people I've run into here who are vacation with their children, their children's partners, and their grandchildren; like the couple we sat next to on the way to Disney World yesterday, or the grandmother who chatted with us at breakfast this morning, and pointed our her husband, and her son's family over at their table.

And then there are the people who don't have children, and don't plant to have any. (Among the numerous social events on the cruise, some are specifically dedicated to singles, both with and without children.) One such passenger came and sat at our table, after we'd been chatting with him cross tables fora while. He was from New York, didn't have children, and says he doesn't plan on having any. I didn't get around to asking him why he'd chosen this particular cruise to go on, since there are cruises specifically for single gay men. But during the course of our conversation, he said that one of the things that he liked about being on the cruise was seeing all these children in families where they were absolutely wanted.

He's right. Not a single gay family on this cruise happened by accident, but rather as a result of great deal of thought and effort on the part of the parents. Later on, though, as I thought more about his comments, it occurred to me that perhaps there was something else. Not only are our children introduced into families where they are wanted but they're also welcome. Most of the LGBT parents I know are very accepting of who they're children are. That doesn't mean letting them do whatever they want, and not correcting their behavior, etc. But understanding that who they are is who they're supposed to be.

It's not just gay parents either. That same acceptance is seen in the extended families — the grandparents who are here with their kids, their kid's partner, and their grandchildren. And it's particularly meaningful because you know that in some cases that acceptance was hard won. It's not hard, then, to understand why even an LGBT person who doesn't have kids and doesn't want any might want to be in that kind of an atmosphere of acceptance — even if it sometimes echoes with crying babies, screaming toddlers, and rowdy teenaegers — especially if that kind of acceptance was lacking in their own lives; kind of like the feeling I get when I see the PFLAG contingent marching in a Pride parade. It does the heart good.

Tonight, there was a family event in one of the ships lounges; a pajama party for the kids on the ship, just before bedtime. We put Parker in his pajamas and went, half expecting a kind of do-it-yourself situation, where we'd have to entertain our kids. Instead, there was a great kids band playing and the kids were encouraged to dance. In fact, the whole set was "audience participation" oriented. Like most of the kids his age, when the music started, Parker took off to join in the dancing.

I can't describe it very well, but there was a moment when I looked around the room and I saw kids reveling in being kids, and parents reveling in their kids being kids. Watching Parker "cut loose" and enjoy himself, moving in whatever way the music moved him, laughing and finally joining in what was basically a conga line of kids at the end, I couldn't help smiling. and thinking "That's my kid!" It helped that every time he finished dancing to a number, he'd run over to the hubby and I. Every so often, during the song, he'd look up and see me and the hubby smiling at him, and applauding sometimes, smile back at us, and keep dancing.

I looked around the room and saw parents and grandparents having that same kind of moment, and from one I can tell, I think it did everyone's heart some good. It would probably do anyone's heart some good. How could it not? Provided, of course, that you have one.

I’m a little late on this, and Andy has pretty much covered it, but in case anyone hasn’t heard Bill Gates bailed out PlanetOut, to the tune of $26.2 million. That’s great, Bill. Honestly, I could kiss ya. Even if you’re not the richest man in the world anymore. (Besides, you’re better looking than that Carlos Slim Helu who’s got you beat by billions.) And, as for all those times I shouted “Whose d***k to I have to s***k to get my computer to work?!”, back when I used Windows? Let’s just forget about that, shall we? That is, unless you’re coming out of the closet as a … liberal.

Oh. Wait. Nevermind.

So pucker up, Bill At his rate, I might even forgive you for going neutral on gay rights, and just in time for the Washington state gay rights initiative to fail by one vote (since it passed a year later), and for hiring Ralph Reed, and even for contributing to Tom DeLay (or to the charity he used as a source of soft money political contributions). Ew. OK. Maybe not that last one. It kind leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

By the time you read this, I'll be somewhere out on the Atlantic, enjoying an R Family Vacations cruise with my family and a whole bunch of other gay families, and co-facilitating a blogging seminar with Dana of the fabulous Mombian blog. And since you'll be reading this on Monday, the hubby and I will also have gotten hitched onboard the ship. I've got a few posts scheduled to go up, since I don't know how often I'll be online. But Family Pride is live-blogging the cruise, so perhaps I'll be able to join them in that. Meanwhile, here's a round-up post of stuff I meant to blog about but ran out of time.

Friday was president Bush's 61st birthday, and I'm sure we all wish him many happy returns of the day. The White House may have actually given Bush critics a gift, when a spokesperson inadvertently confirmed what many of us already suspected: that this administration has no understanding of equal justice.

Q Scott, is Scooter Libby getting more than equal justice under the law? Is he getting special treatment?

MR. STANZEL: Well, I guess I don't know what you mean by "equal justice under the law." But this is a unique case, there's no doubt about that. And we have said that there are a lot of people on all sides of this issue who've made good points. The President took a very measured approach to it. He believed that the jury verdict should be respected and — but he did feel that the sentence was excessive, in terms of jail time. But this is a unique case, and there's no doubt about that.

You can almost hear him thinking to himself, "Equal? Justice? What is this "equal justice" you speak of?"

(more…)

If you’re reading this, is 2 o’clock on Sunday, or sometime after that. If it’s 2 o’clock EST, then the hubby and I are saying our vows to each other now, with Parker looking on. When the minister asked us to write about our relationship, so she could use it in the ceremony, this is what I wrote.

When I think about my family, my relationships with my husband and my son, I think about a song I learned when I was a child. I’d heard it over and over again on television, and when I was in the third grade I heard my school was doing a production of the musical that the song came from. I told my teacher I could sing it, and she asked me to sing it for the class. So I did, and the whole class laughed. Probably because I didn’t sing it like a third grader.

My teacher took me to see the music teacher and had me sing it for him. I got the lead in the show, probably because I didn’t sing it like a third grader. They even changed the name of the character from Dorothy to Danny, so I could play the part.

Technorati Tags: current events, family, gay, gay marriage, life

(more…)

I don’t know if there is such a thing as “reparative therapy” for racism, but if there is then “ex-gay” spokesman Stephen Bennett may want to sign up after his latest slip. Good As You has the skinny, including an audio link, but basically during a chat with a Concerned Women for America interviewer Bennett commented on the experience of Charlene Cothran (publisher of Venus magazine, named for her former partner, and formerly targeted at the black gay community) whose newly “ex-gay” (and newly awash in funding for her struggling magazine) but who identifies as “celibate” instead of heterosexual), Bennett made a telling little error.

He meant to say that “looking over the masses of GAY American people” she felt dirty. What came out was more like “looking over the mass of BLACK American people” she felt dirty.

Well.

Good As You notes that Bennett seems to have had brushes with white supremacists in the past. But in light of his remarks, I think it’s worthwhile to revisit an earlier post of mine that relates to this.

Technorati Tags: current events, gay rights, politics, race, religion

(more…)

You Are Fairly Skeptical

You’re not the type of person who will fall for anything… But you do keep your mind open to all sorts of possibilities. You figure that anything could be true. After all, the world is a strange place. However, you’re going to need some convincing before you can believe in aliens or reincarnation!

Interesting. But I’d like to see a quiz that asks “How cynical are you?” Then again, I might be afraid to see my score.

Technorati Tags: memes

One morning when I stepped off the Metro station elevator on my way to work, I almost stepped into a puddle of blood. My eyes followed the puddle to its source; a woman sitting on the floor of the station, with blood pouring from a gash in her knee that I guessed she’d gotten from falling on the escalator. Standing over her was a woman who was applying pressure to the knee with both hands to stop the bleeding. Judging from the identical name badges they were, the two women were probably part of what appeared to be a group of conference attendees, some of whom were huddled a few feet away from the two women.

Even though I had a train to catch, I slowed down and my hand immediately went to my cell phone, as I asked if there was anything I could do to help. Maybe it’s the Boy Scout in me, but I couldn’t walk by that scene without offering to do something, even though I’d likely miss the train and have to wait for the next one. I wasn’t the only one eiher. Several other commuters did the same thing. The woman applying pressure said that 911 had already been called, paramedics would be there shortly, and that everything was under control.

Slowly, those of us who’d stopped to offer some help moved on with her reassurances. My guess is that not stopping to see if help was needed was as unthinkable to us. The same can’t be said of the people who stepped over a stabbing victim, so they could make their purchases and be on their way.

Technorati Tags: crime, culture, current events

(more…)

Some two thirds of Americans are flag-wavers. That is, they’ve flown the flag at home, in their office or from their cars, according to a recent article, which also says that there are fewer flag-wavers since 2003.

In 2007 some 62 percent of Americans said they flew the stars and stripes at home, in the office or in their car, according to the poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press in Washington released last week ahead of the July 4 Independence Day celebrations.

But in August 2002, less than a year after the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, 75 percent of Americans said they flew the flag, according to the poll published last week.

…Patriotic sentiment has also receded somewhat since 2003, when the United States invaded Iraq. In 2003, 56 percent agreed with the statement “I am very patriotic” compared to 49 percent this year.

Among Republican voters, the sentiment has declined from 71 percent in 2002 to 61 percent in 2007. Among Democrat voters, 48 percent said they were “very patriotic” in 2003 and 45 percent in 2007.

It won’t surprise any readers of this blog that I’m not much of a flag-waver. I never have been, even though I grew up in a home where my dad hauled out the flag for all the appropriate holidays, and I spent years in the Boy Scouts (mostly against my will) where I learned (by practicing over and over again) how to properly raise, lower, and fold a flag.

That was about the time I was coming out, and as a result I always had a somewhat ambivalent relationship with the flag. Then during my senior year of high school, the Supreme Court upheld Georgia’s sodomy law, and I stopped standing for the pledge of allegiance. I couldn’t bring myself to choke out the words “liberty and justice for all,” at least not with out a sardonic chuckle or two.

Years later, after 9/11, I refused to display a flag from our house. I can’t count the number of events I went to at which some form of the flag was thrust into my hands, then leaving me with the job of deciding how best to dispose of it. I guess what bothered me about it is that I didn’t understand the point, or I didn’t get what people were saying with their flag display.

Technorati Tags: bush, culture, current events, politics, puppy

(more…)

84%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Mingle² – Online Dating

No major surprises there. And I’m not even going to say I can quit anytime I want to…

Technorati Tags: blogs, humor, memes

I suppose it was inevitable that something like this would happen. After all, with a well known “reparative therapy” camp closing down, news that a majority of American’s believe gays can’t change orientations, even “ex-gay” leaders doubting orientation change, increasing support for marriage equality among young voters, support for gay adoption growing, religious leaders kicking off New York’s Pride parade, a number of Christians and conservatives softening on the “gay cure” idea, more Americans opposing “Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell,” some pretty high profile former homophobes are changing their minds,and even more Republicans supporting gay rights, somebody clearly has some ground to make up. Especially with “ex-gay” survivors like Peter Toscano and Christine Bakke telling their stories publicly, and ex-”ex-gays” holding a conference of their own.

So, when I caught wind of Michael Glatze’s column in World Net Daily, I wasn’t surprise. I only wondered what took ‘em so long. But given the above, and framing that still bears the faint scent of mothballs, I don’t think Glatze’s story of a former gay magazine publisher (what is it with publishers of struggling and/or failed gay magazine going “ex-gay lately anyway?) will have quite the impact that the “ex-gay” movement intends.

Technorati Tags: culture, current events, gay, gay rights, homophobia, marriage, politics, religion

(more…)

There are times when the Bush administration simply beggars belief. It goes beyond mere blundering to a willful obtuseness that borders on psychotic. If you don’t believe me, consider this. How dangerous is a man who believes he can do no wrong? How dangerous is a man who believes he can do no wrong, and who has the power to send troops into battle? How dangerous is a man who believes that he can do no wrong, and who has the power to selectively enforce or ignore the law? To whom does he dispense mercy and to whom does he dispense harsh “justice”? And on what basis?

That’s the question that came to mind when I heard last night that Bush commuted Scooter Libby’s sentence.

President Bush commuted Monday the prison term of former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, facing 30 months in prison after a federal court convicted him of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to investigators.

A commutation is distinct from a pardon, which is a complete eradication of a conviction record — making it the same as if the person has never been convicted.

Bush has only commuted the jail term, which means that the conviction remains on Libby’s record and he must still pay a $250,000 fine.

Commutations are rarely granted, says CNN’s chief legal analyst, Jeffrey Toobin. A commutation is a total right of the president and it cannot be challenged by any attorney or court, he said.

It’s the fourth time Bush has issued one.

Earlier Monday, a federal appeals court unanimously ruled that Libby could not delay serving his sentence, which would have put Libby just weeks away from surrendering to a prison.

In his statement, Bush called Libby’s sentence “excessive” and reminded that the consequences of Libby’s sentence will be “long-lasting.” (Provided, that is, that Bush doesn’t grant Libby a full pardon before he leaves office.) The amount of consideration Bush apparently gave to Libby’s case struck me as a harsh contrast to the the degree of consideration — and the quality of mercy — he’s shown in other cases, in which much more than 30 months in prison was at stake, as well as the reason why.

Technorati Tags: bush, current events, politics, security, scooter libby, war on terror

(more…)

[Updated: to include link to Jim Burroway's post, which I somehow neglected to link originally.]

Remember Zach? I do, but it’s been a long time since I’ve thought about that story. I only even talk about it when I doing a presentation about blogging, and want to point out what blogging can accomplish. But beyond that, it seems like something a long way back in time. Last night, though, it all came back to me when I read Kip’s blog post and learned that the “reparative therapy” camp Zach’s parents sent him to has closed.

This evening at the Ex-Gay Survivor Conference in Irvine, California, we screened short excerpts of several documentary films including Fox’s unfinished work. Just before Fox’s extended trailer was shown, we learned that he had to make a very quick last-minute change to the ending today. And when we saw that ending, the crowd erupted in both cheers and tears as we saw that Love In Action Director John Smid confirmed that the “Refuge” youth program has been “dissolved.”

There were many cathartic moments at the Ex-Gay Survivor Conference, but for me at least, this surprise announcement was the most satisfying. I hope this will finally bring to an end any ideas that holding youth against their will for counseling they neither need nor desire is acceptable in a civilized country. This is a great step forward.

Now, it seems like things have come full circle since the Friday night when I came across Zach’s MySpace post and posted about in on my blog.

Technorati Tags: blogs, current events, family, gay, gay rights, homophobia, parenting, politics, religion

(more…)

It depends on how you look at it. Admittedly, I was a bit over-stimulated by being in the media room during this weeks presidential forum (even though I was immediately reminded that I was not media, “new media” status notwithstanding). And I had just written that homophobia probably wouldn’t be addressed, even though the forum kicked off with a kind of circle-jerk discussion about racism and racial discrimination. So I was stunned when Barrack Obama actually spoke the word “homophobia” while answering a question about the AIDS epidemic.

Tavis Smiley: Senator Obama?

Barack Obama: I think John’s prescriptions are right. I would add the issue of prevention involves education and one of the things that we’ve got to overcome is a stigma that still exists in our communities. We don’t talk about this. We don’t talk about in the schools. Sometimes we don’t talk about it in the churches. It has been as aspect of sometimes a homophobia, that we don’t address this issue as clearly as it needs to be. I also think there’s a broader issue here. This is going to be true on all the issues we talk about.

The problems of poverty, like of health care, like of educational opportunity, are all interconnected. To some degree, the African American community is weakened. It has a disease to its immune system. When we are impoverished, when people don’t have jobs, they are more likely to be afflicted not just with AIDS, but with substance abuse problems, with guns in the streets.

So it is important for us to look at the whole body here and make absolutely certain that we are providing the kinds of economic development opportunities and jobs that will create healthy communities, that we’ve got universal health care that ensures the people can get regular treatments. Those are the kinds of strategies that, over the long term, are going to make a difference in our communities.

And while I was somewhat disappointed with how quickly he danced away from the issue, and failed to include it in his list of “social diseases” affecting African American communities (after all, homophobia is likely involved to some degree in substance abuse and violence), I was so stunned to hear the word even used at a forum focused on issues facing African Americans that I missed the significance of his next comment, in his exchange with Sen. Biden on the same question.

Technorati Tags: 2008 election, current events, elections, gay, gay rights, hiv, homophobia, obama, politics, race

(more…)